Re: new interactive online dialect survey

Einde O'Callaghan wrote:
> bertvaux@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 schrieb:
> 
>> Dear linguists and other lovers of the English language:
>>
>> My new online survey of world English varieties is now available
>> online at
>> http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/survey/.
>>
> In was prepared to participate in this test but was unable to do so 
> because of a major fault with this survey - in order to participatee 
> youn have to enter a postcode - however in the Republic of Ireland, 
> where I was born and grew up, postcodes are not used except in the 
> cities of Dublin and Cork.
> 
> Of course the designers of this survey may not be interested in input 
> from people of Irish origin (the currrent population of the republic is 
> under 4 million - a minute percentage of the number of native english 
> speakers), but since this group has provided a dispro****tionately high 
> number of leading writers of English I would regard this as being a bit 
> shortsighted.
> 
> All in all a badly designed survey - badly designed since it doesn't 
> allow all speakers of English to participate.
> 
> BTW Ireland isn't the only English-speaking country not to use post 
> codes - as far as I can see they are rare to non-existent in the West 
> Indies, another area where native English speakers are not unknown.
> 

I didn't participate in the survey as I was not able to enter some of 
the mandatory information. The opening form has a check box for "My 
parents are native speakers of English" but doesn't allow for my 
situation: my father was a native speaker, but my mother was not.

Fran