It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, it seems to me that non-native speakers of English are at least
as motivated to speak English as we BE speakers are to speak standard
English.

[Warning! Anecdote follows.]

Joan, an old friend of mine from Saint Louis, moved to The City. When
I went to visit her there, I was amazed to hear her speak pure-dee
middle-class Saint Louis BE, something that I myself am no longer able
to do without thinking about it, since I haven't lived in Saint Louis
since 1962. I told a fellow student of linguiistics about her. He's a
native speaker of Philadelphia Jewish English (Wut's going gone on
Long Guy lund?). I thought that it would be, like Jumpin' Jack Flash,
a gas, gas, gas to see whether they could even understand each other.

However, the joke was on me. As soon as she saw that my friend was
white, she switched to her version of standard and, as soon as he
heard her speak standard, he also switched to his version of standard.

I forgot that Joan spoke SLBE with me because she has known me since
she was seven years old - she's now 63 - and, therefore, had no
motivation to switch registers when talking to me, regardless of what
register I was using. On the other hand, she automatically switched to
standard, just as I do, myself, when in the presence of a member of
"the other group." Unless it's someone from the South, of course,
dInIs.

-Wilson

On 2/26/07, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: It takes more than a language to unify a nation
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2/26/2007 12:41 PM, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> >On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >
> >>That reminds me -- do the right wing English-only radicals realize
> >>that if they alienate the conservative, Replublican-voting,
> >>Spanish-speaking Cuban refugees, they may lose Florida in the 2008 election?
> >
> >Also New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado & Nevada, even ultimately Texas.
>
> True, but it takes no more than Florida to unify a nation.
>
> Joel
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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