#sociolects

[greyennui]

i mentioned to a friend once that i was "back on my chicken sandwich bullshit" and now she uses the "back on my ____ bullshit" phrase semi frequently and i picked up the phrase "that's not my business" from her and i really love sociolects because we've assimilated parts of our friends into ourselves and now we're all walking around speaking bits of our friends into the world and every time we do we're reminded they exist and we love them enough to carry them in our words

[luulapants]

Hello! Please tell me about your favourite dialect! If you have more than one I’d be interest in hearing about that too!

Oooh, this is a tough question! I'm assuming we're talking English dialects, but rather than a regional one, I'm going to go a little left field with this: the language of teenage girls.

(Disclaimer: research on this topic is mostly limited to cis girls.)

It doesn't really have a single name it goes by, and it's definitely not one cohesive dialect over time or geography. However, teenage girls have some of the most dynamic, distinctive speech patterns you'll find in mainstream society.

Sociolects are used for distinguishing a social group, which is massively important for clique-y girls trying to determine social connections and hierarchy. Basically, if you talk like them, you're 'in,' and you had better keep up with the slang and tones and turns of speech they're using, because the second you fall behind, they'll know you're 'out.'

This isn't something that's consciously done, either. Socially-minded girls will subconsciously mirror the speech of their peers. As they do this with one another within restricted social circles, they create a sort of echo chamber where novel speech patterns are picked out as things that are 'uniquely us,' continued and exaggerated over time. This leads to them adopting weird grammatical structures, neologisms (new words), and especially intonation patterns. Think 'valley girl' tone, 'vocal fry' or even the stereotypical 'sarcasm' intonation. All teen girl speech features.

[linguenuvolose]

Lidingö-i/Viby-i

*Since I am from Stockholm that’s the context this post mostly will focus on, the perception of the Lidingö-i in other parts of the Swedish speaking area is different. I will also just call it Lidingö-i for the simplicity of it.* 

Lidingö-i is a special way to pronounce the letter i in Swedish which in the Stockholm region is an upper class marker.

Lidingö is an island right next to Stockholm, known for it’s rich people since it’s the third wealthiest municipality in Sweden after Danderyd and Täby (north of Stockholm, part of what is called Norrort). A proposed origin of the pronunciation is that, in the 1900′s, the rich people of Lidingö used to go to the west coast (where this pronunciation also exists) during the summers and they brought the i back home where it in turn became a symbol of wealth (i.e. having enough money to have a house on the west coast). This theory is debated though since the Lidingö-i also exists in other random places in Sweden so it’s a bit of an enigma. 

Lidingö-i is a long buzzing sound and even further forward in the mouth than the normal Swedish i. It also has a bit of a nasal quality. If you have a Lidingö-i you also have the same kind of buzzing y (since i and y are really similar sounds in Swedish). I’ve had troubles finding videos of people with this pronunciation but I think this guy (at least partly) has it. He’s from Gothenburg though, which you clearly hear in the end of the video, but this pronunciation exists there too. Personally I have a bit of a Lidingö-i but not full on, you can hear it a bit in this audio of me pronouncing my name, especially the last time I say it. 

I think the Lidingö-i isn’t as strong as people imagine it to be, but since it exists in the name of the place it’s associated with (Lidingö), it’s a pretty common response (from non-Lidingö people) to do an exaggerated version of it when someone tells you they’re from there. 

[comtedemoney]

Brits, I know you're speaking English, but I have no clue what you're saying.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/fuckin-ha-ha-ha

In addition to dialectal variation, there are clearly sociolectal issues as well.

[cosmogyros]

adventureswithjay replied to your post “guess what: when you spell “you” as “u” it can ONLY be a singular...”

Actually those are completely different phonological realizations of the second person plural which are much more common than "you". It would actually make a lot of sense then why "u" can only be singular is because it is a representation of the younger generations speech that doesn't use second person plural "you" anyway. For example you could say "u gais" and it would be appropriate. This is actually pretty cool. Thanks!

I know right?! yeah it kind of blew my mind when I first thought about it :D

[justsomeantifas]

u and ur are informal you and your/you’re

[justsomeantifas]

me: *writes in a tumblr grapholect easily recognized by most who use this hellsite*

them: I have no idea what a grapholect is. I am going to attempt to correct your grammar, because of this, when I'm not even using the same grapholect as you.

me: so ur a pretentious, ignorant, prescriptivist, ableist, piece of trash, i gotchu.

[youmayhavenoquotes]

The tendency for older adults to criticize younger generations for how language changes is its own form of establishing identity or staking a space in a social group.

Adrienne Lafrance