Notebook / Archives / "dialects"

While preparing my entry about styling languages, I re-discovered many dialect translators. For example, if you want plugins for your weblog, you can easily get:

• For MovableType: MovableJive.
• For WordPress: the Text Filter Suite Plugin for WordPress (story in the entry Fun Filters, examples accessible from the entry Back to being a land lubber on Dougal Campbell Presents Geek Ramblings).

“MovableJive adds the following text filters:”

• “Jive English” or Ebonics [Wikipedia];
• “Texas Drawl” or Southern American English [Wikipedia];
• “Cokney English” [Wikipedia] (more theorical introduction Web documents relating to Estuary English on the Departement of Phonetics & Linguistics's website of UCL;
• “Swedish Chef” from the Muppet Show [Wikipedia];
• “Valley Girl” [Wikipedia];
• “German Accent”;
• “Hunting Wabbits” or Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes [Wikipedia].

The Text Filter Suite Plugin for WordPress supports the Pirate way of talking.

If you want more dialects, GNU Talk Filters is a complete package of filter programs “that convert ordinary English text into text that mimics a stereotyped or otherwise humorous dialect”. The Talk Filters are numerous:

Filter name	Description	Author
austro	Austrian (Ahhhhnold)	Tom van Nes
b1ff	B1FF of Usenet yore	Matt Welsh, David Whitten
brooklyn	Brooklyn accent	Daniel V Klein ('nyc.l')
chef	Swedish Chef (from The Muppet Show)	John Hagerman
cockney	Londoner accent	Stephen K Mulrine, Edward Betts ('ken.l'); unknown ('cockney.l'); extensive enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
drawl	Southern drawl	Adam Hudd
dubya	George "Dubya" Bush	anonymous contribution
fudd	Elmer Fudd (from the Looney Tunes cartoons)	unknown
funetak	Thick Asian accent	Eclipse Enterprises
jethro	Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies	Duane Paulson
jive	1970's Jive	Daniel V Klein, Clement Cole, with enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
kraut	German accent	unknown
pansy	Effeminate male	unknown
pirate	Pirate talk	Original Perl/PHP version by Douglas Gunters, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
postmodern	Postmodernist talk ("Feminazi")	unknown
redneck	Country redneck	Brand Hilton
valspeak	Valley talk	unknown
warez	H4x0r code	Ian Johnston, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
wrap	Word-wrap filter	Mark Lindner
Note from Jean-Philippe: the wrap filter is not a dialect filter.
The filters were repackaged, integrated, optimized, and documented by Mark Lindner.

To know more about the authors of these filters, have a look at the copyright file (from the filters Debian package).

A few websites doing translation from english to dialects:

• The Dialectizer;
• Language Llama Web Translator.

Another kind of dictionaries on The Complete Newspeak Dictionary, more politicaly inclined:

• 1984 - Newspeak Dictionary;
• Modern Newspeak Dictionary – “A guide to politically correct speech”.

According to Danny Ayers ("Raw Blog": SETI alert), the use of recent discoverings in linguistics (“Swedish Chef. Bork Bork Bork!” [Google in “Bork, bork, bork!”], Klingon [Google in Klingon], “Personal Syndication” – but I would add: “Elmer Fudd's wanguage” [Google the way of Elmer Fudd], “Hacker's L4|\|GU4G3” [Google the way of Hacker], Pig Latin [Google in Pig Latin]; and we must not forget the “geek code” and the “blogger code” to be more accurate and straightforward with personal syndication) could help us progress faster in the search for extraterrestrial intelligences; what we have to do is just use the good words through SETI:

bork bork bork, borg, blog!