"Do You Speak American?"
Wolran Kim (June 2010)
Observational Writing from Film "Do You Speak American?"
Journalist Robert MacNeil was born and raised in Canada. He explores how immigration, time, technology, region, ethnicity, social status and other factors have changed the way Americans speak English during travels across the USA in this documentary film. He shows us the many ways of speaking American English by conducting interviews with ordinary people about their various ways of speaking. There are mispronunciations, accents, dialects, local color in American language throughout the country.
Half the countries of the world have an official language and the United States isn't one of them. Robert MacNeil says one reason American English became such a nuanced, and sometimes difficult, language is that it was shaped by the country's rapidly change demographics. So much of the English vocabulary comes from immigration, first of all in Britain going back 1,500 years, but then, in the last couple centuries, to the United States. Much of our American vocabulary comes from German, Italian, Yiddish, Dutch, Irish, or Scandinavian. And certainly an awful a lot of words from Spanish have been adapted because the Mexicans owned and lived in what is now a large part of the Southwestern United States. Also one sociolinguist explained, that white teenage males, in the suburbs--where they grow up feeling kind of safe and everything--borrow some of the overt masculinity of blacks living in the inner cities, where they at least appear to know how to look after themselves. They know how to deal with woman, they're familiar with weapons and all that sort of thing. That has a huge appeal to adolescent white Americans.
Eastern American is English of the northeast area of the country where early Britain immigrants settled down and has characteristics of Southwest England in the 18th century. New Yorkers and Bostonians pronounce 'car' to 'ca', 'storm' to 'stom', disregard the 'r' sound. Southern American is used in the southeast and parts of Texas and pronounces monosyllable to double syllable. This is a sort of vowel breaking and sometimes articulated double to triple syllables. General American is in the west and preserves enunciation of British English before the 18th century. Non-standard dialects of American English denote often uneducated black gangsters' words. A language presents a person's background and history just as it was.
A neologism of the internet generation in the rapidly changing world appeared to shorten words, secret languages, and slang just like tattoo and body-piercing. The teenagers' language of chatting encodes their own ways like omg-oh my God, and lol-laugh out loud. When my daughter was a teenager, I had to ask her what 'g2g' or 'brb' were. Those stand for 'got to go' and 'be right back,' and she said she never uses those words anymore in her twenties. Their language is fashionable and has a short life.
English is the first official language worldwide whoever wants learn a new language. Language is the most significant communication method for human beings and the most essential factor distinguishing us from animals. American English reflects their liberal organization, multiracial nation composed of various races, and prosperity as it is. One of interviewees in the film never learned English even though she had been in America 18 years because she had just been busy living. This is in a pathetic phase of social life of immigrants who live as marginal men. I've been sticking to only my mother tongue because of cultural shock for a long time and just now I have started to learn English, the enemy's language, in order that I should have it to fight with. How can I habituate myself to new culture and customs without their language?
A language is continuously transformed and will always change significance and concept, not only formal inflection, in future dynamic life. Change of language is a transition of people, society and nation. It is pressing for a role of mass media who lead and initiate frame works of standard American to the next generation in this rapidly globalizing world.
Wolran Kim (June 2010)
Observational Writing from Film "Do You Speak American?"
Journalist Robert MacNeil was born and raised in Canada. He explores how immigration, time, technology, region, ethnicity, social status and other factors have changed the way Americans speak English during travels across the USA in this documentary film. He shows us the many ways of speaking American English by conducting interviews with ordinary people about their various ways of speaking. There are mispronunciations, accents, dialects, local color in American language throughout the country.
Half the countries of the world have an official language and the United States isn't one of them. Robert MacNeil says one reason American English became such a nuanced, and sometimes difficult, language is that it was shaped by the country's rapidly change demographics. So much of the English vocabulary comes from immigration, first of all in Britain going back 1,500 years, but then, in the last couple centuries, to the United States. Much of our American vocabulary comes from German, Italian, Yiddish, Dutch, Irish, or Scandinavian. And certainly an awful a lot of words from Spanish have been adapted because the Mexicans owned and lived in what is now a large part of the Southwestern United States. Also one sociolinguist explained, that white teenage males, in the suburbs--where they grow up feeling kind of safe and everything--borrow some of the overt masculinity of blacks living in the inner cities, where they at least appear to know how to look after themselves. They know how to deal with woman, they're familiar with weapons and all that sort of thing. That has a huge appeal to adolescent white Americans.
Eastern American is English of the northeast area of the country where early Britain immigrants settled down and has characteristics of Southwest England in the 18th century. New Yorkers and Bostonians pronounce 'car' to 'ca', 'storm' to 'stom', disregard the 'r' sound. Southern American is used in the southeast and parts of Texas and pronounces monosyllable to double syllable. This is a sort of vowel breaking and sometimes articulated double to triple syllables. General American is in the west and preserves enunciation of British English before the 18th century. Non-standard dialects of American English denote often uneducated black gangsters' words. A language presents a person's background and history just as it was.
A neologism of the internet generation in the rapidly changing world appeared to shorten words, secret languages, and slang just like tattoo and body-piercing. The teenagers' language of chatting encodes their own ways like omg-oh my God, and lol-laugh out loud. When my daughter was a teenager, I had to ask her what 'g2g' or 'brb' were. Those stand for 'got to go' and 'be right back,' and she said she never uses those words anymore in her twenties. Their language is fashionable and has a short life.
English is the first official language worldwide whoever wants learn a new language. Language is the most significant communication method for human beings and the most essential factor distinguishing us from animals. American English reflects their liberal organization, multiracial nation composed of various races, and prosperity as it is. One of interviewees in the film never learned English even though she had been in America 18 years because she had just been busy living. This is in a pathetic phase of social life of immigrants who live as marginal men. I've been sticking to only my mother tongue because of cultural shock for a long time and just now I have started to learn English, the enemy's language, in order that I should have it to fight with. How can I habituate myself to new culture and customs without their language?
A language is continuously transformed and will always change significance and concept, not only formal inflection, in future dynamic life. Change of language is a transition of people, society and nation. It is pressing for a role of mass media who lead and initiate frame works of standard American to the next generation in this rapidly globalizing world.
