[lit-ideas] They Spake with that Argot of the Cities of the Plain
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:00:01 EDT
"I myself speak the
Mississippi Delta version."
Geary.
Mmm. This would entail that he speaks the language of the city of _the
plain_. I too, speaking the language of Buenos Aires, that Borges indeed
identifies as yet another 'city of the plain'.
London is another city of the plain (cf. the atrocity called "Estuary
English" that charming Prince Harry speaks).
On the other hand, Washington is on a hill.
Dublin is on a plain -- and indeed, Oscar Wilde is considered the epitome of
the decadenc immoralistic, even pervert of a speaker -- who revived the sins
of Sodomah and Gomorrah -- the first cities on the plains if ever there were
two.
Note that all _Greek_ cities -- even in provincial Sparta -- had an
'acropolis', which surely meant 'moral height' as well as geographical cleaner
airs.
One problem I have with this theory is Noel Coward. He says, in his clipped
English of moral high standards, in "Private Lives" that he comes from
Norfolk.
"Very flat, Norfolk."
Yet I have _never_ met a decadent Norfolkian. The exception that _proves_
(refutes) the rule?
If they are on the plain, the cities have rivers, and it's rivers that bring
immigrants, and that's the moral behind the cities of the plain speaking a
degenerate version of a language -- unlike Athenian Greek, or Bostonian
English.
Cheers,
JL
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