Chirac warns of 'catastrophe' of world 'choked' by US values

[Dauphin]

Of course, and it appears Shakespeare was spelt differently in them days too.

[Kuciwalker]

Point?

It could be a typo.

[Dauphin]

My point being that a single source for a method of spelling is not conclusive if the speller is not too bothered about his other spelling errors.

I think you are right, Gloucester was probably often spelt Gloster, but it was not its exclusive or necessarily proper spelling. Shakespeare also has many variant spellings from that time.

[Kuciwalker]

Omitting an 'e' is somewhat easier to do than mispelling "Gloucester" as "Gloster"

I think you are right, Gloucester was probably often spelt Gloster, but it was not its exclusive or necessarily proper spelling. Shakespeare also has many variant spellings from that time.

True.

[Tingkai]

So according to Boorstin, Americans spoke better English than the English and Americans in the South spoke an English that was closest to its truest form.

How many want to bet that Boorstin was from the southern US?

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Not at all. For instance, due mostly to the manner in which reading is taugh (sounding out all syllables) in America, we pronounce every syllable in something like secretary, whereas the English almost always omit it - secret'ry, explanat'ry, laborat'ry - and they have continued to drop syllables in pronunciation, whereas American pronunciation is relatively conservative. (btw, "ain't" comes from the upper circles of seventeenth century England, it is not a Souther invention). Then look at names like Gloucester and Worcester - no one in America would think of spelling things that way.

Why all these references to 'the English'? Aren't you forgetting the Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Germans, French, Scandanavians etc? What happened to their accents? Now I know that Minnesota has a distinctive accent as a result of all the Scandanavians that migrated there. I think it's more likely that the Southern accent is a result the various groups that migrated there.

Americans drop syllables all the time. It's just that you don't notice it. Everyone likes to think that their language is 'the original', but nobody's is.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into the way Bush speaks, when he goes on about the war on 'tur' or his firm 'bleef' that Saddam was a danger.

[Last Conformist]

Now I know that Minnesota has a distinctive accent as a result of all the Scandanavians that migrated there.

Are you sure? I've met Minnesotans who descend from Swedes who went there in the 1920s, and they didn't have anything I'd recognize as a Scandinavian accent.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sandman
Why all these references to 'the English'? Aren't you forgetting the Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Germans, French, Scandanavians etc?

Not at all. However, Americans primarily regarded themselves as Englishmen - in fact, one of the causes of the revolution.

What happened to their accents? Now I know that Minnesota has a distinctive accent as a result of all the Scandanavians that migrated there. I think it's more likely that the Southern accent is a result the various groups that migrated there.

Yes, the Englishmen who migrated there! It's a historical fact that the Englishmen of the time spoke with what is now a Southern accent.

Americans drop syllables all the time. It's just that you don't notice it. Everyone likes to think that their language is 'the original', but nobody's is.

I know we drop syllables, the point is that American speech is fundamentally different from English speech because in American English, when speaking precisely, don't. It is regarded as improper, because of the way reading is taught here, which was invented here. All of this is factual, none of it opinion.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into the way Bush speaks, when he goes on about the war on 'tur' or his firm 'bleef' that Saddam was a danger.

Which goes to show that Southern English is closer to English English.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Tingkai
So according to Boorstin, Americans spoke better English than the English and Americans in the South spoke an English that was closest to its truest form.

How many want to bet that Boorstin was from the southern US?

Boorstin is a leading scholar of colonial history. Moreover, what he was saying was that in seventeenth-century England they spoke with what today is a Southern accent, and that words like "ain't" were actually used by the people of the time, which should make perfect sense since they were seventeenth-century Englishmen!

[Kuciwalker]

"Daniel J. Boorstin has been the Librarian of Congress, the senior historian of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., director of The National Museum of History and Technology and PReston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service PRofessor of American History at the University of Chicago where he taught for twenty-five years.

Dr. Boorstin has spent a good deal of his life viewing America from the outside, first in England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, winning a coveted "double-first." More recently he has been visiting professor of American History at the University of Rome and at Kyoto University, consultant to the Social Science Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico, the first incumbent of the chair of American History at the Sorbonne, and the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University, which awarded him its Litt.D. degree. He is the author of many books, including the acclaimed bestsellers The Discoverers and The Creators."

[Sandman]

Did the seventeenth century English use double negatives like Southerners do (i.e. they reinforce rather than cancelling out)?

"I ain't done nothing"

Is this in Shakespeare with its Southern meaning?

Before you complain that this is grammar, not accent, you've already used the lexicon with your 'ain't' point. I can quite imagine someone saying 'ain't' with an English accent.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Crouching Tiger made it to a theater near me. Any decent foreign film (ie that audiences actually like to see) will succeed here.

False.

This argument lies on a common misconception, that I read often in cultural threads.

You assume that any product that has a potential for success will be sold, and thus meet the success it deserves. This assumption lies on an absolute trust in the market, that always both knows and acknowledges a potential success.

This is wrong. The people who decide what product is sold, they are human like you and me, they are prone to make mistakes, they are prone to conservative -a.k.a only sell "products that work".

There is a particularly telling example of a success that has been hindered by the decisionmakers' conservatism: French music on the domestic market. In the 90's, the radio stations destined to youth aired almost only American (and a bit of English) music. Then came the quota laws, that forced radio stations to air 40% of French music, including 20% of young artists.
French music sold extremely well in stores shortly after that. Some excellent bands arose and became famous. It was a complete renewal of French rock for instance, and a blossom of French rap. I like to tell it was like a "rain in the desert".

How come the customers bought so much a music that was supposed to suck, given that radio stations didn't air them?

Same works for movies. Crouching Tiger is one of the few non-American movies that had such international success. But many movies didn't manage it, because of crappy domestic marketing based on false assumptions by the decisionmakers.

[Tingkai]

Boorstin was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma so he might have a slight bias towards saying southern Americans had the best English, assuming he actually wrote that.

We all have biases, even the most brilliant of historians. We're shaped by our environments.

As for historical fact, your initial statement was not factual. It was a subjective opinion about who spoke the best English at that time.

[Ned]

Spiffor, I can hardly imagine the lack of liberty you have in France. You put quotas on music? You ban religious freedom? You guys are real haters.

[DinoDoc]

French rap? And they wondered why they needed a quota before they got on the air.