Is my accent a crime?

[Tom Zurinskas]

from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html

"Nearly half the teachers at Creighton, a K-8 school in a Hispanic neighborhood of Phoenix, are native Spanish speakers. State auditors have reported to the district that some teachers pronounce words such as violet as "biolet," think as "tink" and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.

Ms. Santa Cruz, the state official, said evaluators weren't looking at accents alone. "We look at the best models for English pronunciation," she said. "It becomes an issue when pronunciation affects comprehensibility."

Sooo.  What is the best model.

I would suggest truespel phonetics which best represent in notation what the talking dictionaries are saying.  "tink" does not have a short "i" as in "tin".  Yet dictionaries say it does, while the speakers in those same talking dictionaries speak a "long e" as in ~teenk.  Not to mention the problem of special symbols of dictionary guides.  Time to get real.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling



>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Re: Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This was originally reported in the Wall Street Journal on 4/30:
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html
>
> Here's the response from faculty at the Univ. of Arizona Department of
> Linguistics:
>
> http://www.u.arizona.edu/~hammond/ling_statement_final.pdf
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > The blogosphere is ablaze with condemnations of the "law." I'm beginning to
> > wonder very seriously if there even is one:
> >
> > http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/22/arizona-seeks-reassign-heavily-accented-teachers/
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> >> The precise wording of the law is elduing me, but here are a couple of
> >> seemingly useful sites. The first gives some background; the second is the
> >> CNN report:
> >>
> >>
> >> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html
> >>
> >> http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/24/arizona-wants-to-reassign-teachers-with-accents/
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:31 AM, George Thompson > >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Arizona has decided that it's unacceptable to have teachers
> >> > > > whose spoken English is deemed to be heavily accented or
> >> > > > ungrammatical, even
> >> > > > though the latter has little to do with the former.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org