Thursday, January 06, 2005
Do You Speak Daria?
I was watching a four-part miniseries on PBS last night called "Do You Speak American?" The series focused on the various regional dialects of American English.
Among the dialects discussed were the particular varieties of "Texas English". The characteristics of Texas English were "laconic, and involving wordplay".
From a board somewhere on Texas English:
From my observation, vowel sounds are drawn out, and pronounced differently
-the "oo" sound is pronounced uh ie "roof" is pronounced "ruhf"
-the "eye" sound is pronounced "aa" ie: "pipe" is pronounced paap, right sounds like raat
-words beginning with the long O (owe sound) like orange sound more like arange
-sometimes words like "milk" or "pick" sound more like "melk" or "peck"
And from the bootlegbooks.com site on the definition of the word "laconic":
Very concise and pithy. A Spartan was called a Lacon from Laconia, the land inwhich he dwelt. The Spartans were noted for their brusque and sententious speech. When Philip of Macedon wrote to the Spartan magistrates, "If I enter Laconia, I will level Lacedæmon to the ground," the ephors wrote word back the single word, "If." (See above Lacedæmonian Letter .) In 1490 O'Neil wrote to O'Donnel: "Send me the tribute, or else -- ." To which O'Donnel replied: "I owe none, or else --."
If there's anyone who's concise and pithy, it's Daria. ("I can't shoot my own mother. Not with paint anyway.") Which leads me to wonder if Daria has a bit of Texas accent in her, as well as some questions about the accents of the other characters? Is Tiffany betraying Californian ancestry when she speaks? And what about the other characters?
This conjecture could be put to rest if we knew where Tracy Grandstaff was born, or where she grew up. Oh well.
That's just a few of the differences though.
# posted by James @ 2:58 PM 
