Warren Port writes about Somerset English. See the link for a baffling sample of this strange form of English.
Admittedly it is a very bad English and he is exaggerating for effect but I understand most of it except for the odd word. When I was twelve we moved from London to a tiny village called Cattcott ten miles from the Mendips where this recording is from. In the eighties there were some people who spoke that way, probably more diluted now.
I am a linguist. We don’t really call anything “bad English.” All dialects are as good as any other. I just figure if you can’t understand it, it’s a foreign language. I would like to split English into some separate languages because some of them pretty much are.
Really Wurzel is just as much of a valid way to speak English as any others. This man speaks Wurzel and he is able to communicate just fine with other folks who also speak it, so it is a valid lect. The only problem is that rest of us English speakers speak another English language that is very far removed from this English language, so we can’t understand him. Someone ought to write this language down. It’s cool because it seems like it has a lot of new words that I don’t have in the English language that I speak.
At a minimum, as separate languages, I would probably split off:
Scots (already split off). Really there is probably more than one language inside Scots. Insular Scots, spoken on some Scottish islands, is reportedly even hard for other Scots speakers to understand.
Jamaican English. Jamaican English Creole is already split off as a separate language. At any rate, in its hard form, it is nearly unintelligible to Americans.
Scottish English. We can probably split this off as well because it is probable that there are Scottish English speakers who can’t understand pure Scots very well.
Hibernian English. There seem to be some forms of Irish English such as the hard lect spoken by the spokespeople for the IRA and its political wing, that are very hard for Americans to understand. It is uncertain how well the rest of the British can understand them.
Scouse. Really hard Scouse is barely even intelligible outside of Liverpool, not even in the suburbs. There is a report of an American who lived in Liverpool for 8 years and after 8 years, she still could not understand the very hard Scouse spoken by young working class Liverpool women. The rest of England reportedly has a hard time with Scouse.
Geordie and related lects from the far north of England up around Scotland. These lects are spoken around Newcastle in the far north of England on the east coast. Even the rest of the English often have a hard time with Geordie, and when people talk about multiple languages inside English, Geordie is often the first one they bring up.
West Country English. In particular the hard Wurzel spoken in Somerset at least until very recently is not well understood outside of Somerset and Dorset. It sounds similar to Irish and has a lot of new words for things. The language of Bristol may be included here.
Newfoundland English. There are reportedly some hard forms of Newfie English spoken by older fishermen on the coast of the island that are very hard for other North Americans to understand.
Appalachian English. Some forms of Appalachian English from the deep hollows of West Virginia are hard for other Americans to understand.
Tangier English. Spoken on an island off the coast of Virginia by fishermen, this is a relatively pure West Country English lect from 1680 or so that has survived more or less intact. When they speak among themselves, they are hard for other Americans to understand. The degree to which this can be understood by West Country English speakers in England is not known.
Mulungeon English. Some of the English lects spoken by some Mulungeon groups in western Virginia are very hard for other Americans to understand. They seem to have an archaic character and they seem to use a lot of new words for things that I could not identify when I heard it. This may be a form of the form of English often said to be archaic from centuries ago that is still spoken in the mountains.
New York English. There is a hard form of New York English, not much spoken anymore, that cannot be well understood at least here on the West Coast. Tends to be spoken by working class Whites especially in the Bronx. In general, this lect is dying out. Here in California, we recently had a man who moved here from the Bronx, a young working class White man. Even after 2-3 months here, people still had a hard time understanding him. He did not seem to be able to modify his speech so he could be understood better. Finally he learned California English dialect well enough so that he could make himself understood.
African American Vernacular English or Ebonics. This lect is spoken by many Black people in the US, often lower class people in ghettos or in the country. The hard forms of it cannot be understood at all by other Americans. I once had two Black women in my car for an hour or so. They were speaking AAVE. Over that hour, I do not believe that I understood a single word they said. They may as well have been speaking Greek. Forms spoken in the ghettos of Memphis and in the Mississippi Delta by rural Blacks may be particularly hard to understand.
Australian English. Some forms of Australian English can be hard to understand for people outside the continent. I found that a form spoken in rural Tasmania was particularly hard to understand. I even have a hard time understanding Helen Caldicott, the famous physician. Other forms spoken more in the rural areas of the main island can also be rather hard to understand.
Nigerian Pidgin English. The harder forms of this may be rather hard to Americans to understand, but this needs further investigation. They are definitely quite divergent and seem odd to many Americans.
Indian English. Some of the Indian English spoken by speakers in India can be quite hard to Americans to understand. What we need to know is whether this is a first or second language for them. If they were brought up speaking this Indian English, then it is a separate language. If it is simply English spoken as a second language by a native speaker of Hindi or another Indian language then it is not a separate language.
In conclusion, it seems that there are at least 14 separate languages inside of macro-English. 2 other cases are uncertain.
