PHONETIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH DIALECTS

Abstract

The article examines the term dialect is often used in the sense of regional, local or geographic varieties of a language mainly used in oral speech. A language belongs to a nation or nations, as English does, therefore it is a social phenomenon, understandable by all its members. A language is not a complex combination of individual speech forms. The phonetic and phonological features of a language dialect relationship, natural bilingualism and also some types of speech communities classified by their social characteristics are studiedin a new branch of phonetics, namely social phonetics. Idiolects and dialect speakers are identifiable by their sounds, tone or melody, words and also by expressions and constructions by their phonetics, grammatical, lexical and stylistic features. The distinction between language and dialect is based on the criterion of functional approach.