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1. On Wednesday night, PBS airs a 3 hour long documentary called "Do You Speak American?" on American dialects and the evolution of American English. In the Philly area, it airs on WHYY at 8 pm.
In addition, the program's website has a lot of fascinating reading material... I started this post 2 hours ago before getting sucked into reading some of the essays, including this thought-provoking piece by Geoffrey Nunberg on grammarians and the decline of English grammar.
I might post about this show to the Fun list since I think a lot of SWIL people would be interested in it. Certainly I can envision it sparking some lively discussions on Chat, to which I am not currently subscribed but may be tempted to temporarily...
2. Of late, when I've been trying to talk with my mouth wired shut, I've found that I'm somewhat more understandable speaking Chinese (Cantonese actually) than English. I was briefly on the phone with my maternal grandmother this afternoon and was surprised at hearing myself less garbled than I currently sound in English. I think this is because Cantonese in particular is such a tonal language (7 or 8 tones instead of the 4 in Mandarin) and there are fewer consonants than in English. I'm having a hard time thinking of particular consonants that are particularly incomprehensible in my current state, but it may just be that the plethora of tones in Cantonese and their importance in meaning makes sounds easier to distinguish. This is getting into the psycholinguistics of how people perceive spoken language, an area in which I have no expertise, however.
This could also be an interesting topic for discussion. Hey, I've never had one of those monster LJ posts with 30+ comments...
In addition, the program's website has a lot of fascinating reading material... I started this post 2 hours ago before getting sucked into reading some of the essays, including this thought-provoking piece by Geoffrey Nunberg on grammarians and the decline of English grammar.
I might post about this show to the Fun list since I think a lot of SWIL people would be interested in it. Certainly I can envision it sparking some lively discussions on Chat, to which I am not currently subscribed but may be tempted to temporarily...
2. Of late, when I've been trying to talk with my mouth wired shut, I've found that I'm somewhat more understandable speaking Chinese (Cantonese actually) than English. I was briefly on the phone with my maternal grandmother this afternoon and was surprised at hearing myself less garbled than I currently sound in English. I think this is because Cantonese in particular is such a tonal language (7 or 8 tones instead of the 4 in Mandarin) and there are fewer consonants than in English. I'm having a hard time thinking of particular consonants that are particularly incomprehensible in my current state, but it may just be that the plethora of tones in Cantonese and their importance in meaning makes sounds easier to distinguish. This is getting into the psycholinguistics of how people perceive spoken language, an area in which I have no expertise, however.
This could also be an interesting topic for discussion. Hey, I've never had one of those monster LJ posts with 30+ comments...
