From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 01:37:57 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Language (Was:Re: Ebonics)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.961221144523.595B-100000@gak.voicenet.com>
Message-ID: <32BCDD2C.2E0@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jamie Lawrence wrote:
> At 7:17 PM -0800 on 12/21/96, Dale Thorn wrote:
> > > > Southern twang (or whatever the politically correct name for that is)
> > Just saying someone has a Southern "accent" is prejudicial and ignorant.

> Bullshit.
> I was born and raised in Ohio. I went to middle and high school in
> Tennessee.  (This isn't a qualification, per se, for asserting what
> I'm about to assert, as any trained ape could probably defensibly
> argue. I state it only to demonstrate some first hand knowledge about
> the topic I'm at hand. As my mother has drifted from speaking "Yankee
> english" to "Rebel English" over the years, examples of which I have
> on tape, I believe I can assert some knowledge on the matter.)

Bullshit yourself.  I was born and raised (mostly) in Ohio too.  You
didn't say what part of Tennessee, and there's a helluva difference
between Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga.  Just like you hear an
*enormous* difference in dialect between Akron and (for example)
Parkersburg, WVa, a mere 150 miles away.

You talk about "standard" English in the U.S., as though the U.S. spoke
*true* English.  More bullshit.  Be that as it may, the principal agents
of the early United States (Presidents, etc.) were Virginians, hence
Southerners. Sure, the barbarian hordes followed from Europe and settled
into Northern manufacturing and so on, and from them you establish that
that represents "standard" English?

You would know, if you had read some of the suppressed history of the
U.S., that barbarians who "speak Northern" have propagated tremendous
amounts of disinformation, including setting up speaking exhibits of
U.S. Presidents, where even the Southern Presidents "speak Northern or
Midwestern", i.e. a ficticious history.

If you read my complete post, you would note that I made a distinction
between "twang" (i.e., slurring words) and "accent" (something that
sounds "different" but is nonetheless clear), a distinction that you
have not grasped.

Next thing you'll say (probably) is that since the White Man killed off
the Indians, then the Indians must have been the True Savages.  Just
like it says in the Declaration Of Independence (yeah, it says that).
Now don't tell me that Thomas Jefferson was wrong, but you are right.
Read more, talk less.

[snip remainder]