Linguist Forum
Specializations => Sociolinguistics => Topic started by: dalila on February 15, 2018, 12:35:21 PM
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Hi everybody, can you give me the definition of "urban dialect" . I searched the web but I couldn't find it. I think an urban dialect is a dialcet spoken in the city (obviously) as opposed to a rural dialect spoken in rural areas, but I think such definition is just too generic and inaccurate.
You can also give me an example.
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I believe that is what the term means. A (usually distinctive) dialect of a dense population in a city. An example would be, of course, a "New York accent". But just like other dialects, boundaries and sizes are not clear.
I think the term "urban dialect" sometimes refers to minority ethnic/racial, or just the general/non-upper class, populations specifically, but it shouldn't be limited to that meaning. Whatever is a distinctive description of how people speak in a particular urban area.
Of course the best source for this would be to look at current research (or textbooks) that use the term and give examples. It would be very easy to find dozens of examples on Google Books just by searching the term, for example.
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Thank you very much! I have another question: can you tell me whether you can hear a glottal stop for "make" and "it" in this sentence?
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It's hard to hear in that (mp3, recording quality, volume levels, etc.). But it's possible for both sounds there's a glottal stop. I'm not sure. It sounds to me like the stops are unreleased, so the sound wouldn't be too different for [t/k/ʔ].