Tag Archives: English Dialects

English Dialects

Screen Shot 2016-01-20 at 15.48.40Some readers have probably been wondering what happened to the rest of the scones we got as presents over the festive period. Well here they are, two of Dobbies finest cinnamon delights. They did not mind being frozen at all and were absolutely delicious. Although they were so big we had to get a couple of neighbours in to help out.

One million hits

 IMG_9578A new app, English Dialects, developed at universities in Cambridge, Zurich and Bern, asks users how they pronounce words including “scone”. Choices are given for another 25 words, or word meanings, after which the app guesses where the user might be from. When the team launched a similar app for German speakers there were more than one million hits in four days.

Typical!

The aim of the free app is to track how dialects have evolved over a number of decades. So the big question when you tuck into your next scone – does it rhyme with “gone” or “cone”? We did all of the questions and it determined that we were from the midlands near the Welsh border. But then English Dialects only works in England .. typical!. If you want to find out what part of England you are from you can download the app here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35262229. Now you can’t say we don’t keep you informed of goings on in scone world! Many thanks to our southern correspondent for the info.