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Cultural and linguistic diversity
Cultural and linguistic diversity
Cultural and linguistic diversity
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Looking at all the languages, dialects and accents that are spoken in The United States. I will be analyzing my own language, my own language variety and look at my accent and dialect in an effort to try to identify my speech community that shares the same language variety, dialect, and accent that I have. I see Dialect as a form of a language that is particular to a region or social group, for example, Japanese Versus English. I understand accent as a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a nation, locality, or social class, for example, Australian English versus American English.
When I am, home I speak American English dialect with Mid-Western or West Coast accent. I am often told I have no accent
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However, early in my career as a paramedic I worked on a gang violence unit for almost 2 years and I can chameleon or style shift my language into 20+ version of what they call gang slang and even under the most critical scrutiny gang members and residents in known gang territories would believe I was born and raised there. I can understand and speak English with dozens of accents and style shift to accommodate almost any geographic or socioeconomic status in an effort to facilitate better communication and make patients feel more comfortable.
Because I grew up all over the world and then was a leader of an international business before working in medicine as a flight RN. My Linguistic Repertoire consists of a set of Languages, and Dialects and Accents. Newscaster English, Tokyo Japanese, Beijing dialect
Mandarin, Broken Spanish, Western Iranian Farsi, Wanetsi Afghani & Ottoman Turkish. In my work in Medicine, I can say "what is your name" and "point to where it hurts" in about 30 languages. My Communicative competence is very proficient in when spoken and terrible when written I seamlessly know when to speak as if I was in a boardroom or a Medic in a crack house having to grasp the grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology including social knowledge about how and when to use
An accent, according to www.dictionary.com, is defined as “Vocal prominence or emphasis given to a particular syllable, word, or phrase.” Around the world, different cultures have different accents because of their language and the way they say words. In Allison Joseph’s “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person”, this description is shown. Joseph uses her mother as an example of having an accent and her mother was from Jamaica. In World War I, 250,000 workers from the Caribbean were recruited and 90,000 of them were Jamaican.
Besides coating your hotdog in a thick layer of ketchup, or implying that the Packers are better than the Bears, there is nothing that makes a Chicagoan cringe more than suggesting that we have an accent. You always get the same repudiate answer; “What do you mean I have an accent? I don't have an accent, you’re the one with the accent.” Chicagoans, are struck with one of the worst cases of “Midwest accent denial syndrome” we simply don’t hear it, and we can’t fathom the fact that we sound different to those in other parts of the states. There are hundreds of accents within the English language, and dozens within American English, and contrary to popular belief, Chicago is among one of them.
Finegan says this is something “living languages must do”. For me, I was raised in a military home in which we moved to a new region every couple of years. Coming from Germany, moving to Rochester, and then to Lowville, my dialect is a combination of all three speech communities. It is different than my parents, and will mostly be passed down to my children. As I age and move locations it is opted to change again as well. So it is not that I speak differently or incorrect than the rest of my family, my speech community is merely growing and changing as it is passed generation to generation. Richard Lederer stated in his article, “We are a teeming nations within a nation, a country that is like a world.” (150) He was portraying how our country, with a universal language, can be so diverted by each region’s version of the English language. I agree completely that although we all “sing” the same song of the American language, “we talk in melodies of infinite variety.” (150) The way our country was built was by different American regions doing their own work, for example, the south had plantations, where my ancestors were small town farmers who worked with manufacturing in mills and
This chapter focused mainly on misconceptions and attempting to clarify those misconceptions about accents. In the opinion of linguists, accent is a difficult word to define. This is due to the fact that language has variation therefore when it comes to a person having an accent or not, there is no true technical distinction because every person has different phonological aspects to their way of speaking. However, when forced to define this word, it is described as “a way of speaking” (Lippi-Green, 2012, p.44). Although Lippi- Green identified the difficulty linguists have in distinguishing between accent, dialect, and another language entirely, they were able to construct a loose way of distinguishing. Lippi- Green states that an accent can be determined by difference in phonological features alone, dialect can be determined by difference in syntax, lexicon, and semantics alone, and when all of these aspects are different from the original language it is considered another language entirely (Lippi-Green, 2012).
In the article " Do You Speak American?" the audience is the general American public. MacNeil purpose here is to inform the general American public of the differences of the English dialect. He does this by looking at the changed backgrounds, races, and experiences people have that can impact their specific dialect. MacNeil talks about how the words each evolving social orders, innovations, and impacts change the way English are talked and comprehended across the country. All through MacNeil's article he talks about diverse dialects found in the middle of blacks and whites, and accents that change from area to locale. In this article, McNeil converses with the assorted American population by expressing numerous examples of the change in English
All accents and dialects tend to originate from where people came from. A largely known accent that is often stereotyped is the southern accent. Although there are many different kinds of southern accents, people often associate the southern accent with stupidity, or someone that is “slow”. The southern accent comes from most southern states such as Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi as well as many others. In the film American Tongues, they show an example of a woman (from the north with a northern type accent) that says that she was once dating a man that was originally from the south and had asked her to come visit his family, that was still living in the south. She decided to go, and as they got closer to his home town, the mans southern accent began to grow stronger. She then told him to stop the car and immediately got a flight back home. She then stated that she was not going to have babies that spoke like that. This is a great example of how people will strictly judge you from your accent and the way you speak. While the woman in this example believed that the man had a strong accent, people from the south would believe that she was the one that had the accent. Everyone has an accent, and everyone believes everyone else has and accent, therefore judging them on it, thinking their way of speaking is the only way. One of the most common judgements would be judging a person’s social class on their accent or dialect. For example, hearing someone talk with a southern accent (which is said to be slow) can make people think they have no money because they are thought to be a blue-collar worker, categorizing them into the lower class. Since most accents generally are concerned with the region, the south for example has more emphasis on agriculture than in the north, causing there to be less need for education. These stereotypes do not just go towards the south or
Beside media and migration, Becker says “linguistic insecurity” is another reason why New Yorkers are changing their accent. Becker illustrated that they think that other people do not like their accent or they, New Yorkers, are not feeling their accent is interesting. New Yorkers consciously stop “Coffee Talk” and Texans like Robertson and her family stopped their accent on the first syllable like “SEE-ment” or “UM=brella” after they moved from Amarillo to Austin. Texas twang, however, is part of Texans and they are proud of it. Hinrichs points out, Texans use twang when it is appropriate with family or friends. He means that the twang is not going to become extinct. However, the fact that more than 1,000 new people move to Texas annually is changing the traditional old Texas
Verbal and written language is how people communicate with each other and encourage thoughts, achieve goals, and build relationships. Speaking a single, or multiple languages, and growing up in different setting can seriously alter the way that people speak the same language. This can either encourage diverse communication or make communication all but impossible. For the most part I speak English fluently, it is the only full language that I can speak and I developed this language growing up in a small farm town in the middle of New Jersey.
Learning a language is quite possibly one of the most difficult and time- consuming endeavors a person could ever undertake. Therefore, it comes as no surprise, that a limited number of second languages are taught in schools across the western world, and languages are sometimes failed to be passed on to children growing up in a different country than their parents did. Even in Canada, an officially bilingual country, only 15% of Canadians speak English and one unofficial language (Statistics Canada 2008) and in America, only 21% of the population is versed in two languages (Logan, 2003). It has become apparent that there is a need for Canadians and Americans to learn a second language. For a country to survive, it needs to rely on other countries as there is no one country that can produce within it’s borders all the means to meet the needs of it’s people. Furthermore, with the threat of international terrorism, the economic crisis and environmental ruin looming above countries all over the world, governments and organizations need to work together to come up with solutions. These cross culture collaborations would not be possible without the ability of even a few people present to speak each other’s languages. Conversely, by remaining monolingual, skills and knowledge will become concentrated only in certain countries and as the transfer of knowledge will cease the rate of human advancement will slow. This report intends to discuss the interpersonal and personal benefits of learning a second language, and investigate different ways of learning. To accomplish this, I have conducted secondary research into the interpersonal and personal benefits of learning another language. These particular areas of research were cho...
Analyzing dialects can be difficult due to the fact that is it hard to transcribe the pronunciation of an individual dialect because English is not spelled the same way it is pronounced. Furthermore, one person’s interpretation of spelling a dialect might not match up with another’s, so the reader might not “hear” the dialect properly. Regardless, written versions of dialects are essential to discussing dialectical differences.
Although some people try to not judge other based on their language choices or dialect it is very instinctive for most to do so. As soon as someone begins to speak to you,without even thinking, some of the first things you realize are the dialect, tone of voice and word choice of the speaker. I agree with the statement from the African-American writer James Baldwin where he states that language is the most vivid and crucial keys to identity.
There are many different dialects across the world. They can change depending on your region, your age or even your gender. Many people would react to a different dialect as wrong or they want to try and eliminate it. When in reality, both are correct. They just sound incorrect due to the fact they are not accustomed to hearing it. If English is just one language, why are there so many different ways to speak it? The study of dialects or the variations in language from one place to another provides the answers. In observing my own dialect, I have found three words or phrases I say or pronounce differently from the people around me. One is the pronunciation of the word ketchup. Two is the word used to describe a spinning maneuver preformed while driving a vehicle. Three is the normality of the question, “Do you have fry sauce?” in different states.
Being bilingual always made my life differ as if I lived two lives, speaking Spanish at home and English everywhere outside of home. On the daily basis at my house, my family speaks Spanish. When we communicate we speak very fast, at times we can not even understand one another. After this occurs we all burst out in laughter super loud, no boundaries are enforced in our lexicon. The enforcement changes when entering a different discourse community.
living on Long Island, that contribute to what others perceive as odd dialect. Its the culture that I
It is estimated that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual, according to Psychology Today. That means about 3.5 billion people use more than one language to communicate every day. There are commonly held benefits attributed to these people who were identified as bilingual or multilingual, the benefits are usually more concrete and personal. Here are a few firsthand accounts we gathered from multilinguals that help explain the daily benefits of being able to speak multiple languages.