online accent quiz - NO MORE!

[Bethany K. Dumas]

Now I am CERTAIN that this is all probably a joke. But it's getting old,
and I shall probably read no more of it. Before I leave it alone, though,
a few  comments - just in case someone really believes all this bs.

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

>Then if linguists don't prescribe pronunciation, who does?

Freshman English teachers.

> Every dictionary
>writer says they are descriptive pronunciation.  I have written a dictionary
>pronunciation.  I say what I'm writing is descriptive.  But then it becomes
>prescriptive for those reading it.

The hell you say!

>What's bad about a dialect is that it subverts the alpabetic principle, that
>letters stand for sounds.  It makes English less consistent, it creates
>homonyms that cause confusion of meaning.

Since EVERYBODY speaks a dialect, we are all in biiiig trouble.

>If you have no criterion for dialects being good or bad, than you can have
>no opinion.  But if you value the alphabetic principle and would like to
>keep English pronunciation as consistent with it as possible, it means
>saying "pin" for the word "pen" is not good.

The alphabetic principle? What the heck is that?

Bethany, native pin/pin speaker, with REAL work to do

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