GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Test 5 — Flashcards

Questions below refer to this passage.

Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a willful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language. This comes of reading dialect stories by authors who have no personal knowledge of any dialect whatever, and who have never studied any language scientifically. All they have done, perhaps, is to have purchased the Dialect Glossary of some district, or maybe they have asked a friend to supply a little local coloring. Authors of this type put into the mouths of their dialect-speaking characters a kind of doggerel which their readers then run away with, believing it is a real, living, English dialect.
As a matter of fact, our English dialects exemplify the sound-laws of living speech and the historical development of an originally inflected language. But the field of English dialects offers other allurements besides those which attract the philologist and the grammarian. The language-specialist merely digs and quarries, as it were, in the bare soil and rock, where he finds rich ores amply sufficient to repay his pains and toil, but there remains plenty of room for the rest of us who are less laboriously inclined, and at every turn are enticing paths. The real charm lies in the fact that it is a “faire felde ful of folke,” natural, homely, witty folk. The study of our English dialects may not only contribute to the advancement of knowledge, but also give us a clearer insight into the life and character of the British peasant and artisan, and so it will have achieved the aim and object of its existence.