Live, Breathe, Speak American

Throughout the United States, many different dialects of English are spoken.  Although we as Americans all live in the same country and speak English, it is sometimes difficult to understand others because of their accent.  For example, a southern accent is much different from a midwestern accent.  Accents also affect how intelligent we perceive other people to be.  This clip from "Do You Speak American?" helps to discern the difference between correct and incorrect English as we perceive it to be...

As stated in the video, people perceive Southern accents to be a sign of unintelligence.  However, if we look at the presidents of the United States, being from the South did not affect their intelligence but rather helped candidates such as Bill Clinton and George Bush to win the presidency because the public could equate themselves with the presidents.  Southern accents seem more welcoming and like the common-man speak, which appeals to people in that they feel the president is no different than themselves.  


In "Do You Speak American", we learned the difference between Chicano English and Spanglish.  Chicano English is English with some Spanish slang used.  Often, people who speak Chicano English do not even speak fluent Spanish, but they have grown up hearing common expressions in Spanish being used and have incorporated the words into their vocabulary.  Spanglish on the other hand is a combination of Spanish and English.  Many native Spanish speakers once they learn English do not notice that they are switching between the languages when speaking because it seems so natural.  I thought that it was very interesting that there are so many different dialects of English in one country!  Below I describe some common expressions used in different dialects or definitions of the dialect...


1. Valley Girl Speak: Exemplified in the movie Clueless.  Includes phrases: "like", "oh my gosh", "and I was all..."

2. Chicano English: English with Spanish slang.

3. Spanglish: English and Spanish spoken together.

4. New York Accent: Changes the "OR" sound to a "OW" sound

From personal experience, I know how hard it can be to understand people with accents different  from my Midwestern accent.  For example, my grandma and her family were from Georgia.  When I was younger, it was very hard for me to understand what they were saying because they pronounced words in many different ways than did I.  When I stayed overnight with some of the family in Georgia during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, I was only three years old.  My parents were attending a basketball game, and I was left with my relatives since buying a ticket for a three year old was not economical.  Even today I can remember having a hard time understanding what these people were saying to me, and it's crazy to think that we only live about 2 hours away from each other via plane!

While some dialects may seem like a totally different language all together, different languages seem millions of miles away.  Guy Deutscher in his article, "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" describes that the English language is much more private than other languages because other languages use pronouns to describe the femininity or masculinity of a word.  For example, if someone was telling someone else about their night spent with their neighbor, they would use "el" or "la" vecino/a, and instantly the other person would know what the gender of the neighbor was.  In Chinese, there is only one verb tense for past, present, or future actions, but, "...this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time."

I found it interesting that in the article it stated, "...grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward object around them."  Some words in Spanish were feminine while the same words in German were masculine.  This determined how people perceived the words to be gender wise.  An example cited is the word "bridge".  In Spanish, bridge is masculine, but in German, it is feminine.  People therefore assigned different gender roles to the word based on what their language described it as.

Bridge=El Puente=die Bruke

Finally, I found the Australian tongue, "Guugu Yimithirr" to be very interesting.  Instead of describing this as behind us, or to the right of us, they use Cardinal directions.  For example, if I were to say that the desk was behind me, in GY I would say that the desk was south of me, assuming the south was behind me.  I read that we are egocentric even with languages.  "If you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself.  In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back."  I found this to be interesting because often we use the pointing hand gesture to point at ourselves when we are talking about ourselves, but this dialect uses it to express direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language 

Overall, we live, breathe, and speak American.  We have determined our "rights and wrongs" of English and continue to express ourselves through the language that we have been raised in.

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Finally, as a side note, this week in Sociology we had the opportunity to go to a presentation for a group called Purse of Hope who is working to save girls in Uganda from sex trafficking.  The numbers were astonishing...80% of people taken for human trafficking are girls who are sold into sex trafficking to make money for brothel owners.  The other 20% are boys who are forced into the military.  We have life so good over here as a society, and we really need to come together to help the society of Uganda to save the lives of innocent boys and girls.  Fortunately, our high school has been able to save a young girl named Prossy from Uganda and bring her into the Purse of Hope home so that she can get off the streets and not have to be sexually assaulted anymore.  The girls in the home learn vocations to raise money for their families (some of the girls become pregnant through sex trafficking), and also money to support themselves so that eventually they can live on their own and operate their own businesses.  The girls made bracelets and necklaces that are being sold at my high school, and I learned that one necklace can save a girl from 140 acts of sexual assault.  140!  These poor girls have a skewed image of their society because all they have seen is the men in the brothels who take advantage of and sometimes hurt them.  I feel so blessed to be living where I am today.  None of my problems seem as grandiose as the ones that these girls go through on a daily basis.  I hope to be able to help those girls in need by the resources that I am fortunate enough to have!  No one should be forced into sex labor.  The video below really touched me and made me want to become a part of the Purse of Hope organization so that I too can help these girls get out of horrendous situations and eventually become strong, independent women.