LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.12.16 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 16.DEC.2004 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.12.16 (02) [E]

Hello all,

Ben Bloomgren and Jim Krause wrote -

>Well, we are doing it here in America by our media. Only the dialect spoken
>by black/African Americans(?) is accepted as "cool." If somebody comes on
>MTV who is from Boston, and he talks about wea he paaks his caa, they'll
>laugh him off the set.
>
>Ben, I think where a Bostonian "paaks his caa" is properly called an
>accent.  Gullah is a dialect spoken by a few Americans of African
>descent.  It has it's own sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary.
>The Bostonian uses the same sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary
>as I do.  Whereas the Bonstonian is quite understandable to me with my
>Midlands American accent, the speaker of Gullah would be a little
>difficult for me to understand in the particulars.

I agree - I think what we have here is more accent than actual dialect.
Granted a few words here and there are *used* dialectally, but in their
normal context, are understood by any speaker of American English - whether
I call where I get my water from a "spigot", "faucet", "tap", etc. - is just
a matter of where you're from - all those words are perfectly understandable
and, though may be used in a slightly different context depending on where
you're from, everybody knows what they mean. If I say my "sistah went down
to Floridar with a cah", I don't think there's anyone in the US who wouldn't
understand me, though I may get a few chuckles from some people!

A good example of a word with a common meaning but used dialectally would be
"spider" - it's understood to be an arachnid by every speaker of American
English, but here in New England, particularly on the coast of Maine, it can
also be used to refer to that local seafood favorite; a lobster. Not sure I
would classify that as being dialectal per se; again, more of a regional
thing. In other parts of the country, as I understand it, it may refer to a
cast iron skillet with short "feet". We eat "pancakes" here in New
Hampshire, but they could also be flapjacks, griddle cakes, etc. if I was in
another part of the country  - again, not really dialect, just a
regionalism.

Gullah, as Jim pointed out, is something else entirely - that's more of what
comes to mind when I think of dialect here in the US. If you listen
carefully to it, Gullah, though a dialect, isn't all that hard to
understand.

Yeah, I also agree - American English mixed with a fair amount of "Ebonics"
is considered "cool" (but again, it's certainly not anything I would ever
refer to as a dialect; to me it's more of just a "slang".

Maybe I'm not correct, but to me a dialect would have its own grammar and
sentence structure and lexicon (though all three of these may in fact be
very close to what the "standard" of the language is - Gullah being a great
example).

Mike S
"Manchestah", NH - USA

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