Dialect Stories

DIALECT STORIES Dialect stories are typically humorous narratives, usually told in the form of a joke, that use inappropriate words or foreign phrases spoken by immigrants to drive the humor. Some of the oldest reported dialect stories are Jewish American jokes from the late nineteenth century featuring the inappropriate use of Yiddish words or speaking in a Yiddish accent in English-speaking America. More recently, children of immigrants from the Philippines have been recorded performing dialect stories imitating a Filipino accent with substitution of a p sound for f and b for v.