ABSTRACT
A number of interesting things happen in dialect-contact situations – in situations where people who speak different dialects come into contact and communicate with one another. Usually there is no need for us to modify the way we speak very much in order for someone who speaks a different dialect to understand us – most English dialects are not that different from one another. All the same, it is a matter of common observation that we often do this anyway. We are influenced by the way people around us talk. A British person who goes to America for six months may well come back sounding rather more American than when they went away.
