Sunday, October 18, 2009

Glaswegian translation

This news piece on the BBC site covers the recent story about a translation company in Scotland advertising for "Glaswegian English" speakers to help their clients understand the local dialect. There's more detailed analysis of the Glaswegian dialect here in the Telegraph and one academic, Dr Jane Stuart-Smith, a Reader in English Language at the University of Glasgow, makes the point that Glaswegian itself is quite a broad category:

The Glaswegian accent has a range of varieties, ranging from those close to standard English to those that are much closer to Scots, so the broad varieties of Glaswegian which are linguistically and structurally more different from standard English you would expect people to find harder to understand. Non-native English speakers or southern English people who are used to standard English or American find the sound system of Glaswegian different and these differences mean it will be difficult to understand.

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...