Imitation of Dialects: from South to West
My Segerup · Lund University Publications (Lund University) · 1999
This study reports on imitations of the West Swedish dialect performed by native speakers of the South Swedish dialect. As an alternative approach to traditional dialect studies the imitations teach us more about the most characteristic features of the target dialect and further guide us to the essence of the dialect. Introduction Imitating different dialects of a language is often a source of amusement, entertainment and challenge, but is it also a source of knowledge? In comparison to other dialects West Swedish appears to be quite a tricky one to understand. By means of synthetic speech experiments to reproduce the main Swedish dialects have been made through manipulation of the intonation (Bruce and Grding, 1978). While the experiment was generally successful, the synthetic imitation of the West Swedish dialect was considered to be a failure. Consequently the aim of the present study is to learn more about this dialect from a study of imitations. By analysing the imitations care...