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This week’s question comes from Zhu Yan from Wuhan who wants to know more about regional British dialects.

	Which region has the best dialect?

Before we talk about the variety of British dialects, let’s look at what a dialect is.

A dialect is a form of a language that people from a particular region might use.

A dialect usually contains some different words and grammar to the standard form of a language.

Great Britain contains four different countries: Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. People from these countries sound very different. In fact people from different towns within these countries sound very different. They use different regional dialects.

In Scotland you might hear people use words such as ‘dinnae’ which means ‘don’t’ and ‘ken’ which means ‘know’.

	Could you understand someone from Edinburgh?

People from other parts of the UK might not understand these words but they can usually guess the meaning of what the person is saying from context.

Why not listen to the audio programme to hear some more examples of regional British dialects?

We hope this has answered your question Zhu Yan.

If you have a question about the English language, do send us an email: questions.chinaelt@bbc.co.uk and don’t forget to visit this page regularly to learn more about English.

Glossary 词汇

dialect 方言

a form of 一种

region 地区，地域

context 语境