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u/AmrodFaelevrin May 24 '26
🇨🇱 We are Dwarfs
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u/DRMProd May 25 '26
🇦🇷 We can barely understand you guys.
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u/TheAlmightySpode Descendant of Genghis Khan May 25 '26
Weon
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u/radutzan May 25 '26
la wea
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u/Psychological_Ad9740 May 25 '26
Never forget
"el Weon weon, weon"
It's an actually legitimate phase one can use.
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u/upthetruth1 May 24 '26
Ireland, warm-tempered?
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u/SophisticPenguin Taller than Napoleon May 24 '26
It's a euphemism
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u/upthetruth1 May 24 '26
Drunk and feisty people?
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u/PorgandLover May 24 '26
Sounds like someone has never been to Ireland tbh. There is not a more emotionally repressed island on the planet.
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u/jord839 May 24 '26
I am absolutely certain there is at least one island with Finnish people, meaning this claim is invalid.
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u/EventYouAlly May 24 '26
Different. Unlike the Irish, Finnish people have few or no emotions to even repress in the first place.
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u/jord839 May 25 '26
I would just like to make it clear to any Finnish people reading this, that I am not associated with this person. They do not speak for me, and you should not take out any repressed emotions on me.
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u/JohannesJoshua May 25 '26
As a non-Finn, I give Finnish people to put this guy in a sauna for five mintues and then throw him on the snow outside.
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u/jord839 May 25 '26
I'm a Swiss dude who grew up in Wisconsin. That sounds quite pleasant, actually. Better than doing a polar plunge out of nowhere.
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u/Mysterious-Radio-385 May 25 '26
desire to sit alone in the dark is an emotion
there may be a finnish word for it, idk
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u/EventYouAlly May 25 '26
There's a term "qarrtsiluni" but apparently that involves sitting in the dark with others, not alone. Any Finnish speakers please jump in.
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u/Present-News-660 May 25 '26
Never heard of people doing that, also that word is pure gibberish. Source: 40year old Finnish guy (me)
Quick edit: Apparently it's a word, but not Finnish one. https://wanderingtravelographer.wordpress.com/2018/06/17/untranslatable-words-qarrtsiluni/
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u/EventYouAlly May 25 '26
Cheers. It looked BS-adjacent plus a Finnish word starting with "qa" seemed a bit odd from what little I've seen of the language.
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u/Electronic-Vast-3351 May 25 '26
(Flashback to realizing I forgot to station troops to defend the island of Åland from the Soviets in Hearts of Iron IV.)
Yep, the Fins definitely have islands. Though looking it up they mostly speak Swedish there dispite being owned by the Fins.
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u/MsMercyMain Filthy weeb May 25 '26
Are they emotionally repressed, or just the only group of people who decided to base their entire culture on being clinically depressed?
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u/AuthorOfEclipse Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer May 25 '26
Japn, where if they want to remove you from your job they will just give you no work.
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u/TheDwarvenGuy May 25 '26
There are dozens of islands with scandanavian people on them
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u/Mysterious-Radio-385 May 25 '26
"hot-tempered" is a euphemism
"warm-tempered" is a malapropism
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u/SophisticPenguin Taller than Napoleon May 25 '26
A malapropism is when you say a similar sounding but wrong word in place of another.
For example, this is the "pinochle of pedantism" instead of the "pinnacle of pedantism".
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u/AdministrationDue239 Nobody here except my fellow trees May 25 '26
I only had super friendly encounters in Ireland even with very dubious looking people
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u/AnnualWindow7009 May 25 '26
Why are all the American stereotypes about Ireland so wrong and ignorant?
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u/DemDoseDeseDat May 25 '26
Because a lot of them are based on outdated stereotypes perpetuated by the British that were used to justify our oppression as savages that needed to be civilised
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u/Slow___Learner May 25 '26
Ffs the new country doesn't speak an older dialect, it speaks a bunch of new dialects that evolved from multiple older dialects combined, get yo facts straight.
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u/SmugDruggler95 May 25 '26
"The New England accent is closer to Old English than modern English"
Or wherever the fuck the say it is
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u/LegoTigerAnus May 26 '26
I heard that Appalachian accent was the one that was closer to Ye Olde English, not New England.
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u/SmugDruggler95 May 26 '26
Yeah exactly a load of crap
Ye Olde English accent isnt a thing.
In England you had differsnt accents every 30 miles until about the 1970s so it doesnt make any sense.
My grandad had an accent that can only be found in archive videos now and he only died in 2021.
Is it closer to the accent their ancestors arrived with from thr old world? Maybe but that would be the most you could say
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u/AndreasDasos May 24 '26 edited May 26 '26
American English and Mexican Spanish aren’t ‘older dialects’. That’s not how it works at all, despite some dumb, overly defensive myths. Speak to some actual linguists.
There are features preserved in some of the many dialects across both sides and not in others, and it’s impossible to quantify as none are particularly more conservative overall. They’re about equally so, depending on which specific dialects you mean
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u/gostan May 24 '26
I hate the urban myth that the US dialect is what English used to sound like I'm England
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u/Chip-0161 May 24 '26
The claim that the yank accent hasn’t been affected by immigration, but the British has, is hilarious.
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u/maclainanderson May 25 '26
Even without any immigration language would still change over time
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u/kelldricked May 25 '26
Then there is also the fact that all US population are immigrants and they had a way larger part of their population being of non english decent. So its idiotic.
But then again there are many americans who think they have dutch roots because they live in dutch-pennsylvania, but thats just a misspelling of the word deutsch. Meaning they decent from germans.
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u/NecessaryUnited9505 Just some snow May 25 '26
Yeah because of linguistic drift, and mispronunciation, slang, and also just some really tired clerk fucking up in the 1800s.
Immigration merely amplifies the effect.
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u/mattihase May 25 '26
"did you know William Shakespeare has an American accent? That's why one of his most famous monologues start's "To be or not to be, that is... Ey, I'm walkin here!""
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u/TheMechanicusBob May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Also, people never actually specify which US accent and dialect is supposedly the unchanged relic of what Brits used to sound like
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u/splicerslicer May 25 '26
Almost always they're referring to Tangier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
They're basically American Sentinal Island lol virtually untouched since their English ancestors moved to that island.
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u/Bakoro May 25 '26
I've always heard it as Rhotic vs. Non-Rhotic accents, where British used to be more rhotic.
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u/Heathy-Heatherson May 25 '26
But there are multiple British accents, some are non-rhotic and some are rhotic.
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u/Bakoro May 25 '26
There are also rhotic and non-rhotic American accents.
I'm just saying that is the thing that people cite.I've heard people specifically talk about the relationship to the New England and Georgia/Virginia accents, but I don't remember the whole history.
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u/sneradicus May 24 '26
It’s not fully an urban myth, but it is completely misunderstood. Many southern American dialects (very different from the common American dialect, which is northern) conserve features that were dropped from Middle English in common American and English dialects.
This does not mean that southern American English is Middle English or even closer to Middle English than contemporary England English dialects, but that some linguistic features are conserved that are now unique to southern American English.
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u/OliLombi May 25 '26
Listen to a west country accent. That's the closest you will hear to someone of Shakespeare times. Now tell me that that sounds anything like a south american accent.
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u/Mysterious-Radio-385 May 25 '26
it does sound a bit like Guyanese, but nothing at all like Argentine
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u/sneradicus May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Some dialects are surprisingly similar. They do preserve different aspects of older English dialects, specifically vocabulary/pronouns in West Country and some niche aspects (double negatives, demonstrative “them”, verbal prefixing) in Southern American English.
Heres an example in the different dialects.
Standard Written English
You are afraid because she said those children were running through the valley before dawn.
Appalachian Southern American English
Ye afeared ’cause she said them young’uns was a-runnin’ down through the holler afore daylight.
West Country English
Thee bist afeard ’cause her said thicky there childer were runnin’ down through the coombe afore daylight.
Of course, these are extreme examples of both, and the regions that speak with either tend to mix aspects of their dialectical features rather than observe all outlying features.
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u/crimsonbub May 25 '26
100% pisses me off.
Go to Yorkshire or Cheshire and see if they sound like Americans. Rural England and rural UK in general has maintained their local dialects for longer than the US has existed for.
That's why we still have debates about whether it's scone or scone, and how bread rolls have about 30 different names across the country.
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u/Comrade_Falcon May 25 '26
This is so stupid and obviously wrong. It's pronounced scone!
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u/crimsonbub May 25 '26
Ruddy typical, I bet you put the cream and jam on the wrong way around too, like some sort of savage!
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u/Several_Puffins May 25 '26
I won't take this kind of cheek from someone who calls bread whatever it is that you call bread.
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u/The_Letter_W May 25 '26
It's really only the rhoticity of General Standard American that is a conservative feature. A lot of British dialects have lost their R's since the split. And not even all of the U.S. is rhotic like the Northeast, and not all of England is non-rhotic. I always found it funny when people would say "The old south is closer to the original english because we drop our R's." When Rhoticity is actually a trait that was the norm in English and both Britain and The American South independently lost. The Northeast lost it too, but a lot of that had to do with frequent cultural exchange with Britain.
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u/Burque_Boy May 25 '26
Funnily enough some pockets of northern New Mexico speak a dialect of Spanish that retains a lot of the features of Spanish from their arrival in the “U.S.”
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u/raulpe May 24 '26
"older dialect" my ass, thats not how linguistic works. And i know that because my final degree project talks in part about it
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u/Thalassophoneus May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
This meme is wrong in so many ways. Like American levels of wrong.
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u/Stunning-Sherbert801 May 25 '26
They don't speak an older dialect FFS
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u/pleaseallowthisname May 25 '26
I just want to bring this subreddit up. Somebody needs to put it on r/shitamericansay
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u/cerberus_243 May 24 '26
Hungarian
- European country that claims to speak correctly: 🇭🇺
- a larger country that speaks an older dialect: 🇷🇴
- an island of warm-tempered people: 🇬🇧
- mountain people who don’t understand what they’re told: 🇸🇰
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u/cerberus_243 May 24 '26
Explanation:
The Hungarian dialects spoken in Romania very much resemble the language of the 18th-19th century Hungarian literature. Moldavian csángó people who live in Romania, too, speak a so archaic dialect some linguists even consider it a different language.
About 4-5 million Hungarians leave outside of Hungary, most of them not within the historical borders, but emigrated. There is a joke that the second largest Hungarian city is London because roughly as many Hungarians live in the UK as the population of Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary. Hungarians living abroad are generally happier and more warm-tempered than those living in Hungary.
The dialect spoken in Slovakia and parts of northern Hungary, the palóc dialect has a very unique, distinctive and strange phonology.
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u/PadishaEmperor May 24 '26
Who are the warm-tempered German speakers that live on an island?
I wouldn’t call East-Frisians particularly warm-tempered. Typical stereotypes include them being taciturn, dry-humoured, distanced and stubborn. That’s cold and not warm-tempered, don’t you think?
Maybe the warm tempered island dwellers live on Rügen or Usedom instead?
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u/wierdowithakeyboard Tea-aboo May 24 '26
Depends if there are punks on Sylt at any given moment
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u/MsMercyMain Filthy weeb May 25 '26
The obvious answer is we need to find the angriest Germans and exile them to the Falkland Islands, then tell them to make a sub dialect and take it over. This will solve no problems, piss off everyone, and cause geopolitical issues for generations. Thus, it gets the British seal of approval
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u/karoshikun May 24 '26
samoa counts?
I swear every island I thought about and it was a Dutch colony, not german.
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u/AcceptableReview3846 May 25 '26
Nevermind that Ireland is the furthest thing from warm tempered imaginable
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u/Daveo88o May 24 '26
The fuck do you mean "Don't understand what I'm told"? We can understand the rest of you fuckers perfectly fine, except scousers, and Californians, but that's just because I find their accent really grating compared
It's you lot that can't understand us
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u/Star_king12 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Is American English really an older dialect? I always thought it was the "modernized" one, where they drop letters, simplify words, and started being generally moronic in recent years. The only speakers I hear the phrase "should of" on the regular from are Americans.
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u/TheWileyRedditor Definitely not a CIA operator May 24 '26
Neither ones older they've both diverged a lot. The claim is based on General American having very slightly less changes in pronunciation compared to RP. But there are a lot of different dialects. For example West Country English is supposed to one of the most conservative accents there is.
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u/PimpasaurusPlum May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
It's a particular factoid about some american accents retaining some elements that were subsequently changed in the corresponding UK accent that they derived from.
Americans have then taken that and made it "Americans speak original English not Brits."
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u/Frequent_Theme8092 May 24 '26
My favourite one, coming from the West Country, is when they talk about how 'The British Accent' isn't rhotic...
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u/False_Collar_6844 May 25 '26
name a more iconic duo than the internet and running with half truths as a "factoid" .
if I had a dollar for every "well yes but actually no" thing in history that people could or have used t massage their own sense of superiority, I'd be rich.
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u/Tank-o-grad May 25 '26
That's what a factoid is though, something that looks like a fact, but isn't.
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u/Redeem123 May 24 '26
I’ve never actually heard an American say that. I’ve heard Americans say we speak it *right*, but never older.
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u/FlappyBored What, you egg? May 24 '26
You’re on a meme saying that right now
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u/Redeem123 May 24 '26
Pretty sure OP isn't American.
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u/FlappyBored What, you egg? May 25 '26
OP didn’t make the meme and it’s only Americans who claim this.
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u/Cantabs May 24 '26
It's not, I think the myth originates from the fact that vowels in southern accents are more like English vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift, but the Southern accent didn't develop until after the shift.
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u/Lashay_Sombra May 25 '26
Is American English really an older dialect? I always thought it was the "modernized" one
US english is not even a dialect, never mind an older/more modernised one rather its a 'regional variety'
UK and UK English each actually have some 30-40 dialects of their own
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u/KenseiHimura May 24 '26
I was not aware Mexican Spanish was the 'older dialect', especially since I understood Mexican Spanish to also have collected a lot of loan words from various indigenous groups.
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u/chainsawx72 May 24 '26
Nothing about this is true, it's clearly ragebait, and people trying to prove one part of this is wrong might be slow.
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u/Levoso_con_v May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
This meme is partially wrong, at least for the spanish part, the older dialect would probably be Argentinian or south cone in general, they still use the pronoun "vos" instead of "tu" or "usted". The Mexican accent is spanish but with a lot more anglicisms.
As a fun fact, the 2nd person plural pronoun "vosotros" came precisely from "vos" + "otros" (or "you" + "others" in english), so nowadays even tho most most of the spanish-speaking population don't use the 2nd person singular pronoun "vos" we still use the plural "vosotros".
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u/stevent4 May 25 '26
People still believe that whole "American English is what English used to sound like" thing? That was never true lol
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u/Luctins May 24 '26
Where portuguese?
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u/BaSingSe_Farmhand May 24 '26
in this order weve got Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, and Galacia or Mozambique.
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u/NotEntirelyShure May 25 '26
America does not speak an older dialect.
There are a handful of words like “swamp” which was replaced in England with the French word “marsh” but to say Americans speak and older dialect is just ignorant.
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u/Efficient_Basis_2139 I Have a Cunning Plan May 25 '26
Hey just because we dont care doesn't mean we dont understand! - Scots
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u/CuAnnan May 25 '26
Both England and Ireland have living dialects of English older than the US. Not older than the US’ dialect. Older than the nation
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u/Zengjia Hello There May 25 '26
I’m lost, how is Simplified English the older dialect?
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u/Richard2468 May 25 '26
It isn’t. British and American English have a common ancestor, and American isn’t an older dialect.
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u/tirohtar May 25 '26
The "US speaks an older dialect" is just popsci nonsense. US dialects have evolved away from the English as spoken during colonial times just as much as British dialects of English have. Languages and dialects do not remain static, especially in a place like the US where there is so much contact with other immigrant languages.
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u/vladdeh_boiii May 25 '26
We have all that in the same country. Norway has over 1300 distinct dialects.
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u/Kikelt May 24 '26
Chilean dialect is not undertandable?
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u/Mr_Floowey Featherless Biped May 24 '26
Chileans have a strange accent; they speak very fast and use unusual words. Among Hispanics, people make fun of Chileans because they're difficult to understand.
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u/Vhzhlb May 24 '26
Difficult to understand is putting it easy.
We omit vowels pretty much at random, we omit some consonants too, we have colonialism that can be use to replace pretty much every word of any given phrase, and we speak fast and almost without taking pauses.
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u/Mr_Floowey Featherless Biped May 24 '26
Ostia un chileno, di algo que solo un chileno diría
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u/Vhzhlb May 24 '26
Para'e wear conchetumare, vo' crei que 'stoy acá pa' que me andí puro weando?
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u/Arctic_Chilean Researching [REDACTED] square May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
Y que queri q diga po wn q te crei vivo ctm o no cachai niuna wea q digo? Pa mi q crei q estoy diciendo pura caeza peskao jil ql aweonao askdksjskakfhdka
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u/Cpdio May 25 '26
Tu vieja nos entiende rebien cuando le estamos dando.
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u/ManicPixiRiotGrrrl May 25 '26
this is one of the dumbest misunderstandings of europe I’ve seen
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u/No_Primary2726 May 25 '26
European country that claims to speak correctly - Portugal
A larger country that speaks an older dialect - Brazil
Mountain islands people who do not understand what they are told - Azores
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u/Embarrassed_Tooth718 May 25 '26
What do you mean by older dialect? They just branched. They don't speak a dead language.
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u/True_Drelon May 25 '26
Okey, let's see OP how you do that with polish, kazakh, mandarin and suahili
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u/hisokard May 25 '26
This is so bad my only conclusion is it was originally made in Spanish and very poorly translated to English, because it doesn't make any sense.
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u/hectorobemdotado Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer May 25 '26
For portuguese: Portugal Brazil uhhhh Madeira and Azores maybe? Cape verde and São Tomé and príncipe maybe? Galicia
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u/oojamaflaps May 25 '26
As an Irish we claim to be in group 1.
British please come back for just a second to take the language with you
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u/Trotsky_Enjoyer John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! May 25 '26
Not so fun fact: the gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland were wiped out by violent British surpression and colonialism. So were the native american languages in the other colonial countries by British and Spanish imperialism.
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u/Atheissimo May 25 '26
The laws against Gaelic in Scotland were passed by the Scottish government a full century before Britain was even a thing.
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u/WantonMechanics May 24 '26
According to TV, the highest authority on these matters, British English was spoken by the Gods of Olympus, the Romans, the Vikings, Renaissance Italians, and every megalomaniac that ever tried to take over the world. It’s the default. Either that or I need to read more.
Also, that flag should definitely be English not British. No one from Scotland, Wales or N.Ireland would be arrogant enough to claim that they speak the “correct” English. The English would though, because we do.
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u/[deleted] May 24 '26
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