[lit-ideas] Auto-Eu-Phonia (Was Hetero-Kako-Phonia
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:37:11 EDT
Ursula Stange writes:
"Jimmy Carter's accent made it really difficult for me to accept his
intelligence. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, the only Southern
accents we
heard were on the lips of black people or Appalachians (neither the common
terms then). But one of my dearest friends in grammar school was Eula from
Kentucky. Smart and sensitive and cute. But that accent...
My sister has lived in Southern Indiana for thirty years now and her
grandkids drawl horribly. They're cute and smart, but that accent..."
This had me thinking, and have now formulated what call a pretty good
phonological hypotesis.
We know about the "Everybody speaks with an accept except me".
Then we have what I call "Geary's Moral Adage" -- "I can never be wrong" (He
means that he stystem of beliefs and values especially that one endorses are
beyond refutation).
Combining the two we get:
"Everbody tends to have an UGLY except me and my closest kin"
by which I mean my mother and my father and my siblings.
I have not encountered so far anyone with the gut to say,
"My accent is horrible"
or
"My mother's accent is horrible" or ditto for father, or brother or sister.
Whereas to criticise the accents of others is the easy thing to do, and in
the repeated phrase by Stange, "... but that accent".
I justify my motto in terms of survival conditions. It would be totally
pathetic, even by Olaudah Equiano, to criticise his own accent, or dialect.
Is this by the grace of God, Geary?
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