The Cullen Café

[fritzkep]

Apparently he moved to the States when he was very young, but you would talk with your parents in the manner you would have grown up speaking to them. I tend to talk more with the local accent when speaking with my mother and sisters.

It's a great example of code switching, as it's called in linguistics.

[Sason]

It must mean that when he grew up in the states, he talked AE outside of home, and SE at home with his family.

Like some kids do when they talk two different languages, one at home and one outside home.

But some kids actually switch, and speak the new language even with their siblings,
and answer their parents in the new language even if the parents speak the "old" language to them.

[tonydude]

It's a great example of code switching, as it's called in linguistics.

  Phew, it helps to know there's a name for my life-long troubles, in speaking (and writing).  My parents were very much Southern petty gentry in background and, since I was not allowed to go out in the rough blue-collar neighborhood that had sprung up around our home, my dialect was not, as is usual, the same as my age peers.  This later got re-inforced by the nuns at school.
 But I DID rebel and got out to find friends, and quickly found I would get my hind parts whupped if I talked so "foreign", and so learned to speak rough-neck blue-collar.  Since dialects  usually are locked in by the age of 7-8 years old, this is, for me, a legitimate and natural dialect.
 In switching back and forth between the two (triggered by what, I do not know), it can seem kind of phony.  But that is me, and what are you supposed to do, when that's who you really are, a hybrid?
 Now I can just say, wheee, code-switching, and flip off any uneasiness from others at how I write or speak.  That's an improvement over..."oh, screw 'em and the horse they rode in on", I would think.
  Thank-you, Fritz.  I am now quasi, semi, on the boundaries of normal, again.  Maybe  .

[fritzkep]

Hey Tony, it's not phony in the least! It's perfectly normal for kids to speak like their peers or their parents, depending on the audience. And for the most part it's quite unconscious on the part of the speaker.

[Cally]

Here's a link to an interesting programm on NZ tv, about the search for the reasons people are gay.

http://www.therealstevegray.com/2011/01/watch-the-making-of-me-here-because-tvnz-the-show-when-they-were-sure-no-one-would-see-the-doco/

I saw this on television here in the UK when it was first shown - about a year ago? 

I thought JB came across very well - I was impressed by his sincerity  and how deeply important it was to him to find some back-up to his knowledge that he had been born gay.

[tonydude]

Hey Tony, it's not phony in the least! It's perfectly normal for kids to speak like their peers or their parents, depending on the audience. And for the most part it's quite unconscious on the part of the speaker.

 
  Thanks, Fritz, very much.  But it's still true, I do talk and write kind of funny, i.e., different, at times. Too late to change, though, and also, why should any of us have to?  But am somewhat reassured, BTW, that I would not be the only one around this place that's a little different  .

[CellarDweller115]

Sonja, thanks for posting this here.

Matthew (ZK) posted this on BetterMost, and sent me the link via PM there to view it.  I'm glad it got shared here as well.

[tfferg]

 
  Thanks, Fritz, very much.  But it's still true, I do talk and write kind of funny, i.e., different, at times. Too late to change, though, and also, why should any of us have to?  But am somewhat reassured, BTW, that I would not be the only one around this place that's a little different  .

I would think that code switching would be much more normal than the opposite. It is more obvious in bilingual, multilingual and diglossic societies and countries where different languages are in daily contact, but even in English-dominant societies, we all switch along a continuum of varieties of English. For example, every family speaks its own idiolect; we range between informal and formal varieties of speech according to the social context and our different role relationships; people speak the variety of their peer group when with them. There may be a different variety in the workplace especially if it is a technical or professional domain. Men in  single-sex settings use a different variety from the way we speak in mixed company. People use written codes when texting or emailing which are different from other forms of written communication, just as telegrams used to be different from letters.

[tonydude]

 ^^^^ Thanks, Tony, for the above specifics, as they really developed what Fritz had pointed out.  All I know is that, if I hadn't  dropped my original dialect when I was going out to make friends, in a rough and tumble neighborhood, at the age of 6 or 7, I would have been sorely roughed and tumbled up  .  I was so very young and do not remember, now, adapting: it just happened.
 Also learned to fight  , but at least it was not over my speech patterns.

[killersmom]

I would think that code switching would be much more normal than the opposite. It is more obvious in bilingual, multilingual and diglossic societies and countries where different languages are in daily contact, but even in English-dominant societies, we all switch along a continuum of varieties of English. For example, every family speaks its own idiolect; we range between informal and formal varieties of speech according to the social context and our different role relationships; people speak the variety of their peer group when with them. There may be a different variety in the workplace especially if it is a technical or professional domain. Men in  single-sex settings use a different variety from the way we speak in mixed company. People use written codes when texting or emailing which are different from other forms of written communication, just as telegrams used to be different from letters.

I grew up speaking more like a telegram as my Mom worked for Western Union for 45 years. Not that I used the the word "stop" like telegrams did, but my talking was abbreviated for a few years as that is what I heard.

[tfferg]

I grew up speaking more like a telegram as my Mom worked for Western Union for 45 years. Not that I used the the word "stop" like telegrams did, but my talking was abbreviated for a few years as that is what I heard.

My partner and I still communicate in Thaiglish. Phong often says something to me in English words. It can be something out of the blue and there may be no subject or subject pronoun and no object, and the verb in the universal present tense so it sounds like a telegraphic fragment and I have to cross-question him in order to answer him or try to read his mind. We usually get there, sometimes we don't and when we don't, we have to tolerate a degree of ambiguity. It's specially hard on the phone with background noise from public places when he calls me, so I try to get it straight when he gets home.

He was watching the Thai TV news tonight and wanted to tell me about a road rage shooting of a pilot on his way to the airport. Thai TV often has news reports only the day after they have  been written up in the newspapers. I knew what he was talking about only because I read it in yesterday's Bangkok Post.

[brianr]

Many doctors in Australia are of Indian descent. They of course are professional and speak in a normal Australian accent. My sister was very surprised when her doctor took a call from his brother while she was in the surgery. He spoke to him in that sing song Indian accent that is often used in comedy sketches.

[Sason]

Sonja, thanks for posting this here.

Matthew (ZK) posted this on BetterMost, and sent me the link via PM there to view it.  I'm glad it got shared here as well.

You're welcome Chuck.

Yeah, I saw it on BM, and thought it was worth sharing here as well.

Maybe I should have credited Matt for it. Sorry I forgot that.

[tfferg]

Many doctors in Australia are of Indian descent. They of course are professional and speak in a normal Australian accent. My sister was very surprised when her doctor took a call from his brother while she was in the surgery. He spoke to him in that sing song Indian accent that is often used in comedy sketches.

I seem to remember Indira Gandhi once sending up Peter Sellers by imitating him imitating that stereotypical Indian accent.

[tfferg]

 


River rescue as sex toy ditches rider
Thomas Hunter
January 17, 2011 - 6:31AM

A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman’s face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch.

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices’’.

Police and a State Emergency Services crew were called to the rescue when the woman and a man, both 19, struck trouble at Warrandyte North about 4.30pm yesterday.

They were floating down the river on two inflatable dolls and had just passed the Pound Bend Tunnel when the woman lost her toy in turbulent water.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/river-rescue-as-sex-toy-ditches-rider-20110117-19sra.html