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Sandman
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Sinister Penguin
Aug 2001
time: 05:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The accent, while it HAS changed, has been relatively constant.
The upper classes. |
The evidence you have provided so far has been pretty insubstantial. The use of 'ain't', syllable-based reading and some minister's opinion on the linguistic diversity. These don't add up to much, and I'm going to need a lot more to even begin to consider this a 'historical fact'. What other scholars agree with Boorstin, for starters? Are there any that disagree?
Given the upper classes were involved, I assume that there's loads of written sources available documenting the linguistic angst of the English aristocrats. Care to provide some?
Oh, and how did the English upper classes even know what Americans sounded like, given the limited state of communications of the time? Did they quiz veterans and merchants on how Americans spoke, and then began 'deliberately' altering their accents to avoid the terrible crime of sounding 'American'? Even though from their point of view their accent was English?
Where did the English accent(s) come from? Were they just invented one day? Was they adopted from elsewhere? Did they just 'evolve' out of the English upper classes 'deliberate' desire to not sound American?
No reply to my point about the Pitcairn islanders? Their accent is said to be 'Olde English', and yet nobody has commented on them sounding like Southerners.
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Anyways, I'm sick of this. Just read the frigging book. It's not like you or I actually have any first-hand (in the form of primary source stuff) experience with any of this. |
I think the problem we have is a claim by any expert to have access to primary source accent information so long after the speakers are dead. It's absurd to accept such theories without reservation as fact when even a casual examination of relevant facts suggests that the theory will at best be quite speculative. It's also a bit annoying to be told that unless we read his book we have to accept him as a pre-eminent authority whose conclusions are unlikely to be grossly wrong. Rubbish.
You are the only one to have actually read this book so it seems reasonable to address our objections to it's conclusions to you so long as you support it's conclusions as being equivalent to fact.
Did the author comment on the Pitcairn islanders accents at all? Did the author explain how the british isles accents have so much more diversity than does the US south even though they do not contain an indentifiable american 'southern' accent anywhere and even though the author claims that divergence between US southern accents and UK accents arose from efforts to make UK accents more uniform?
The author probably gained his fame with a revolutionary treatment of the largely unapproachable topic of the evolution of old historic accents and he might well have uncovered some bits of truth through some clever means of how it arose but without actual audio recordings or very extensive contemporary and continuous to the present phonetic analysis of the accents then and up to the age of audio recordings the conclusion that speakers of english on both sides of the atlantic spoke a recognizably modern southern US accent is absurd in it's scope and depth. He could not possibly have access to sufficent information to know this even if his conclusions were correct (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding).
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
quote:
Originally posted by Geronimo
I think the problem we have is a claim by any expert to have access to primary source accent information so long after the speakers are dead. It's absurd to accept such theories without reservation as fact when even a casual examination of relevant facts suggests that the theory will at best be quite speculative. It's also a bit annoying to be told that unless we read his book we have to accept him as a pre-eminent authority whose conclusions are unlikely to be grossly wrong. Rubbish.
You are the only one to have actually read this book so it seems reasonable to address our objections to it's conclusions to you so long as you support it's conclusions as being equivalent to fact.
Did the author comment on the Pitcairn islanders accents at all? Did the author explain how the british isles accents have so much more diversity than does the US south even though they do not contain an indentifiable american 'southern' accent anywhere and even though the author claims that divergence between US southern accents and UK accents arose from efforts to make UK accents more uniform? |
I don't think you understand, this is a small part of the book. The book isn't on accents. There's just a chapter or two devoted to how the English language was affected in the colonies. |
Maybe i can make time to read a capter or two. I'll see if it's available in the public library on the way home from work.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
quote:
Originally posted by Tingkai
Classic double-talk: You complain that I'm attacking the man instead of the argument and then you say his argument is right because he is a great man. |
You haven't provided an argument. When two people assert opposite things, and one of them doesn't provide any argument at all, I can justifiably go with the other person if that other person is an authority on the subject. However, if that one person's argument is simply an ad hominem against the authority on the topic (who, by the way, provided arguments and presumably has actually RESEARCHED THE TOPIC and has managed to publish his findings, as opposed to meraly posting them on the internet), I can rightfully call you an idiot. |
There you go again with your insults. You need to step back from your emotions and your reliance on authority (and I find you're acting out of character in this discussion. Usually you discuss things critically and objectively).
The study of history is about critical analysis, not parroting something someone once said. (And what is taught at the high school level is typically a very rudimentary form of history)
Just because a respected historian says something doesn't mean it is true. AJP Taylor is a highly respected historian, but his book about the origins of the first world war is riddled with factual errors. Hugh Trevor-Roper was a respected expert on Hitler, but he declared the "Hitler Diaries" to be authentic, when they turned out to be false.
As for Boorstin, all history is written from a cultural perspective. If someone says Southern US accents represents the best English and that person is from the southern US then obviously the red flags go up. Does that mean he's wrong. Of course not, we have to be aware of the probable bias.
The biggest problem with the Boorstin's theory, as I have pointed out, is the idea that one accent is somehow better than all of the other accents. It's a completely subjective question so just because a respected historian says the South had the best English doesn't make it true. That's just his opinion.
More than that, the idea that a English can become corrupted by new words has been rejected because it is now recognised that English is a language that is constantly changing. For example, the word "ain't" was first documented around 1776 and it evolved from the 17th century word "an't"
The idea that the Southern US accent is the Elizabethan accent relatively frozen in time ignores the impact that African-based and other European languages and cultures had on English-based cultures in the south.
The idea that the English aristocracy changed its language in response to the colonials is far feached. A much more reasonable conclusion, and one backed by fact (Webster's dictionary) is that the colonials wanted to create a new language befitting their new country.
At about the same time, industrialisation was creating a more mobile population in Britain, leading to new accents as peope from different parts of the country intermixed.
In short, languages always change and to say that one is better than the other is absurb.
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16-10-2004 23:12
@ Dinodoc
The guy has the guts and determination to say and do what is right for his country. I'd vote for him if I could. 
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