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**Qqmike** · Dec 01, 2016, 07:27 PM

What's wrong with being and speaking American English if you were raised here (USA)?

And if you are American but want to speak as if British, why not be consistent?
Why favourite, but then "honoring"?

**woodsmoke** · Dec 02, 2016, 06:33 PM

Lol I just like the way that the words "roll off the tongue" only on print.

But, in truth, I actually SPEAK without placing infinitives such as "to" or "at" ...at the end of a sentence.

When I was a young lad I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and have forever remembered a line from A Scandal in Bohemia:

Only a German is so uncourteous to his verbs.

That ONE SENTENCE impelled me to "study" English "useage".

Also, I doted on the films of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

When I was in college for the first week of the term I was asked repeatedly if I was from "Boston" or "Massachusetts" or "Back East" because...

I had always been careful during my previous years to "pre-process" my sentence structures and... I have absolutely no idea how this came about, but I speak rapidly much more rapidly than the "average" person in the midwest.

BTW the "midwestern" dialect is not hillbilly it is a kind of belated, leftover of "middle english" the "rhotic" as it were. It was actually BROUGHT HERE by emigres from "Britain" and "Germany" who first ended up in "the carolinas, etc" and found that it was..."too crowded"...(as said by Daniel Boone) and they continued on and settled "at the edge" which is the "midwest" of mainly Arkansas, Missouri parts the very eastern edges of Oklahoma, Kansas etc.

This article is not DIRECTLY about that migration, but it is tangential to what I stated.

http://the-toast.net/2014/03/19/a-li...cents-of-yore/

I first learned this from my high school english teacher who later became a college professor of "southern literature" and railed against the "east coast and west coast" saying that "Hillbillies can't speak english". Actually it they who "don't speak english" in terms of the cartoon of what the MEDIA intones very gravely what "is english".

And, another thing is my very early upbringing in which my mother actaully READ to me, while I was 4, 5, 6, 7, things like the Hunting of the Snark and ...believe it or not, my grandfather from Scandanavia who read to me...from "the Poetic (Elder) Edda".

In such readings vowels such "a, e, i, o, u" are pronounced with what "Americans" call the "continental pronounciation, to wit: ah, ehh, eee, ooo, ouuuhh.

Also, I really have become the "classic" example of a Renaissance Man (now termed a "polymath"). And part of that journey was that I obtained a "major" in Biology, a minor in english, a minor in "education"(with lifetime certification). If Kennedy had not drafted me into the military I would have obtained three majors.

But... one impetus for the situation, which was NOT really "conscious" was that I read... the English translation of the Novum Organum by Roger Bacon and the "sentence structure" was VERY disciplined. I did that one summer, I think when I was, ... thirteen?

But...to the point, when in college, I went all the way through "middle english literature" wherein we were required to SPEAK the writings with the proper "prnounciations" and accents. (fortunately we did NOT have to "recite from memory"! lol

( the professor looked like "Heckel" from the Heckel and Jeckel cartoons

and also taught...weight lifting! lol (I also took the weight lifting class and could " one arm snap" a hundred and sixty with ease. lol )

Also I took two classes in "Spainish" in high school, and three in college because I had hoped to end up in another jungle, like South America to find a cancer cure...but Kennedy screwed all the poor white people and all of the black people. It really a "poor white trash and black man's war".

So, again, I was exposed to a great variety of linguistic influences.

i roomed for four years with an Amerindian from "the reservation" and was exposed to his language and also to the "Amerindian" method of education which GREATLY influenced how I now use the "Socratic Method" in my physics classes... lol

I first learned to hand the racism of my little burg when i actually viewed the racism of the "city fathers" against a "South African" ...who was very definitely BLACK, dressed impeccably in a Saville Row Suit, and who spoke PERFECT "King's English" because he was a graduate of Cambridge and was...the publisher, not the owner, of a major South African newspaper and he had travelled to our little burg with a hundred some odd thousand dollars to buy "Photoengraving" and "printing" equipment.

And the towns elites, I am an equal opportunity elite basher, were more than willing to take his cash but he couldn't stay overnight in a hotel.

Well, across from the business was a three generation barbershop and I was the "shoeshine boy". (made more money at a quarter a pair than the "smart kids" did working in their father's stores or kids "bucking hay"... well, he came in for a "shine" and quietly asked if I could find him someplace to stay.

i was astounded when I heard the story.

I walked across to a hotel where I washed dishes to have something meager to eat at lunch and was FRIENDS with the owner and his kid.

He said that if he allowed the man to stay that there would be "consequences".

So, I personally obtained a room in another town and drove him there.

Well, THAT was seared into my mind and his language patterns were imprinted also.

So, I have a patchwork of things that have caused me to have a love of "older" "classic" "useages" of 'english" and sprinkle them into my writing.

Of course I do not so do when writing technical manuals, or textbooks, etc.

So...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it! lol

woodageminismoke

**Qqmike** · Dec 02, 2016, 06:48 PM

Well, there's certainly nothin' wrong with having cultural influences in one's past.

(Btw, though born in the SW USA, I grew up and attended colleges in the Midwest (IL & IN). I like the Midwest and the people who (still) live there, including relatives and several friends.)

**GreyGeek** · Dec 02, 2016, 07:19 PM

Originally posted by woodsmoke View Post

...
BTW the "midwestern" dialect is not hillbilly it is a kind of belated, leftover of "middle english" the "rhotic" as it were. It was actually BROUGHT HERE by emigres from "Britain" and "Germany" who first ended up in "the carolinas, etc" and found that it was..."too crowded"...(as said by Daniel Boone) and they continued on and settled "at the edge" which is the "midwest" of mainly Arkansas, Missouri parts the very eastern edges of Oklahoma, Kansas etc.
...

Very interesting, woodsmoke!

When I was dating my wife we were walking the mile to the local theater when a good looking blond stepped out of a house ahead of us and walked in front of us. To get a rise out of her I remarked, "Wow, that sure is a good looking blond!" She replied, "Yes, it <nameforgotten>, she's my cousin".

She went on to remark that the local museum in York, Ne, is dedicated to Boone Spenser Anderson, the first settler in that area. Settled on the Little Blue, south of York. She went on to say that after 3 or 4 years another family moved into a sod house about a mile away and Boone decided it was getting too crowded, so he pulled up his family and moved to an area south of North Platte, NE, where she is from. It turns out that there were so many Anderson's in both locations that one could turn a rock over and discover another of her relatives.

**woodsmoke** · Dec 02, 2016, 07:46 PM

Thank you QQ!!

And yep, GG. I agree about people being so close in lineage and acreage and a funny story!

Of course we might also remember that when the smarter than thous were lamenting the destruction of the Lascaux (Lascaux Caves) by the great unwashed tourists and wanting to put steel doors on them, (which later caused mold growth which is destroying the paintings in real time!

) but...someone got the idea of gathering DNA from shards of broken human bones etc. in the caves and comparing it with locals in the towns...and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux

OMG... the liberal elites of the U.S. openly sneer at the "flyover people" who...never move away and are rooted into inbred families...those baskets of deplorables"..lol

OMG... it turns out that "most" of the people living in the local towns are DIRECT DESCENDANTS of the people who painted the caves...

so...it guess that it is ok for people in France to not move around but not folks in the midwest U.S. lol

Anyway... the midwest "heritage" is actually VERY complex and interesting...

There was a story on NPR a decade or so ago, for which I cannot find a link, which was discussing the Brown's Ferry thing in which all the men were killed in the building.

However, since folk of the time tried, a lot and also not very well, to observe "some of the niceties" of fighting other men the trapped men were allowed to write letters to their families before the final battle.

It turns out that for whatever reason the letters never "made it home", they ended up in the Smithsonian and were discovered a year or so before the program and the letters were written in...

"very well written English in the style of the Three Musketeers and the Bible".

In other words, the "civil war" people who are so decried by the PRESENT educationists as being so "ill educated" and the present American schools are so GOOD... were writing BETTER english than is taught now!! lol

It was mentioned that someone like Speilberg who was going to do a film of the incident and have the people, they know the actual names, speak in the "Four Musketeers English". lol

As an EXERCISE to show how people REALLY spoke because people really do somewhat write like they speak, or vice versa.

it never was made.

Here is not much of a link which mentions "writing letters".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/s...nnedyfarm.html

It would be an interesting exercise to try to actually find "transcriptions" of said letters and put one or two up to read, but I'm not up to it.

wood, hey, thanks for the comments my friends smoke

**TWPonKubuntu** · Dec 02, 2016, 08:23 PM

Woody, thanks for video of "Girl on Fire", worth watching.

**woodsmoke** · Dec 06, 2016, 05:05 PM

woodsmoke

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