the mother language

[Wilson Gray]

An Australian friend of mine once told me that the dialects are in the
following order of prestige, highest to lowest:

True RP
Australianized RP, which my informant spoke (e.g., "shewpa" [Siwp@]
instead of "sewpa" [siwp@] for _super_)
American
Non-RP, but also non-working-class, Britspeak
Strine
Working-class Britspeak
"Foreign" accents: South African, Indian, Arabic, Chinese, sub-Saharan
African, etc.

Of course, this is merely the opinion of one somewhat snobbish,
somewhat anti-Semitic - "Chomsky reminds me of a little, Jewish
greengrocer" - individual from forty years ago.

This low ranking of the native dialect reminds me of the disparagement
of Southern "country" BE by speakers of Southern "proppa Ang lish" BE.
There's an insulting term for this non-"proppa" BE that escapes me, at
the moment. It's not a slang term, but an ordinary word used
insultingly, as "native" once was used in the era of colonialism. That
makes it hard to recall, dammit!

-Wilson

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Herb Stahlke<hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: the mother language
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> And Strine isn't even listed in the Ethnologue.
>
> Herb
>
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â the mother language
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Heard on the car radio:
>>
>> An Australian government commission has discovered that there are
>> over 100,000 British citizens eligible to vote in Australia under an
>> existing law. Â (They become eligible after residence for, if I
>> remember, eight years.) Â A government official commented that this is
>> enough to affect election results, and should not be
>> permitted. Â (Shades of the Irish in the United States in the
>> 1840s.) Â The proposal is to deny these people the right to vote if
>> they do not become Australian citizens within five years.
>>
>> Is five years enough for these Britishers to learn the language?
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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