On p. 23 of today's (May 10, 2015) New York Times Magazine, we see the perfect expression of the kind of linguistic insecurity/chauvinism discussed in this blog post. In "How to Fake a British Accent" we are reminded that Americans are lazy (they "have particularly lazy tongue tips"), that Americans need to "clearly enunciate consonants," and that Americans "run words together." We also learn such bizarrities as the fact that "Americans speak with wide, almost grinlike mouths." (Could the dialect coach quoted in the piece simply be unfamiliar with the sight of people... smiling?)
First, this kind of generalization is (always) silly: Americans hold their mouths this way; Southerners speak slowly; Spanish-speakers always talk so fast! No. They don't. More important, I think, is the need to dispel the idea that American speech is the result of laziness. This has been common knowledge (that is, commonly believed but false) for a long time now.
(Remember the business about flaps in that NPR post linked to above? Most varieties of American English are more particular than the classic British "Received Pronunciation" English the thing in the Times Magazine is talking about. The phonological rules about all those t's, d's, and flaps depend on niceties that RP doesn't even notice. (USA! USA!) And you know what else? Those sounds in the middle of the word butter when spoken American-style aren't d's, you people who wrote the piece!)
Can we move past the idea that the British are the ones who naturally, innately, inevitably do language right? According to this piece, Brits even place an "infinitesimal space" around each word, as though each one were a precious bead on a chain. (How much do you want to bet a sound spectrograph would put the lie to that claim? Do people still use sound spectrographs?) Sorry, British people. You're just like the rest of us ugly clods—you run your words together, and you're stuck with the same imperfect equipment the riffraff use.
No comments:
Post a Comment