American Tongues

I love this production and all my Wisconsin friends who talk about ‘bubblers’ and ‘signal lights’☻- It’s a great way to demonstrate the variety and richness of English dialects. The main point that I appreciated was the stress on what is considered ‘proper’ and how people tend to base opinions/impressions based on dialect. Also, I simply liked hearing all the different ways of speaking. The fact that dialects can be traced to immigrant populations from early settlers’ points of origin is fascinating. I don’t know if any of my fellow classmates are insomniacs like me, but I have caught a PBS program called (I think) ‘How to Speak American’ late at night a few times, and it is very interesting and reminds me of this video.

How do we learn these attitudes? That’s also very interesting. I have been reading “Strawberry Girl” by Lois Lensky with my daughter – it takes place in Florida in the later 1800s and is written in a strong regional vernacular.- and my daughter commented that she was afraid she was starting to talk like a ‘hill-billy!’ I have no idea where she got the idea that one dialect was inferior to another (not from me!), but she just turned 8 and already has very clear ideas about what is ‘proper English’. Interesting.

This video went well with the Finegan chapter, especially the idea of the triangle and the living nature of language.