Celtic influence

Patrick C. Ryan proto-language at email.msn.com
Tue Mar 16 23:12:03 UTC 1999


Dear Joat amd IEists:

-----Original Message-----
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 3:57 PM

>In a message dated 3/14/99 10:11:38 PM Mountain Standard Time,
>iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu writes:

>>Except in the rest of world and the rest of history where standard languages
>>of stratified societies are always class dialects.

>-- That's simply not so.  In the US, dialect is regional rather than class-
>based.  "Standard American" or "NBC News English" is simply a regional Midland
>dialect.  I hear a dozen different regional dialects of English every week,
>and they have no correlation to class at all.

[ moderator snip of remainder of long article ]

There is no way, of which I am aware, to really prove this but I will relate
my experiences to you for whatever it may be worth.

I have lived on both coasts of the United States, in the Midwest, and
currently in the South. My experience has been that professional managers,
with whom I have principally dealt in business, speak a standard English
with very few regional differences, in every part of the country. Sometimes
the business owners, if they are first generation nouveau riche, speak the
local dialect --- in fact, sometimes exaggerate it (for psychological
reasons, I believe) but the second generation of rich shed the regionalisms,
and join the managerial classes of the rest of America in speech if not in
anything else.

Pat



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