Re: Dialectic Esperanto (was once Blackett English)


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Posted by Alex Forbes on October 19, 2003 at 17:53:08 from 165.247.221.185 user Pitsligo.

In Reply to: Racist, forsooth! (was Blackett English) posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 18, 2003 at 11:35:06:

"At boarding schools, it is (or was) a well-known phenomenon that some pupils arrive back after the long summer break with their local accent revived, only to lose it after a few days (and much ribbing)."

Still is. Or was 18 years ago, when I was in bording school in California (CA) but living summers in Maine (ME). I'd go back home to ME and get ribbed about my CA accent, lose it in a week, then return to school in autumn only to be jeered (amicably) about my ME Yankee accent until I lost it. Could this same thing have been the case with Nancy and Peggy? Could they have been at boarding school away from the Lake, returned on holidays, and being primarily with the Walkers and Callums, simply kept their RP because it was the "dialect" they were all used to speaking? In effect, they never dropped out of RP and back into their native tongue?

"There is a very good reason for "BBC English" - it cuts through static and other background noise and can be heard very much more clearly than other accents."

Amen! The (relative) non-accent of USA national news broadcasters is very handy for spanning our wide range of dialects. I'm currently living in CA, but my wife, herself from Nevada, knows instantly when I'm on the phone to one of my friends in ME: all of a sudden she barely understands a word I'm saying. Think about how effective this would be if a newscaster from ME tried to give the national news. As they might say in the Bronx: fergeddabuttit!

I've never been a big fan of Esperanto or the idea of an invented language, but when it comes to esablishing communication throughout a region divided by a common tongue, it sure is handy to have a non-accent version. Language is about communication; dialect is about identity.

Alex



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