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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 06 August 2010 - Volume 10<br>
</b><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">From: <img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Ron/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif" name="upi" width="1" border="0" height="1"><span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Anisman</span></span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="mailto:panisman@gmail.com">panisman@gmail.com</a></span>></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="FR">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Language politics" 2010.08.06 (05)
[EN]</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="FR"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">What Henry (and others)
report, dealing with good/bad language, speech disorders, etc., reminds me of a
situation I recall here in the U.S.
I'm a product of the New York City
school system, and also taught in the city schools for the first half of the 1960s....and
am certainly a native speaker of NY City English. At that time, (and for many
years prior to that time) in order to get a license to teach, you had to go
through a rigorous examination that lasted two days....a written test, as well
as at least one interview. As part of the exam, you were judged on whether or
not you "spoke English correctly"....which, in essence, meant----did
you sound like a native speaker of NY City English (which is precisely what the
vast majority of the applicants were). If you did, you were in big
trouble....since NY City English was (and remains) a stigmatized brand of
American English....and if you spoke that way, you needed to "get
fixed".<br>
<br>
Here's how it went - during the interview portion of the exam, a Board of Education
examiner sat quietly in a far corner of the room, with a checklist on which he
kept a running tally of how frequently you uttered sounds that were part of the
normal phonology of NY City English. If you happened to utter more than the
absolute minimum, you quite possibly would have failed the whole exam. I should
add that there were only certain phonological variables that the checklist
dealt with. Examples would be: post-vocalic /r/, (words like "car",
"part", "quarter", etc.), realization of the open back
vowel (in words like "bought", "caught", and
"more"), and the realization of the "ae"-digraph (words
like "man", "half", etc.). Actually, in a word such as
"quarter", the guy with the checklist could nail you three
times....once for the first vowel, and once for each postvocalic /r/. He must
have had a ball! BTW - I apologize....cannot do any phonetic symbols on my
machine.<br>
<br>
College students who were preparing to become teachers were aware of this
process, as were their instructors. If you were among those preparing for a
teaching career, you were given a "pedagogy test", early on. It was a
dry run of the "person with the checklist". If you didn't do
well....meaning that you sounded like a native speaker of NY English, you were
told that you needed to sign up for a special course, whose sole purpose was to
train you how NOT to sound like a New Yorker, and hopefully, to sound like,
say, someone from the midwestern part of the country....and to sound
"correct" for the interview portion of the licensing exam.. After the
exam, you did whatever you wanted. Most folks went back to their normal NY
speech as soon as they walked out of the teaching license exam....and resumed
their existence as native speakers of NY English for the remainder of their
lives....and G-d bless all of them.<br>
<br>
As to whether or not this process still exists in NY City, I have no
idea....having left the school system in 1965. I kind of doubt it, but maybe
someone in the group can bring us up to date.<br>
<br>
--Paul<br>
Maryland U.S.</span></p>
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