Perhaps the most interesting class I took in college was a dialects class. I remember the professor making the point the first day that there is no such thing as a single "correct" English dialect -- that whatever was expected and understood where you were was "correct," and whatever wasn't was "incorrect." An example: where I grew up, "pin" and "pen" were pronounced the same way (pin). If one were to say "pehn" when needing something with which to write, one might get an "excuse me," or a comeback of "look who's puttin' on airs." (If there was any chance of confusion as to whether one was referring to a pin or a pen, the later was called an "inkpen." :D)

As for Network Standard English, in Britain it's called Received English.

Well, when Beowulf was written, no one knew that William the Conqueror and his fellow Normans would invade England and make French the language of the court. Mix good old Germanic Old English with old French and you get Chaucer's Middle English.

That's what makes it almost futile to try and predict how English will change. It will change based on variables we can't really predict.



Oh, and Dunkin' Donuts' doughnuts are just plain awful.

No, I drink my wattah from a tumblah. :)

There is a "test" (as in MMPI, MBTI, etc., ) that measures how many words you have spoken in life, up to that date - some linguist, or speech therapist here may be familiar with that test?. My college was into the psychology of engineering design, and that test was floating around. I grew up near Boston (in one of the Tonic Towns) and spoke few words. So, I lost my Boston accent quickly.

English has always been a fluid language, variations like Ebonics are frequent through history.

hijack--I grew up outside of Boston too, but I've never heard the phrase Tonic Town. What towns does that refer to/what's the reference all about?

Generally, I don't speak with an accent (although both my parents do), but I was 24 before I realized that people in the rest of the country didn't know what a bubbler (pronounced 'bubblah') was :o

ps, I'm with Ree, Dunkin Donuts munchkins are calorie free and delicious. /hijack

water, wahtah, wooda, wooder

bubblah, tumblah, water fountain

Can anyone add to the list?

Very curious about the tonic towns also. Is this where they drink tonic instead of pop and soda? Also, do they enjoy cabinets with their grinders?

I bet a Brit would disagree with you on that. ;)

Everybody speaks with an accent.

True.

I meant that I don't generally speak with a Boston accent.

My husband is from Charlestown (a part of Boston - it's where the Bunker Hill Monument is). Until their deaths, his parents still lived in the same house he grew up in. In 1997, my husband and I were living in Chile. I was pregnant (about 5 months at the time) with our first child. I came up to the States for a month tho see my in-laws (Boston), my grandmother (San Diego) and my mom (Houston).

My FIL took me baby clothes shopping in Boston one day. This was a discount place where nothing was more than $10, but they had some very nice things. I picked out quite a bit, mostly things at the $10 price level. We went to check out and the clerk said, "You didn't get any bahhhhgans." I could not for the life of me understand what she was trying to say. My FIL, who had an accent as thick as anything, had to "translate" for me - he spelled the word - b-a-r-g-a-i-n-s. I said, "Ohhhhhhhh, barrrrrrgains!"

see, now I'M glad i read ahead.

I call all over the country in my postion and deal with different accents and dialects daily. If I call California, no accent unless they moved there from another area. Most of the West Coast, same thing. The Midwest has different accents, as does the south. The East Coast, too has several different accents. Boston & Staten Island, New York are the two that come to mind. If I call Staten Island or Brooklyn I sometimes have to get an Italian interpreter. Ditto the interpreter (Spanish) for certain areas of California, Texas, or Florida.

I spent 4 years in Kentucky during college. I like to joke that it took me 4 years to learn the proper pronunciation of the word Louisville (Lou-ah-vull). However, now it takes me no time to get a southern accent back, although I have lived in Chicago again almost thirty years. I have even caught myself doing it during a call to a Southern state. The best was the call where a guy called me & I could tell that he was from Louisville just by his accent!

There are many accents in the US- all part of the individual cultures that we grew up in. An example of this are my Indian friends who actually speak better English than I do because they were taught British English, not the American version. :)

The Tonic Towns are the inner northern suburbs of Boston. North, but not on the coast. (Except for maybe parts of Lynn.) "Tonic" is used, instead of soda or pop.
At one time, these towns were resorts, most had a lake or pond. And, liquor licenses were not year round, but six months.

Subs are subs, cabinets are frappes.

Frappe= milkshake with ice cream added
Milkshake=milk with syrup added

Cabinet is used in Rhode Island for a frappe.

1. That horrendous house music you are referring to is actually called 'club music' and it's probably one of the most irritating sounds I have heard in all of my life...you want some good house music...altho i haven't bee in over a decade...go to the Paradox. Matter of fact I got tons of the stuff on my PC...I would gladly send you some if interested...


2. In short, that i why I have dismissed teaching Ebonics...it was a very poor excuse of not teaching kids proper grammar by dumbing them down...

1. Well, there are other baltimore folk who beg to differ on whether it's house or club music. :) But we agree that it's crappy. I don't want any of that stuff sent to me unless it's go-go. But, thanks. :)

2. I agree that Ebonics shouldn't be taught. It should be received fairly and used to reach certain students and teach them on an equal playing field. Similar to how ESL shouldn't be taught but students who speak Spanish should be translated and taught how to learn in, and speak, English.

Of course we can't predict how it will change, and quite frankly any changes that do happen, I think will be quite slow. But we can predict change based on history. According to a language historian, (I can't recall the name) but as I can remember I think there were like 180 irregular English verbs from Old, Middle and Modern English, and he estimated their frequency in everyday speech. He found that the less common a verb, the sooner it regularizes. In other words, irregular verbs that get used a lot remain irregular, in fact, the 10 most common English verbs are irregular. Anyway, from the 180 or so verbs that were tracked, around 75 of them have now regularized. So my question is what is to become of the remaining verbs? Look at the past tense verbs, and how some of them have changed gradually over the past 1200 years. Like in Middle English, I know the word helped was holp at one time, and now it's change into a totally different word with the same meaning. History will certainly repeat itself, and English will change as time goes on, it's just a matter of what the words will become.

And Dunkin' Donuts are the best!:)

I wonder if the use of "tonic" has fallen out of favor recently. I only say that because I grew up just northwest of the Tonic Towns and have many friends and family in that area, and none of them use the word tonic, always soda or Coke.

ok, now I'll really end the hijack...

Clearly there is no point in trying to reason or have an intelligent discussion with you. :p