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Post by Kit Walker on Oct 7, 2011 12:11:28 GMT -5
Once your ancestors invent a language, you'll get to decide how to speak it. My distant ancestors invented lots of languages. Finnish, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, lots of stuff. Because America is a country of immigrants, you jackass. And since the south isn't well know for being a place where people of all nationalities live together in harmony, I bet a lot of people down there have ancestors who "invented" English. Because their ancestors were from England. |
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Post by scotsgit on Oct 7, 2011 18:07:07 GMT -5
Because their ancestors were from England. How do they live with the shame? |
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Post by Kit Walker on Oct 7, 2011 20:05:00 GMT -5
How do they live with the shame? It's the south, man. They know not of this thing called "shame" unless it involves book-learnin', interracial marriage, or queerosexuals. Not that I have much room to talk, being descended from the same immigrant stock as the noble and inbred hill people of Appalachia. And, y'know, my family hailing from Kansas. |
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Post by scotsgit on Oct 7, 2011 20:55:51 GMT -5
How do they live with the shame? It's the south, man. They know not of this thing called "shame" unless it involves book-learnin', interracial marriage, or queerosexuals. Not that I have much room to talk, being descended from the same immigrant stock as the noble and inbred hill people of Appalachia. And, y'know, my family hailing from Kansas. In which case, pretend you're descended from the Irish: It worked for Bill Clinton. |
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Post by Kit Walker on Oct 7, 2011 21:01:38 GMT -5
In which case, pretend you're descended from the Irish: It worked for Bill Clinton. That's rather the problem, actually. Scots-Irish. According to my armchair historian father, they became the hill billies when the immigrated her. In part, at least. |
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Oct 7, 2011 21:37:04 GMT -5
I grow weary of this. If there's no objectively correct standard of English, then there is no need to have English classes to begin with. After all, that stuff is just subjective & regional. And so the point is moot.
If, however, there is at least some degree of objective correctness, then it follows that it is not unreasonable to expect people not to deviate from it, within reason.
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Post by Kit Walker on Oct 7, 2011 22:01:27 GMT -5
If, however, there is at least some degree of objective correctness, then it follows that it is not unreasonable to expect people not to deviate from it, within reason. There is a basic standard (typically what is found in the dictionary), but that does not make dialectic differences and different (native) accents offensively wrong. |
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Oct 8, 2011 0:29:23 GMT -5
If there's anything I find offensive, it's that people like to parrot "English is subjective" when they know damn well they're omitting that "to a certain extent" for the sake of not conceding the point.
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Post by scotsgit on Oct 8, 2011 6:12:28 GMT -5
In which case, pretend you're descended from the Irish: It worked for Bill Clinton. That's rather the problem, actually. Scots-Irish. According to my armchair historian father, they became the hill billies when the immigrated her. In part, at least. Do you know who the Scots-Irish are? It's not what lots of people think it is. |
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Post by starseeker on Oct 8, 2011 7:28:44 GMT -5
That's rather the problem, actually. Scots-Irish. According to my armchair historian father, they became the hill billies when the immigrated her. In part, at least. Do you know who the Scots-Irish are? It's not what lots of people think it is. They're the descendants of the Scots Plantations right? The ones who may have lived in Ireland for 400 odd years, yet are very much not Irish. And it's this fact that is why Northern Ireland is a complicated mess. |
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Post by scotsgit on Oct 8, 2011 8:00:21 GMT -5
Do you know who the Scots-Irish are? It's not what lots of people think it is. They're the descendants of the Scots Plantations right? The ones who may have lived in Ireland for 400 odd years, yet are very much not Irish. And it's this fact that is why Northern Ireland is a complicated mess. Basically yes, although the problems of Northern Ireland cannot and should not be laid directly at the door of the majority Unionist community, the nationalist community are every bit as bad. |
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Post by booley on Oct 8, 2011 12:52:35 GMT -5
Let me be blunt, Ameircans have the absolute worst pronunciation of English words of any English speaking nation. Blunt and arrogant are not synonyms. American accents have an enormous degree of variation. Not all of them talk like they're from the Bronx. Not all of them sound like they're from the Deep South. Most of them have an accent you wouldn't even be able to discern just where it's from. Could be Canada. But hey, don't let nuances get in the way of your sweeping generalizations. There is no cockney accent in the UK! Just the proper London, upper-class accent. Exactly as the English language was first conceived! Oh, wait. English doesn't have a standardized pronunciation and is filled with instances where the general trends are completely and totally ignored or outright upside down. Because a child only picks up the foreign sounding accents, not the speaking patterns that they most often hear. Such as those of friends, family, school mates, and random strangers. It's just that one person that talks funny. Pip pip, cheerio. I guess I should also point out that human brains have an amazing capacity to understand what someone means even when the language itself isn't clear. And no this isn't perfect. People still can and do misunderstand each other. But considering the amount of verbal garbage and bad grammar and how most of us fail to listen.. it's a (secular) miracle that we communicate at all. Indeed, having people with accents can help because this process is subconscious. In other words you can't "teach" it so much as put people in a situation where they have to learn it. |
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Oct 8, 2011 14:10:44 GMT -5
Wait, so, my superpower to fully understand 1337 speak and aolspeek isn't actually super?
Dammit!
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Post by scotsgit on Oct 8, 2011 19:01:50 GMT -5
Wait, so, my superpower to fully understand 1337 speak and aolspeek isn't actually super? Dammit! So you can stop wearing your underpants outside your trousers. |
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Post by tolpuddlemartyr on Oct 8, 2011 19:20:31 GMT -5
There is no cockney accent in the UK! Just the proper London, upper-class accent. Exactly as the English language was first conceived! [/b][/i] Beowulf, spoken in gutteral German Saxon - the only proper English accent! |
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