This study reports on the linguistic behaviour of 39 university students from Moravia (in the east of the Czech Republic) living at a hall of residence in Prague, Bohemia (an area covering the west/central parts of the Czech Republic). In Bohemia, Moravian dialects and Standard Czech (SC)--an archaic and semi-artificial standard dialect that is…

This study compares the ability of 37 Standard-English-speaking graduate students to comprehend Black English versions of a set of 45 utterances with the ability of 37 comparable students to comprehend Standard English versions of the same utterances. Of the two stimulus tapes used (consisting of 45 sentences each), one was recorded in Black…

Twenty-four English speakers from various regions of India were tested for the intelligibility of their speech. Recordings of speech in a variety of contexts were evaluated by listeners from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, and Germany. On the basis of the resulting intelligibility scores, factors which tend to hinder…

A study of Greek speakers' ability to understand and produce two varieities of codes--Katharevousa (K) and Demotic (D)--is reported. The investigation was undertaken to provide evidence supporting or refuting the Greek government's decision to legislate Demotic as the official language of the country. A sample of 545 informants were tested with a…

The paper discusses some issues that language variation creates for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction, identifies research strands relevant to program development, and describes two dialect program exemplars. It also suggests considerations for educational policy formation with respect to dialects. The introductory section gives…