The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Talking Words

11.27.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 7)

Oh, and 'Valley Girl', far from being a quick-lived fad, seems to be on its way to being enshrined as an official 'dialect', according to a couple linguists I've chatted with. There are some unique characteristics that keep cropping up (aside from "y'know" and "like") -- the chief two are to break statements into small sentences, and to end each sentence on a higher pitch. It's a little annoying to me since every sentence sounds like a question!

If I was to leave a voicemail with you on this topic, it would go as follows:

"So, Mr. Henry?"
"Valley Girl is like, so not going away?"
"Maybe we?"
"Could lobby for?"
"Some government funds, to, y'know?"
"Make it official?"
"Like ebonics?"

Much Obliged,
-- Michael Bellomo
The Heart of the Left Coast, California

Lawrence Henry is very mistaken if he thinks his son speaks without an accent -- I will guarantee anyone in Britain will say Bud speaks with an American accent. We all have accents -- there is no such thing as unaccented English, and never has been. Unfortunately there have always been snobs and fools like Mr. Henry who think the way someone pronounces words is a guide to their worth. It's what people say, Mr. Henry -- not how they say it. Nick Faldo grew up just a few miles from where I grew up myself, and to my ear he speaks in a perfectly acceptable Southern English accent.

Incidentally, what is this "slurry" accent he claims some Londoners speak? Does he mean Estuary?
-- Martin Cornell
Edenton Middy, Great Britain

With respect to Lawrence Henry's column, I'm puzzled by the reference to a London-area accent referred to as "slurry":

To the Pygmalion audience, a glottal "t" indicated a yob. Today's Brits have adopted it as part of a kind of commercial London speech known as "slurry."

From the context, Mr. Henry seems to be referring to what is known as "Estuary English."

Could "slurry" be a mistake -- a typographical error, a slip of the error, or whatever -- for "Estuary"?

If not, what did Mr. Henry mean?
-- Mark Liberman

Lawrence Henry replies: I learned of the accent I call "slurry" from none other than Dick Francis, can't now remember which novel. He described it in some detail as a kind of commercial affection based on suburban London, and gave extensive examples in a character's speech.

I once wrote the word "draw" on a piece of paper and asked my friend from Boston to read it. He pronounced it "drawer." Then I wrote the word "drawer" beneath it, and he said "draw." And when I ordered a pizza in Schenectady, the girl asked if I wanted it to be a six or an eight chug' (8-cut).
-- Ted Hans
Niskayuna, New York

South Africans don't have accents! -- they have exclamation marks!

Happy Thanksgiving America!
-- Marc de Jung

CUT AND RUN SYNDROME
Re: Andrew Cline's Still in Saigon:

I could not disagree more with Andrew Cline (and others') arguments that Democrat are somehow fighting the last war. If anything, I have been shocked by the number of Republicans who seem to write and/or go on air and try to rewrite history as it relates to Vietnam.

Turn on any FOX News show or read the Washington Times and The American Spectator and you will find dozens of examples over the past 6 months to a year, especially, wherein an author or pundit is trying to somehow make a point that Democrats lost Vietnam. They continue to bring up the specter of helicopters leaving Saigon and how we "abandoned" our allies and our principles...and somehow try to suggest that this all happened because McGovern's anti-war efforts had led Dems astray.

Do these folks really believe that? I was in junior high and high school in the early '70s and there was no one, and I mean no one, who wasn't in favor of getting the hell out of Vietnam by that point. Nixon, Kissinger and everyone under 30 agreed...we had been there too long, we weren't winning and too many Americans had died unnecessarily.

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