In my earlier life I did quite a bit of traveling because my husband was a contractor. And moving different places people would ask me what part of the south I was from. And of course at first... It was a little annoying.
And then it became a game with me. I would let them guess. And they never could.
Same thing with my weight. I let them guess. And they never can.
Mary had a little lamb, feet was white as snow. Everywhere me and Mary went, that lamb was sure to go. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went... the lamb was sure to go. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. Mary had a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. He followed her to school one day, which was against the rules, made the children laugh and play to see the lamb at school.
Got a lot of cotton in that country. Cotton, peanuts and potatoes. You're working cotton patch? When I was a little kid, I used to go out on my little tote sack and pick it off the ground.
You know your face is getting longer? Is that what Paige lives in? Oh, that's Gino's building.
Oh, Gino. I guess they're putting new windows in there. New windows?
Yeah. I can use new windows in my apartment. Winter windows. Storm windows.
There's Junior. Junior, what you do? You buying new curtains? Putting up new curtains?
Yeah. I can use new windows in my apartment. Winter windows. Storm windows.
Yeah. I can use new windows in my apartment. I went to Pat and Labelle's concert. I was on the floor.
Girl, yeah, she was pooping at that concert. Did y'all ride on that gondola? Girl, yes. That's too scary. Girl, I was riding on that thing.
Did you go to the kiddie wash? Girl, yeah. Who do you think has a funny accent? People from New York or Philadelphia, you know. And Virginia, especially.
We have grandkids in Virginia, and they have that Virginia dialect, you know. I have to live twice to catch on, you know, to get that dialect, you know. Wisconsin people. Why do you say Wisconsin? What do they sound like?
Because when they say their O's, they're going out. Out and about. They do. They're really bad.
They sound like they're Norwegian. Mississippi and Georgia, they had a certain way of talking that, boy, you know how to have a knife to cut it, like trying to cut butter. They couldn't understand them. People from Chicago and people from New York, upstate New York and all of them have a definite accent. And they're the ones that are hard to understand.
They may think I'm hard to understand. New Yorkers are rude. Southerners talk too slow.
New Englanders don't say much at all. We've all heard the old clichés. People have many ways of talking in the United States, and no matter who's doing the talking, Somebody or other has an opinion about it. After all, it's one of the most important ways we size each other up.
It's like a vibration thing. You know, it's not too much what they say out of their mouth, it's how they say it. You know, because you can meet a person for the first time and automatically draw an opinion, I'm not going to like him, we're not going to get along together.
And you don't know him from Adam or Eve, just from what he has said and how he has said it out of his mouth. When someone expresses an opinion about the way somebody else talks, he may be making a judgment about more than just their speech. I think you see more change in the way the blacks talk than you do the way the whites talk. Because some of this yakety-yak junk that they do just go on and on and on, and when they get through, when it all boils down, they just say good morning.
We talked 15 minutes on that same thing. And since your speech is so much a part of who you are, if someone criticizes the way you talk, you might feel they're criticizing you. Well, they call me dutchified. Does that get you upset?
Well, in a way. It depends on the mood of the tone you say that. Because they get people on television, you know, like you watch these programs, they're from a different country. Well, I can tell they're from a different country, but I wouldn't make fun of them because they talk the way they do.
And you accept them like that, don't you? I do. But why make fun of me?
Because I sound Dutchified. You're dumb. Just as soon as it's Dutchified or German, you're dumb. When people put down the way others speak, they sometimes forget that everybody speaks with an accent. So before you jump to conclusions, consider the many ways of talking Americans have.
And remember that what sounds funny or odd to one person is not funny to the other. is music to the ears of another. Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me.
Do not, Phoebe. Say that you love me not, but say not so in bitterness. The common executioner, whose heart the accustomed sight of death makes hard.
Oh, dear Phoebe, if ever, as it ever may be near, you meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, then shall you know the wounds invisible that love's keen arrows make. ...physically park the heads via a program from your diskette or hard drive. There are two ways you can shut down a hard drive.
If your hard drive has an automatic feature, simply by turning off the power switch of the computer, will actually bring the heads up off the platers and bring them back past... track zero so that if there is any jostling of the computer after shutdown, the heads will not erase any of the data on the plater. Of course, they'll go to the server in turn, but they are sent down with 128K bytes of information down a packet with a start and a stop for collision detection.
It'll drop off these bits when it gets to the destination and go straight DMA access into the system. It's hard to say how many varieties of English there are in the United States. It depends on how you want to cut the pie.
accent may be spoken by only a few hundred people. You can hear some of the most unusual varieties in remote mountain areas or on islands along the East Coast. The speech heard in some of these places may sound very old-fashioned to outsiders. Jack said, I had to get out of home. His mom's been calling and casting at me all day.
She was behind the counter. She said, it's a lie away, Jack. I said, who's that, Mom?
The first permanent sheltman, wage sheltman, on the island was in 1686. There's been people living here ever since. You ever think of yourself? Nearly about all of us that were born here on this island, we can say that our parents were born here, and our grandparents, and our great-grandparents, and our great-great-grandparents, and right on down. What amazes me is that I can be most anywhere.
I can be in the mall in Salisbury, Maryland, for example, and I can hear Tan German talking in the crowd, and I can immediately tell, hey, they're from home, you know. Like Claude and them said, you can follow the crabs right on down. You don't. don't do that no more.
I think you get on top of the water and swim when you're ready to look. Swim over top of the ponds instead of in them. Where's the ponds, sir?
Where they're at? Just outside of the dine, the dine will pass, sir. Dine are cutting down the oil further, that crab going out.
If we're talking among ourselves, we might fall into the pattern of years ago and use words that you're not used to, that you haven't heard. We're going to have to live with that. But it's just about gone now.
We talk like everybody else. I figure I sound just like Walter Cronkite. American dialects came from the speech of the first English settlers who brought with them the accents of their regions. The folks from the London area who settled in Virginia and Massachusetts spoke a different way from the folks from northern England who made their home in Philadelphia.
As the population spread out, these groups and others interacted, mixing with the non-English speaking settlers to create a patchwork of American accents, each blending gradually into the next. As you go east to west, it becomes harder to hear the differences between accents. In the wide open spaces out west, southern and northern accents mixed, so you don't find as many distinctions. Sometimes the settlers were stopped by natural boundaries or barriers such as a mountain range or a river. And of course, since they were stopped, their dialects stopped too.
For example, the Connecticut River to this day separates park your car from park your car. Human interaction, the way people talk to each other or don't talk to each other, the way they copy each other, it's always changing. And because we, as people, change, so do our dialects.
It isn't just that we speak differently. Take a trip across the United States today and you begin to notice something else about the way Americans talk. Our speech reveals how we deal with the world, whether we beat around the bush or get straight to the point. The more you listen, the more you realize how our ways of speaking relate to how we live our lives.
Good morning. Welcome into the Marketplace program on this Tuesday morning. I'm Ricky Campbell with you.
Good morning, Marketplace. Hello. I have a ringer Maytag washer I'd like to sell, and I'm on $125 for it. I've got a General Electric.
Frigidaire. It's real good. Runs good for sale.
And I've got a nice five-year-old saddle horse. This is me again, Ricky. I forgot to put my mustard greens. I got plenty of pretty mustard if anyone wants it. Well, I just don't talk like Buckeyes or, you know, or Detroit and stuff like that.
I don't talk Southern, but I'm just a plain old hillbilly. You can tell people from this part of Kentucky from anywhere else in the world. I can, you know, if you really listen to it.
I thought this is the way everybody talked until I went in the Navy, and everybody talked funny to me, and then I got to realizing it was me that was different than the rest of them. How much is these rent? Forty. Forty? These will all be in the boxes now, they'll be around from thirty to forty dollars.
How much you say you want for these dresses? The subtle, cultural overtones of this dialect. remain among Appalachian people.
It's culture expressing itself in sound, and it involves rhythms, pause, tonal qualities, and so forth. They themselves could not... articulated or identified, but it's there. You hear it as an outsider.
These look like they fit him. Because this pointed toe, you've got to have a half a size, you need a half a size larger, see. If he's buying something like this right here and square-toed, he may could wear it in eight and a half. There's a strong emphasis in Appalachia upon the integrity of the individual. This means then that one talks far around a subject before he hits it.
How do you feel? Pretty good? I feel good. I'm a little tired. We've been campaigning a lot.
We've been out on the trail for the last two years. I want you to sign a personal note for me, let's say. I go and we interact socially.
We might sit on our heels and whittle and pick our teeth with grass. Stems and tell stories for half an hour Before I finally let it be known that I have come to have you sign this note for me This is typical of the way we interact among ourselves. I think still is I do appreciate it Now I can't bring these back if I don't feel We seem to be here, the median, and then everybody else seems to be either above or below. When they say Midwest, to me it means middle everything. It's mid-level.
You want to find the basic America or the yardstick, it's kind of right in here. We're straight American. We're bland. We're just the normal stuff right here.
Dictionary. No accents, no colloquialisms, you know, no uniqueness. Just kind of straight English.
They say the Republicans got all the money, but the Democrats is doing all the goddamn advertising. Huh? Yeah, every Democrat running for city council or whatever is in the goddamn football bulletin.
And they're in the... We got two lots of... They don't have the money to get the ads. We're always in here, there's a gang of us always in here.
About 7.30 every morning. What do you talk about? Everything.
Oh, I'll tell you. If there's a conversation, we got it. It isn't always good, but we always got a conversation or something. There's occasionally that sense that when you mention Columbus, Ohio, or say Ohio, they immediately presume that you're talking to them from the phone extension in the hog barn.
Well, those of us who live in the central part of this state will say, no, we don't talk funny in Columbus, but if you want to hear funny, go about 70 miles due south. And I'm sure there's this gnawing suspicion that they're saying the same thing up in Cleveland about us. Well, you know how it is.
I think Texans are pretty obvious to tell, I guess. What do you think is the most obvious thing about the Texans? The way they talk.
I think that most Westerners, in their speaking, feel like they're being more open, more... forthright, more trustworthy. I think that Westerners feel about their speech sort of the way they do about their social rules and things. You're supposed to come out and let everybody see and hear, and you're not supposed to hide anything.
And I know that's true of Texans. I want to tell you what you need to do about your cow dogs. Well, you stand here in that pole, let me tell you, them cow dogs, cow dogs are supposed to work behind the cow. And he's worked right in front. He's stupid.
Did you train him? I train him. I'm stupid. Another thing about Texas, you very seldom will encounter a cow dog. that main approach, nah or yah, they'll bend your ear.
In fact, I've seen it happen more than just a dozen or two times. I've seen it happen with a rather constant frequency. You're driving down a little country road, and here are two pickup trucks, and they're two guys that see each other at least once a day, but they're talking there, and you pull up in front or behind, and you've got to give them a little time to break off their conversation, and sometimes they'll pull out and let you by, and you'll...
You look in your rearview mirror and they're back to talking again. John Henry, are you a dog trainer? You need to every day train those dogs.
It's just like going to a football game. If a coach hadn't coached them before he got to the game, they don't need trying to coach them after you get there. If I do anything I'll jump the broomstick and I don't want no spring chicken either.
I want an old set in the hand who can cook. He didn't want to cook bread for soup. He didn't want to cook bread for soup. He want to know what I cook for supper. I tell him nothing.
Where are you going to sleep tonight? I'm going to sleep in the back of the bed and you in front. So what do you think of those New York Mets?
They're the best. I love them. Did you watch the games?
Every game, every night till 12 o'clock at night. No wonder you were sleepy all day at work. When you think about the way someone from another part of the country talks, one thing that strikes you are the words that they use. Fried Steak, I would like Chicken Fried Steak, Hush Puppies on the side, Cream Gravy, and an Iced Tea, please.
What's that? Hush Puppies. This is a New York deli. If you want a nosh, if you want to eat, you could schlep all over the world. You wouldn't find what we got here.
How about a Poppy Schmier? How about a Klisch? How about some Kischke? How about a nice Bialy?
Now, wait, wait, calm down, y'all. I don't understand a word you're saying. Even though we are. speak English there are many words and expressions used in one place that might as well be Greek to people from somewhere else the Mets I think she's talking about the vets this drink consists of syrup ice cream milk and it's all mixed up and turns out to be a very very fine drink no it's called a cabinet and this part of Rhode Island's called the cabinet What is a gum band? It's a gum band.
It's the thing that you wrap things up in. It stretches. Do you ever hear another name for that? Rubber band? I think some people call it rubber band.
Not here though. I'm in Honolulu and it's quitting time. What do you say? Well, you would use the Hawaiian term that everybody knows, which is pau hana, work is finished.
And everybody knows that. Jambalaya, oh yeah, I know what is jambalaya. Yeah. What's that? Jambalaya, you mix that with meat, jambalaya, and rice, and wear a season.
Cook it, that's good jambalaya. And a gargling, you know what that means? Yeah. It's diagonal, skew.
Off from the perpendicular, we'll say. Antigoga, meaning non-square. Anything but square if it's sitting schmunch-wise.
Snickle fritz, that's a good one. A snickle fritz, yeah. Snickle fritz, what's a snickle fritz? Snickle fritz. Little kid would be a snickle fritz.
You know, a rowdy little kid would be a snickle fritz. What does schlep mean? What does schlep mean?
Schlep means to carry, to lug, to schlep around, to walk around. Everybody in New York schleps. Everybody's carrying something, everybody's schlepping someplace.
We're all schleppers. Since you've been exposed to some New Yorkers, do you know what this word is? Shelp?
No. Shlep? Shlep. Oh, schlep. What does it mean?
Well, did you sleep? That's what I think. Shelf.
Shelf. Slip. Slip. What's it mean?
Slip. Slept last night in this room. Words do tell a lot about the people in a particular place. In the Southwest, where the weather is always on everybody's mind, there are many expressions to describe rainstorms.
Any kid from Oklahoma could tell you that. We learn the words we use in our region the same way. way we learn our manners and customs from the people around us.
Mama, mama, I'm so sick. Call the doctor, quick, quick, quick. Doctor, doctor, will I die? Count to five and you'll survive. Everybody learns to talk in the same way.
At first, they learn it in the home, from their family or the people who raise them. Look at all these in my pocket. What you doing there, baby?
He had to make those glass. What you doing there, Santa? Huh? Playing in the street.
She might want to play. If you want to pick up some pecans, you pick them up over here. Don't pick them up out there in the dirt and all.
You can put it in your mouth, germs and all on there. Just pick them up. over here and wipe off your clothes.
Once kids become old enough, they learn their language from their peers, the kids that they play with. Kids the same age or those who are slightly older than them. Hurry up, kids! Hurry up! Hurry up, we have to get out of here.
Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!
As kids grow older, peer influence becomes even more important. Kids hear a lot of speech on TV. They listen to a lot of teachers talk in school, but what's really important to them is the speech of the kids that they interact with on a day-to-day basis. As kids go on, they may learn another dialect, but in those unguarded moments, moments of anger and passion, it's the original dialect that they fall back into because that's the dialect that has the most meaning for them. At times I go back to my southern dialect, you know, certain words and I feel more comfortable.
And then there are other settings that I correct that. When much it could? When I'm in my professional field more so than anything. And when I'm in my own social group and I'm more relaxed, my southern dialect seems to come out a little bit more.
And I feel more relaxed. And then they begin to call me a southern girl and that's my identity and I like it. If you need assistance, an operator will return.
Where have we heard your voice before? Well, does this sound familiar to you? The number is 732-77... Seven, seven, seven. That's where you've heard it.
I'm the voice of directory assistance throughout a good part of the country. How did the actual taping session go? I was given a list of numbers from zero to nine to record with different inflections. For example, one, one, one.
2, 2, 2. These numbers are thrown into a computer, and depending on where you want the number in the sequence of a telephone number, the different inflection is used. So that it comes out something like this. The number is 0, 0, 0. 2, 0. 2, 0. They were looking for generic speech.
Or some people... people call it homogenized speech, speech that would float in any part of the country and didn't sound like it came from somewhere in particular, perhaps the voice from nowhere. I was engaged for a while to a Yelly who sounded like a Yelly to me, although he had a trace of a southern accent.
I thought sort of a Bill Faulkner, Truman Capote accent, you know, when you're 20, you don't, you know. these distinctions. And I went home to meet his family at Christmas and as we drove further south from New Haven, his accent got heavier and heavier. It became filled with all these hillbilly kind of regionalisms, you know, this real kind of you all stuff. And as well a lot of the hand gestures.
I mean, this man was becoming a different person. Mostly the language. By the time we got to Sparta, I had had it.
I just knew that someone with those little accents was not going to crawl around inside of me. I was not going to have little southern babies who talked like that. And I got a plane home, no question.
You can't talk southern. I mean, second bro is the worst. You don't like that yourself. I mean, you're laughing. Why is it worse?
Because they talk like niggas. I'm sorry. Even the white people?
Even the white people talk like niggas over there. People can be very blunt when they say what they think about the speech of a certain area. They might point to how people talk as proof of what they like or don't like about that part of the country. And I was talking to a New York editor not too long ago, and I could tell, you know, he was thinking, Ohio, okay, I learned about that in geography. It's somewhere near Iowa or Idaho or one of those places.
And you get the impression that they think there's rampant brain death east of the, or west of the Hudson. And you almost want to say, well, I've got to go now because the Berkshires are eating the seat covers off the massive Ferguson, and we've got some cannon to do. But, so we tease back and we get very defensive. I say about New Yorkers that in Manhattan the reason there's that nasality in the language is because the higher up you go in the skyscrapers, the thinner the air is.
And they say, he's in a meeting right now. And that's what happens. I don't think they perhaps have the same values of hospitality that we do in the South.
And so I associate all of that with the sound of their voice. And it's grating on your ears. Maybe our sound is also, but it's usually very nasal. And a lot of times the things they say are not kind.
You know, they won't say, oh darling, I'm so glad to see you. They'll say, nice to see you. I'll just clip it right off.
clip it all and you've got to put a little adjectives and little darling precious something like that to make you a southerner they laugh at me i took a nice chest out of the wedding and i said i brought the ice and these three guys said you brought the what and i said i have i've brought the ice and they said well we're not quite sure what what you're saying and i opened up this ice chest and i said see ice there's a lot more prejudice against a southern accent than there is against any other kind. That is, and I think it troubled Jimmy Carter. ...because in the northern mind, a southern accent equals both ignorance and racism. And you'll see that stereotype reinforced in zillions of old movies. You take all those old movies around World War II era.
I don't know how many zillions there were, but the classic World War II movie consists of an all-American clean-cut hero who's from somewhere in the middle of the West, usually a farm kid from Kansas who's blonde. And he's always got one wisecracking buddy from New York, and then there's always some just dumb, slow-talking southerner who's the butt of all the jokes in the military movie. And that's a stark character in American movies, and it really has reinforced the prejudice against a southern accent.
Regional stereotypes have been around for a long time. We often feel that we know an area, whether we've been there or not, because of what we've seen in movies or on television. or what we've read in books. When you hear people with strong regional accents, they tend to be the villains or comic characters. Hey, monks!
Get a load of that! But don't cover it up. That's the way I like to see it.
My name's Feist. Yeah, but that makes you the challenger. You're the natural born point killer, ain't you?
You know, my father once had his name on a thing like that. Yeah, I want it. Dead or alive. Reward.
Two cents. Well, I'll tell you what I would like. Yes?
I'd like to learn how to talk good. It's the nice guys and heroes, the well-educated and serious types who speak an accent close to standard English. Well, I might give you a few books to start with, and every now and then I'll correct you if you don't mind. Go ahead. Well, that is when I know I don't talk so good myself.
You do. Good. So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors in a ballpark, and what do I get?
A one-way ticket to Palookaville. You was my brother, Charlie. You should have looked out for me a little bit.
The other side of the stereotype is that a regional accent tags a character as natural, real, the salt of the earth. You don't understand. I could have had class.
I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it.
From Mark Twain's Huck Finn to Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Regional accents have been used by writers to make their characters trustworthy. I don't know how long I can get away with this act, but she's sure worth a try. All those buildings filled with people. Kind of scares a country boy like me, you know it?
Isn't that sweet? So unpretentious and honest. No, I love it.
I have in-laws in Georgia. I love Georgia very much. They talk in questions, though. Last week, I went to see my mother-in-law.
You're talking to me? Are you asking me if you went to see your mother? You think we went to the Braves game? Well, I don't know.
No, did you go? With your mother-in-law? Then we went home, say, Stone Mountain?
You know, no. That's why they lost the Civil War. The troops couldn't understand the commands.
They were very equivocal. You know, charge. Well, it's not them feeling superior, it's me feeling inferior, and I hate when I feel like that.
And when I speak horribly, I feel stupid, and I don't have confidence in myself, and it's holding me back. It's holding me back in a lot of things that I want to do. do. I want to, you know, a good career and things like that and if you don't speak well you can't, you can't.
Let's face it, there are certain consequences for not speaking a standard dialect. For example, people may make fun of you or you may have certain limitations in terms of the job market. So if you don't want to deal with the negatives, it may be very helpful to learn a standard dialect for certain situations. It may not be fair, but that's the way it is. You know, they kind of stereotype you, Woody, from Brooklyn.
Yeah, I am from Brooklyn, but I don't like to, you know, remember it every day. I mean, it was a good place when I grew up, but automatically when they hear this Brooklyn accent, they think like you grew up in a slum hanging out on a corner and, you know, they get the wrong impression, which I guess I like to make a good impression. Dwarf. Bearded dwarf. Fierce farmer.
Fierce farmer. Farmer. Farmer.
Farmer. Farmer. Farmer. Farmer.
Regional speech patterns are going to mark you as regional. for the rest of your life and that's not what the corporate world is looking for right and yeah the final are certainly and then some of the media Lars are still missing I work for a dental company we have really high-tech type equipment and I'm an outside sales rep, and I would have to fill in at meetings all over the country. And they'd send me, I remember one time in particular, they sent me to Milwaukee, and they weren't even listening to what I was saying.
And they thought it was like a comedians'act. They were kind of listening more to the way I was speaking than what I was saying. And they'd say, where are you from? And, you know, where are you from? Texas.
You know, where do you think I'm from? And they'd say, where are you from? There's an ability to stereotype that person, and worst of all, they get stereotyped in terms of ability to do things, like run a corporation, or take responsibility, or meet the public, or give a good image. There's the feeling that anybody who talks like that can't be very smart. And if I don't talk like that, I must be smarter than you.
And I don't want anybody who's not very smart representing my company. And those kinds of folks tend to have a hard time. getting a job so their speech is very very important it is tough because when you're speaking one particular way it's almost like a diet you know it's tough but you want it few of us actually go so far as to try to change our accents especially if we never have to leave our home regions but even within communities accents vary enough to reveal something else about us it's the thing that in a democracy isn't supposed to matter matter so much, our social class.
My name's Kathy Carangelo and I live in the north end of Boston. I lived here all my life. I enjoy to travel. My latest trip was to St. Martin and we took a little side trip to St. Botts, which was a beautiful island.
It was only nine miles. I'm John Sears, and Boston is home. I grew up in the Back Bay part and now live in Beacon Hill, but we're in the Fenway.
And the object behind me is Cyrus Dallin's Appeal to the Great Spirit. That statue is my home. you means a lot to me because it's a reminder. My name is Sandy Hall and I am a resident of Boston. I come from a neighborhood called Dorchester and I'm interested in all types of sporting activities.
Right now the Boston Red Sox are number one. Hi, my name is George McAvoy. I live and grew up in South Boston and now I live in Dorchester. I'm married. My wife is named Marge.
I have two boys, George III. Even in one place, there are many accents. A stranger to Boston might think that everybody there says, pock the cow, the same way.
But one Bostonian can tell the neighborhood and the social or ethnic background of another Bostonian as soon as he opens his mouth. People make these distinctions whether they live in Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon. It's easy to figure out which dialects are more desirable and which dialects are less desirable. Just look at which groups are more desirable and which groups are less desirable. We tend to think of urban as better than rural.
We tend to think of middle class as better than working class. We tend to think of white as better than black. So if you're a member of one of these stigmatized groups, then the way you talk will also be stigmatized. This goes on. all over the United States in every community.
There are those people who are professionals, and then there are those people who are factory workers, and they live in entirely different social circles. And you've got three different ways of speaking. You've got a cultured way of speaking, you've got a...
White trash, is that a terrible expression? Well, that's what we really think about. And then you have the black way of speaking.
Not really white trash, let's say uneducated. Okay, that's better. Uneducated. There's a difference between uneducated and white trash anyway.
You know, it's I ain't got no, let's don't let no, let me think, I've got to remember, let's don't let no stump knock no hole in the bottom of this here boat. One of the things that having an accent does to us is make us They have to be excellent. Once you've been in the city and realize how it works, how the social system works, you immediately realize that you have to be one cut above anybody that you're competing with. Because the minute you open... your mouth you've got two strikes against you I know how we talk we kind of um I wouldn't necessarily say slur our words but we know what is it enunciate and pronounce our words when I want to talk proper I will If there's somebody I have to impress or, you know.
When you've heard enough people tell you what's wrong with the way you talk, you might begin to believe them. Yes, I do, because it's ignorant. It sounds ignorant.
Come on, listen. These people hear this stuff, they're going to say, what the hell's coming that garbage out there? Yeah, that's it.
Right there. You see? That's it.
That's going to happen. They're going to hear this and they say, look at them two beautiful girls. If they'd shut their mouths, it'd be great.
You know, my girlfriend. I've heard that so many times. My girlfriend wrote it. Oh, everybody. My girlfriend wrote it tells me that.
If you would keep your mouth shut, you'd be perfect. Once they hear that nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh, it's like, oh my. It's like, go through it. What else have they got to live for?
Well, sex, probably. Well, don't do sex. They keep that very quiet.
Yeah. I know you don't like Dickens. No, I don't like Dickens.
Yes, he's post-Austin. Now, Jane Austen, of course, is the greatest novelist in the English language. Well, she's a great novelist, but not the greatest.
Not the greatest. I'm a Dickens man. Dickens is messy, George. Of course he's messy, but he's lively.
He only wrote one great book, which is Pickwick Papers. I would put that way down compared to... I've been here for about 350 years.
My family came over with the first load of bricks. I consider myself speaking for the people. speaking the Brahmin dialect of Boston. But the word Brahmin is a very difficult word to define, and it wasn't, in fact, invented by until Oliver Wendell Holmes in the middle of the last century.
Do you think there are many people in Boston who speak like you two gentlemen do? We're a dwindling group. We're a declining group.
But I think there may be as many as a thousand. And... I don't know.
Out of 600,000. I overwonder. You tend to revel in the communication level you've come to experience. People in the North End particularly, as I say, revel in the fact that they speak a certain way. And if you speak some way other than that, they find you to be different.
And I can't express it more than to say they really revel. They go further than what they really should. In other words, to communicate with one another, they don't have to say, car, like they say, but they'll say it even more, just to emphasize the fact that that's where they're from.
Julio! Come here, will you please for a minute? You look all good, God, though.
What's the matter? Rough night? Seriously? Did you make it to my party-farty?
Well, you'll find that a lot of us really do express ourselves differently, and if my brother Phillip was here, he has yet another way of expressing himself. He'd probably be the best one. Yeah.
Why? What's his accent? He definitely has an accent, a Boston North End accent.
The reason why Philip has it so strong and emphasizes it and uses it to his advantages is because he's the only one out of the five of us that actually really grew up in the North End. Combo. We're done.
Chris fucked up big time. Yeah, he's in trouble in the Marines. He fucking called up his boss. He says, hey, I ain't coming into work today.
The boss goes, why not? He says, I'm going to get beamed with the broad. The boss says, yeah, they put him in the brig. Then he took a piss test.
Every time I hear my younger brother talk, I cringe because it's fine for the area, it's fine for your family, you know, but when you travel outside the area and travel outside the family, you're going to have to pronounce your R's, you're going to have to... Think of what you're saying, and you're going to have to articulate. And all he could do is talk in one manner. I would never change growing up in the city.
The best thing that ever happened to me. It really was. It's such an advantage over people. You go to a club.
You start talking to a babe and she says, you Italian? And she, what makes you think that? She says, you talk like an Italian.
And then you start giving her the accent. Yeah, youse guys, and where youse from? I'm with Tria, my friends.
I chew the football all day. And this, that, and yeah, mother. And stuff like that.
And the women, they eat it up. They love that. They really do.
They thrive on that. And then you get a guy, right? And you tell him. Don't fuck with me, I'll break your motherfucking head. And then right away, the guy, he says, wow, this kid's from the city, he's gonna pull a shank on me and cut me.
And you can intimidate people with your verbal actions. Yeah, you know where I'm sitting? First three rows. Are you? Watch, walk right in like me on the joint.
Seriously, watch. I'd be lost without growing up in the city and having these assets. I used them as an asset instead of a liability, you know.
And when they went to college, it was a liability for my brothers, you know. But then again, they ain't as smart as me. It's his body well, isn't it, man? I ain't got too much money, man.
What you got? Come on now, brother. He said we were gonna work it out. Smell that. 350, smell that.
Why you huffing? No, I'm working with you. You working?
I'm working with you. I'm trying to meet you. Man, you short as real, man. Oh, thank you.
long real I'm scared of this so really buy me a bag the dialect of many black Americans is what is often called black English although the roots of black English go back hundreds of years its use is still controversial today. I met a dude too, his name Kevin. He was with his girlfriend and I didn't play nothing like that so I left him alone. I saw this guy named Mike.
I think that the majority of white America does not accept white English, but not because of the language itself, because of the people who speak it, which is racism. Most of the white varieties are accepted. They might not be similar. quote, you know, correct, but they are accepted. And that's what makes black English different.
It is not accepted. Even though black English is mocked and looked down upon by many white people, a lot of black Americans use it to relate to one another every day. And those who don't use it in their home communities run the risk of becoming outsiders.
I know that my two children now who are in suburban systems, when I hear them talk, sometimes it grates on me. I have two sons. I mean, one's 12, one's 15. When I hear them talk, sometimes I say, my God, I mean, am I raising two white boys here?
And I don't mean that to be negative with respect to white males, but I don't want my boys sounding like white males. And when I first heard, I started listening because a couple of my cousins came over. And they said, my age, and they said, what's happening with your sons, man? I mean, why do they sound like that? And I said, sound like what?
Do the three of you all talk in the same way? No. I think me and Sharon do if it's not Amelia. What's the difference?
I don't use slang as much. I know what the difference is. Amelia has a proper voice in us. She talks proper. I don't use slang as much.
Why not? I don't know. I know why. Because she's a schoolgirl and she's a mama girl. I'm a mama girl too, but you know, I still be using them slangs.
What's happening, girl? I've been there, I've ride far, nothing more time. That's my girl.
Yeah. Yes indeed. It ain't about nothing. It's my parcel.
So is it a bad thing to speak proper? Yeah. You call Amelia bunny rabbit.
Because some people look at you different because you don't use as much slang as them. She's trying to be cute or something like that. You've been made to believe that your own language that you've been communicating with is a bad language.
But that's not your own language. It is your own language. Listen to me. Whites don't talk that way.
You know why? Is it their language? Is it their language?
Whose language is it? Listen to me. Whose language is it?
Listen to me. The only time you're going to use black vernacular is standing on the corner with your arm around your body talking and rapping in a party where everybody's hiding with roofing. When you're trying to take your business and you're trying to make yourself, you're trying to increase your level standards of living, believe me, black vernacular ain't going to mean no more than that cigarette butt laying on the ground.
The hardest thing though is for me to try to show the legitimacy of black English that I'm putting in my life. Let your parents speak, let your sisters and brothers speak. It's not bad English.
It's not slang. It's not something that you have to look down upon. It's just another variety. And at the same time, say, well, but still you've got to learn standard English. So whether it's slang or whether it's standard English, it's still a language.
Don't tell me it ain't a language. It's a language that you have snobbed and got indoctrinated. But it's more than just accepting a dialect. You have to really understand that it's politics, too. It was accepted.
and the people who speak that for us. So you can't just say that, okay you guys if you speak standard English you're going to get that job. You know, because that's not true.
You know, you might not get the job because still that you're black, but at least if you speak a standard language they can't say you didn't get the job because you didn't speak standard English. You know, at least you know that I ain't got any chance. Lay that on me. Black or white, Texan or New Yorker, few people talk the same way all the time. There's one way of talking to friends and family, and another way for business or school.
We switch back and forth because we know there's no one way that works in every situation. Language can bring us together or set us apart. Our social and racial attitudes are mixed up with what we feel about people's access. And because the way we talk is so much a part of who we are, we feel a special bond with people who talk the same way we do.
Put some South in your mouth, put some Dixie in your tongue, let me hear that Southern drawl when you say y'all. Across the country, it sounds like we're having a renewal of pride in our roots and in our speech as well. People are getting rid of the notion that everybody should sound alike.
We're recognizing that our accents are part and parcel of our diverse identities, and we're certainly not afraid to advertise it. Some people think I have Lone Star fever, that I take Texas pride too far. They think that's the only reason I eat Ron's crispy fried chicken. Come on! Do you own a foreign car?
Well, if you do, I have a tune-up special for you right now for only $19.95 plus parts. J.O. John's Discount Furniture on Whitfield Road is the place that we invite you to come and save money the year round. Hey, Vern.
Smells great. Cooking on a gas grill. Hot, fast, and cheap. You know, Vern, it's always fun to see why you don't get your house.
Same way. But that's not really the case. the case. It's true you may not speak exactly the way your parents do.
Americans are more mobile and better educated today than ever before, but we'll never all speak the same way. Listen, play it smart, Vernon. Call your guys'company. Should have talked to your old buddy Ernest first, no?
I believe him ribs about ready, Vernon. The little differences that are with us everywhere we go are not likely to be changed as long as they don't prevent. comprehension as long as they don't keep you from knowing what somebody else is saying or what you are saying somebody else is.
As long as they don't spoil communication then we're not going to change them. Why should we? I don't want to sound like somebody from some some other part of the country. I don't know what's wrong with my own speech.
We don't have to all talk alike. So I think that's a general feeling. So you're not embarrassed by the way you talk? Absolutely not. You know I mean it's It's not a matter of pride or anything, but I mean, I don't want to go through the process of making my tongue do the stuff you have to do to talk right.
I mean, you know, why put forth the effort? Everybody knows me. Ain't that right? American Tongues was produced and directed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Polker. The coordinating producer was Susan Milano.
The line producer was Laura Myers. Music by Mack Rabinak, Lou Marini, George Davis. Narrated by Trey Wilson.
Editing consultant, John Purcell. The advisors were Walt Wolfram of the University of the District of Columbia. Frederick Cassidy of the Dictionary of American Re... Regional English. Raven McDavid of the University of Chicago.
The local coordinators were Shirley Perman and Sis May. Wendell A. Harris, alias Popcorn. Thanks to Herbie Smith. Bill Hort and Howard Mintz.
Millie Moorhead and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Ann and Mark Kinley and the New York Historical Society. I would like to thank all historians for letting me speak. They should not have left me behind. Southwestern Exposition and Fatstock Show.
American Tongues is supported by a grant. From the National Endowment for the Humanities. And SWAMP, the Southwestern Alternative Media Project.
This has been a production of the Center for New American Media. No one like? A friend of theirs left Louisiana, the state that he was born, and went to New York. And when he came back, he had this accent, you know, this southern, picked-up northern accent.
And he walked in the restaurant. This time, that tomato kicked. And he said, I want a menu, please.
And they passed him the menu, and he looked at it. He says, I think I want an order of potatoes and tomatoes and some lettuce. They gave him and brought the bill. They turned the bill down, and he ate. When he had finished eating and he turned the bill up, he said, My God Almighty, I've never known taters and maters to cost so much.
Laughter