I don't want none. She ain't done it. them people over there They done it yesterday. the person what went He hurt hisself. Forms such as these are not 'wrong' in any way and should not be regarded as 'mistakes'. They are used by millions of English-speakers around the world, and are representative of grammatical systems that are different from Standard English, not linguistically inferior to it.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that nonstandard dialect forms have less prestige than Standard English constructions, since the Standard English dialect is spoken by British people who can be regarded as being at the 'top' of the social scale, in the sense that they have more money, influence, education and prestige than people lower down the social scale.
The Standard English dialect itself is not entirely uniform. Scottish Standard English, for example, is clearly different from the Standard English of England at a number of points. It uses words which are not known in England or Wales. And Scottish Standard English speakers also use grammatical forms that are not found in the Standard English elsewhere, such as:
Had you a good time last night? My clothes need washed. and Will I shut the door? whereas similar speakers in England and Wales would say:
Did you have a good time last night? My clothes need washing.and Shall I shut the door? There are also differences between the north and south of England. In the south, for example, people are more likely to say:
I haven't seen him. She won't do it. while in the north of England you are more likely to hear people say:
I've not seen him. She'll not do it. Generally speaking, however, there is relatively little geographical variation within Standard English. It is as you go further down the social scale that regional differences become more apparent. The most regional of regional dialect forms are to be found at the 'bottom' of the social scale. Thus, the Standard English relative pronoun who corresponds to a number of different nonstandard forms in different parts of the country:
Standard English dialect : the woman who taught us Nonstandard dialects: the woman what taught us \ the woman as taught us \ the woman at taught us ' the woman which taught us Thus the meaning of the term dialect covers the types and meanings of words available and the range of grammatical patterns into which they can be combined.Dialects are different to the extent that they involve different morphological, syntactic, lexical and semantic patterns. A dialect can be expressed in either spoken or written form.
The meaning of the term accent is simply a manner of pronunciation.In this sense, everyone speaks with an accent. Technically, it is not possible to speak aloud without speaking with an accent. The notion of accent is a phonological and phonetic concept, with some implications for the lexical level of analysis as well.
It is important to make this distinction between dialect and accent, in order to be able to show that it is possible to speak Standard English with a regional accent. The upper classes who speak with a 'ВВС' accent do not betray their geographical origins at all when they speak, although of course they do give lots of clues about their social origins! People of a more middle-class background will tend to have more of a regional accent, but you might not be able to say any more.
