Re: What is the language "British"?

[Beartooth <Beartooth adelphia net>]

On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 18:36:25 -0700, Grumpy_Penguin wrote:

> There used to be a guy on the carnival circuit [about 40 years ago] who could 
> after hearing you speak a few sentences, could tell you where you grew up 
> sometimes right down to the county and sometimes right down to the part of 
> the county [this was in the Southern US]

It's not just the South. I was married for a while to a native of
Columbus, Ohio -- who actually used to maintain, among professional
linguists, that she had no "accent," as we call both dialects and foreign
pronunciations. Then one day at a party a total stranger, new to town,
asked her after five minutes, "Are you from Columbus, Ohio?"

I kept my face straight at the time, but it wasn't easy.

Years later, giving a tour of the Library of Congress to a small group, I
told them they were from Newark, Ohio -- but that was dead easy. The
pronounced the town "Nurk" -- and were quite aware of it. But they were
surprised that I knew it.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
What do they know of country, who only country know?