As we have seen while watching this episodes
we can se how everything revolves around language. In history for example, all
the mayor battles have “roots of the language as well”(The Story of English).
Talking about the backgrounds and origins
of the English language we can see how strongly Britain and America were divided
and they shared a mutual language.
So there is the struggle for Independence,
and having their own government and all the battles which connect back to
English, and so does politics, since all the “political revolutionaries were
also, language revolutionaries”(The Story of English).
Patriotism grew with the inventions of new
words.
So now, in the English language there
wasn’t only focus in where they spoke English and how they spoke it but also
how correctly they did.
The
pronunciation. In different regions people pronounced words differently, and
this created doubt between regions on which was the correct way of pronouncing
that word. This is were dictionaries have another very powerful resource that didn’t
only consist of defining the word.
Merriam Webster who was a lexicographer of
the time invented the famous dictionaries.
This would not only help the different
regions speak the same way but it would be a way to make mispronunciations of
words disappear. But it would be difficult because it was hard to “reproduce
the idiomatic pronunciations that Americans used”(The Story of English).
But what Dictionaries did do was an effort
to help newcomers to pronounce better, so the people who came to America and Canada
could adopt more easily to the way people spoke in their region.
If people have already established their
way of pronouncing then there is no way of telling them not to pronounce it
that way or how to do it in fact, but Americans were able to pronounce words
like “forehead, through”(The Story of English). Thank you Mr. Webster!
Pronunciation isn’t a big part of how I
speak, because I am not American, I believe that it is not necessary to have
the best accent or a perfect pronunciation to be perfectly understood. When I used
to live in Paris all my friends bothered me because of my accent, when in fact
I speak correctly and I make small mistakes in pronunciation. I don’t believe
that it is a big deal.
There
is a huge difference between British English and American English you have to cross
an ocean. But you would never imagine that in Canada, which is only divided by
forts that there would be such a strong difference in how they pronounce words.
You can differ Canadians and Americans in the way they pronounce: “house” and “out” and “about”(The Story of
English).
People really do make fun of the Canadian accent, like
Barney over here! And in France, don't even get me started on how they criticize their french accent.
