[lit-ideas] "Everybody Has An Accent Except Me"

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:07:50 EDT
In a message dated 6/17/2009 8:34:11 P.M.  Eastern Daylight Time, 
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I call 'a furrin
>  accent'.

Exactly.  As the Kingston Trio used to introduce their song  "Gue, gue": 
"This next song is in French.  Well, actually, it's Creole  French.  For 
those of you who speak Creole French, it's Northwestern  Creole French...as 
spoken in perhaps Utah."

People in Seattle would  scrunch their noses when I talked.  "Where are you 
from?" they'd ask,  obviously afraid of catching my disease.  Wiki says I 
speak Mississippi  Delta Southern American English.  "Ah shucks," I say, "I 
just speak  wherever comes out of my mouth.  Ain't got no time to think 
about 
it."  

----
 
Well, this is more like the self-pragmatic contradiction.
 
In "Language Myths" by P. Trudgill, there is a chapter that contains a map  
of the United States.
 
The ONLY area where they have no accent is "Connecticut".
 
I did read in the NYTimes once (the Connecticut Supplement --  online).
 
    "We have no accent".
 
I cannot tell!
 
I know Bostonians do have an accent (for Americans) because they say "kah"  
and "pahk", "pahk the kah". 
 
And new Yorkers like Sotomayor have a heavy accent, "Noo Yohoook". Depends  
on your ethnia, too.
 
I don't know. 

I met like 2,500 Brits and spoke to them; I still  cannot tell. Most 
Aussies I meet I think they are Cockneys so go figure.
 
But ACCENT is a different animal altogether.
 
We's speakin' TONGUES or languages, here.
 
-------- Perhaps P. A. Stone could testify of some bilingual brain in  
Canada. All the Francophone Canadians I met or heard have a _horrible_ English. 
 
And they can't help it. It's the 'phonic apparatus' as my mother calls it. 
She  thinks Anglos don't open their mouth when they speak, which amuses her. 
 Obviously, they are unable to pronounce the Italianate vowels that we 
value in  the Buenos Aires area.
 
----  
 
The French (native) cannot pronounce the 'th' in 'the' or 'theatre'. I'm  
sure Trogge can, but most Germans have a problem there, too.
 
The most difficult language to learn is Japanese, but perhaps McCreery met  
a bilingual.

J. Evans cannot speak Welsh, so she shouldn't count here -- she was  born 
in Bath, so there's no legal reason why she should make the effort,  either.
 
McEvoy from Eire is a different animal. I was told there is a crazy man in  
Ireland who was taught Gaelic as a first-language and almost died in the  
attempt. He learned English as a second language only (and this is recent), 
and  therefore, 'his books sound as if written by a total furriner'. 
 
----- In The Hebrides, north of D. Ritchie country, they spoke Hebridian,  
and I heard some of their folksongs but they put me to sleep. It's a very  
'lullabyish' kind of language.
 
Phatic speaks a lot of languages, so I wonder if he ever met a bilingual  
brain.
 
In Argentina, native-Argentines of Native-Argentine descent (pre-Colombine  
we call them) speak in Guarany and such, but that language is slightly 
primitive  in terms of inflections, so I don't know if it reflects on the 
dialect of  Spanish they speak. 
 
Etc.
 
J. L. Speranza
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
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[lit-ideas] "Everybody Has An Accent Except Me"

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