--- title: Accents and dialects around the world — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Accents and dialects around the world», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: English is spoken all over the world, and every place has grown its own accent and words: a fizzy drink is "pop" in much of the Ame --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Accents and dialects around the world # Accents and dialects around the world Lesson 19 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/0/) — English is spoken all over the world, and every place has grown its own accent and words: a fizzy drink is "pop" in much of the American Midwest, "soda" in the Northeast and California, and sometimes just "coke" in parts of the South. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/1/) — The same word can mean different things in different countries: in Cape Town "Turn left at the robot" means at the traffic light, and in Sydney "Grab your togs and thongs" means your swimsuit and flip-flops. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/2/) — Some Englishes have grown into rich systems of their own: Indian English gives us "prepone" (move earlier, the opposite of postpone), Singapore's Singlish says "Can or not?" and "Can lah!", and Jamaican Patois grew from English mixed with West African languages. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/3/) — Accents grow from the people who settle a place: many of Australia's first settlers in the late 1700s and 1800s came from London, south-east England and Ireland, and their mix became the Australian accent. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/4/) — None of these is "broken English"; each has its own rules, and a smart listener uses the situation to work out new words, then asks. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/5/) — In Pittsburgh "yinz" means you all; a fizzy drink is "pop" in much of the Midwest, "soda" in the Northeast and California, and sometimes "coke" in parts of the South. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/6/) — In Australia "togs" means swimsuit, "thongs" means flip-flops and "arvo" means afternoon; in other countries "thongs" can mean something different, which causes funny mix-ups. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/7/) — In New Zealand "sweet as" means great or no problem, with nothing after "as", and "chur" means thanks or cool, influenced by Māori English. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/8/) — In South African English a "robot" is a traffic light, "lekker" means great or tasty (from Afrikaans), "now now" means soon and "just now" means some time later. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/9/) — In Indian English "do the needful" means do what is needed, "revert" often means reply, and "prepone" means move to an earlier time; Indian English is spoken by many millions. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/10/) — In Singapore English (Singlish) "Can or not?" means is that possible?, "Can lah!" means yes, sure, and "lah" adds feeling; Singlish mixes English with Malay, Chinese languages and Tamil. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/12/) — Many of Australia's first settlers came from London and south-east England as well as Ireland; their mix of accents grew into the Australian accent over generations. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/13/) — Jamaican Patois, also called Jamaican Creole, grew from English mixed with West African languages; it is spoken by millions and has its own grammar; "Mi soon come" means I'll be there soon, though maybe later. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/14/) — "I couldn't care less" and the American "I could care less" both mean "I don't care at all"; "couldn't" is the original and makes more sense, so use it in careful writing. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/15/) — "Fixin' to" means about to in Texas and the American South. - ← previous: [Accents and dialects of Britain and Ireland](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/18-accents-and-dialects-of-britain-and-ireland/) - next →: [Is there one proper English? The big arguments](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)