The forum was hosted by these folks:
Joan Hall (editor, Dictionary of American Regional English , UW–Madison): words
Greg Iverson (Foreign Languages & Linguistics, UW-Milwaukee): sounds and language change
Jennifer Delahanty (German, UW–Madison): German influences on Wisconsin English
Tom Purnell (Linguistics, UW–Madison): sounds, ethnicity, and dialect
Joe Salmons (Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, UW–Madison): sounds, language, and immigration
Also to have been included was - Erica Benson (English, UW–Eau Claire): perception of dialect differences and boundaries, grammatical differences – but she was unable to attend due to illness.
Walking into the room, there were tables set up with lots of information about the Dictionary of American Regional English as well as Wisconsin's linguistic history.
If we look closer, we can see a bit of "bilingual" Wisconsin:
For anyone outside of Wisconsin, an explanation. The Kohler company in Kohler, Wisconsin patented a valve which was used in drinking fountains. The water bubbled upwards instead of shooting out in a stream. The trademarked name became a generic term, used especially in the Milwaukee area. In addition to the displays, there were several handouts and copies of the DARE to thumb through, as you can see above.
The first speaker was Ms. Hall, shown here in the center.
She's one of the editors of the DARE. In her talk she described coming to Wisconsin and learning the peculiarities of our version of English and this involved some amusing anecdotes. Ms. Hall then proceeded to discuss the DARE itself and its many uses. For instance, it was mentioned that among the uses of the DARE was catching criminals as she described how a word found only in an area near Cleveland was used in a ransom note. The DARE was consulted and this helped narrow down the search area leading to the eventual apprehension of the criminal. Instead of trying to summarize all of what she said, listen for yourself. After her speech, she fielded questions from the audience. Now about that audience...
The majority of folks in the audience were of retirement age and a lot of the questions asked were essentially short bitch sessions about how "young people" talk today, i.e. – they're not speaking standard English. For instance, one woman complained that her grandchild said "me and my friends" instead of "my friends and I". At one point, Ms. Hall told an audience member that the DARE folks do not try to prescribe usage and instead just document it. I don't want to give the impression that these types of comments were the bulk of the questions asked as they weren't. There were plenty of people who said things like, "I grew up on a farm up north and we used to say blah blah blah – is this in the dictionary?" But the majority of the people in attendance were older folks and when one of them complained about how young people talk, you could hear groans of agreement from much of the audience. This was a common feature of the forum and the presenters did explain at various points that some changes could be discriminated by age.
The next speaker was Tom Purnell and he began by admitting that he uses "me and my friends". Here he is on the left facing the camera.
He spoke about many things including changes in the pronunciation of vowels such as this:
All the while he had a PowerPoint presentation up with maps'n'such. (I asked afterwards to obtain a copy of it so perhaps I can update this entry with more pictures in the future. In the meantime, bear with me.) One map showed the area affected by the vowel change above. It started in western Pennsylvania and moved west. It spread in areas south of Wisconsin and eventually took hold in the entire area west of the Mississippi River. And now it's moving back east, creeping into Wisconsin from Minneapolis. I spoke up at one point I asked about how certain people, namely my friend Charles who was sitting next to me, replace the ŭ with a ŏ in words such as "unreal" and "unbelievable". When Charles says these words, they come out like "onreal" and "onbelievable". I was told that this was a fairly common practice and is found throughout the state. I also found that some of the peculiarities of Wisconsin English that I noticed when I moved here from Chicago were very common. These include pronouncing "creek" as "crick", "acrost" for "across", and "heith" for "height". (For instance, "The bridge was 100' acrosst and 50' in heith.") Again, you can listen for yourself. I do want to warn you that, unlike Ms. Hall, Mr. Purnell did not stand at the front of the room so his voice goes in & out. This bit was normalized but I was unable to apply the noise removal tool. I readily admit that I'm no audio engineer.
After fielding questions, Purnell handed the mic over to Joe Salmons. I apologize to him for not having gotten his picture. He talked about his own area of expertise and filled in for Ms. Benson as well. So we hear about usage and the construction of sentences. Here's part of his presentation. He talks about, among other things, how people perceive their own language – whether it sounds pleasant and whether or not people think they speak correctly. A couple maps were projected that showed the differences in perceptions between Southerners and folks in Michigan. This was interesting. Southerners found that Southern accents sounded the most pleasant but they also thought they that spoke incorrectly. Michiganers, on the other hand, not only found their accent to be pleasant, but also thought they spoke correctly.
Oh, and this is Greg Iverson (on the right):
He didn't give a formal presentation but instead remained in the background and added his two cents in where appropriate. I liked the guy as he complimented me on my "Drink Mead!" t-shirt.
While the audio clips download, check out some examples of American regional English:
salt rheum - a cutaneous inflammation (chiefly North)
mulligrubs - a condition of despondency or ill temper; a vague or imaginary unwellness. (scattered, but esp. South)
If you called cottage cheese cream cheese you'd be in Louisiana.
If you thought of mangoes were vegetables instead of a fruit, you'd be in the central U.S.
ring-a-levio - a team hiding or chasing game in which players who have been caught must remain in a designated area until released by a teammate. (chiefly New York City)
pretty girls' station - a game involving the acting out of occupations. (esp. southern Appalachians)
No comments:
Post a Comment