About 28 years ago when I first started drinking there was still a few of the old miners around. Now, I'm descended, on my English side anyhow, from fishermen, steam-boatmen (Steam-tugs in my family), ship-builders and miners. But even I couldn't understand the old mining patois! The old guys would fix you with a grin, ramble on for more than a few minutes to which you would reply "aye, man!" without understanding a single word! At the time these people lived in the same time as me in the same town- the Ridges of North Shields but they might as well have been from Mars!

I realize that a dialect is a regional variation of a language, but at some point, isn't it hard to differentiate a dialect from a language?

The old mining communities were very close knit with very little contact with outsiders so I think they virtually did develop their own language. It just seems strange to me that I could barely understand someone who was born in the same town as me! The present Geordie dialect is much less harsher now and sadly we'll never hear the older version as it's died with the men who spoke it- rather a shame.
The North Eastern accent does vary even within a few miles. In Sunderland just to the South of me they pronounce 'make' and 'take' as 'mack' and 'tack'. For this reason inhabitants of Sunderland are known as 'Mackems'! Ashington (another old mining town) to the North pronounces the u sound in pub and tub for example as purb and turb. They'll say "Ah'm gannin doon th'purb" meaning "I'm going to the pub"! Which leads me to the only joke about Ashington I can remember:
Someone meets a friend of his from Ashington "Hi, Harry. Did you pass your driving test then?" Harry replies "No, I didn't, it was going well until I ran over a kerb." "You failed your test for just that?" his friend says. "Well, it was a kerb scout!"

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Erik Johansen,

Interesting note: for some reason Americans spell kerb as curb. They don't spell curb, as in "Curb your enthusiasm" as kerb, though!

OK, perhaps not so interesting...

All right, so in Ashington they pronounce cub 'kerb' so how do they pronounce kerb,then?-'korb'!They also pronounce table 'chebble'!

Do you spell the 2 "curbs" differently. I haven't heard of "kerb."

In all fairness to us Americans , aren't there lots of words that have 2 meanings without 2 ways of spelling the words?

As arnie says we use curb as in 'curb your enthusiasm' but kerb for the edge of the pavement- 'sidewalk' to you Americans. I don't know why but kerb doesn't look very English to me-I'll have to check it's origins.

American English curb and British English kerb are both from Old French courber 'to bend, bow' from Latin curvo 'to bend'.

quote:

but at some point, isn't it hard to differentiate a dialect from a language?

At some point, what was one language becomes two languages. Prior to that, the two languages were dialects of the same language. So, at some point, there must be a point at which they switched over. Obviously this is almost impossible to pinpoint, especially without a massive amount of written works. This is clearly an over-simplification, but the point should be clear.

The distinction between a dialect and language is quite hard to pinpoint, but typically involves mutual intelligibility and armadas. Other possible criteria are vocabulary and grammar. Writing systems could be included, however there are several well known modern counterexamples, including Hindi-Urdu. There are also a number of cultural factors which effect these distinctions, as evidence by the level of mutual intelligibilty of Swedish/Norweigan/Danish.