ah/ awe

[Paul Johnston]

They don't usually work.  People can acquire maybe enough of a second
dialect to be able to use it in short stretches after that, the way
actors do.  But not everyone.  And not for their life, not when
they're thinking about WHAT they say rather than how they say it 24
hours a day.  Take it from someone who occasionally trains actors to
speak different varieties.  They not only vary in their ability to do
so, they can't keep it up for long, even if they're good. Cf.  Rosina
Lippi-Green's "English with an Accent", Chpt. 1-3.  You'll hate that
book, but I really recommend it to you.

Paul Johnston
On Oct 3, 2006, at 6:01 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: ah/ awe
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> No "My Fair Lady"?  No accent reduction classes?
>
>
>> From: "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu>
>>>
>> yup.
>>
>> On Tue, 3 Oct 2006, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>
>> #
>> ##From: "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu>
>> ##Pronunciation isn't learned from teaching, but from living. By
>> the time a
>> ##native speaker of any language begins school, his or her
>> dialect* is
>> pretty
>> ##well set for life.
>> #
>> #5 years old?
>> #Tom Z
>
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