[etni] Delving into dialect
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:10:44 +0200
Delving into dialect
Smoky Mountain News - June 28, 2006
Gary Carden was in fifth grade when he learned to be ashamed of his accent.
His teacher, perhaps meaning well, said simply, "'Gary, you need to change
the way that you talk. Your dialect is associated with ignorance and
backwardness,'" Carden recalled. "I believed her because I was raised to
believe that teachers knew what they were talking about."
Carden's grandmother told him to get used to it.
"She said that the world is full of people who 'will look down on you'
because of the way you talk. 'Ever time you open your mouth, you will be
weighed and found wanting,'" Carden quoted.
It was a lesson the world would continue to prove over and over again. In
college, when Carden wanted to become an actor, he was given dialect tapes
to help overcome his Appalachian affliction, much to the amusement of his
speech teacher. When he decided to become a teacher, his supervisors chided
him for what he calls his "nasal twang."
So he did it their way, developing over the years a self-conscious, stilted,
but "correct," manner of speaking. Fortunately for the Jackson County-born
author and storyteller, "correct" didn't stick.
"When I was teaching at Lees-McRae, a man from the Smithsonian told me that
my mountain dialect was 'a rich cultural heritage,'" Carden said. "I have
since reverted."
(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.etni.org/news/delving_dialect.htm )
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