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As a young GI on furlough in Holland with my wife and baby daughter, it wasn't hard to get turned around and lost in the Dutch cities, with road signs that didn't make sense. My old '47 Buick Roadmaster straight drive managed to ease through the narrow streets intimidating Volkswagens. But that didn't help when I tried to find my way past the horde of bicycles and confusing streets. Spotting a policeman directing traffic, I asked, "Pardon me, can you tell me how to get to Rotterdam?" He scratched his head, puzzled. I repeated the question, speaking slower. He still didn't understand. Very proud of what little German I had mastered while stationed at the Air Base in Wiesbaden, I boldly asked in that language. He shrugged, still not understanding me. Then he asked in clear tones, "Tell me, sir. Do you speak English?" "My lord! I thought that was what I was doing." Then I realized I wasn't. I was speaking Southern. My Virginia dialect didn't come through to a European taught textbook English in school. Most Europeans, of course, master several languages while Americans settle into their own regional dialect, understandable to everyone in the neighborhood but strange across the state line even. In Shaw's play "Pygmalion" and again in the movie "My Fair Lady" much was made about dialect and the fact people don't speak English. Winston Churchill once remarked that England and America were divided only by a common language. Boston has it's distinct--Pa'k the cah. Coastal South Carolinians have a sing song dialect. And Southerners hate their R's. “Four” may come out “foah.” “Where” sounds like “whe-ah.” And regions have their own idioms which have meaning only to itself. My mother once had a northern lady stop by to visit. When she left, my mother said, "Come back again." The woman turned around and came back again, "Yes. What did you want? You said come back again." Language students such as the fictional Professor Higgins claim to detect a person's origin by his accent. That's weak. A person moving from one dialect to another may adjust. My ex-wife was a chameleon with language. When we were around some friends from London a few days, she began speaking with a cockney accent. I'm stuck with my southern Virginia-Tidewater accent. A word with the "ou" sound is offered like sounds pure from Scotland. "There's a mouse about the house" comes out "There's a moose aboot the hoose." It only sounds right in the right neighborhood. I'm stuck with it, for better or worse. Professor Higgins was able to take the street girl and have her sound like a duchess. He would give up on me. But I'm used to the way I talk--and I don't mind repeating, as I often do. The Southern sound to me is warm and caressing, not clipped and brutal. Southerners want to take their time and enjoy the feel of words and expression. They're not in a hurry with clipped, terse pronunciations. My friend Frank Ray was traveling through Chattanooga some years ago, stayed overnight and loved the city and the friendliness of the people. It was an ideal place to settle, halfway between a daughter in his home area of Pennsylvania and his son in Texas. He bought a home and shifted into the lifestyle. But--he is amused at the way Southerners talk. "No one speaks English here," he says. Then someone told him, "We don't talk funny. You do." When in Rome . . . . So, if anyone wants to know who speaks English, it depends on where you are. As long as it's intelligible to the listener, it's English.
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