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rfmcdonaldMany of the people who meet me are surprised that I don't speak with very much of a Prince Edward Island accent, or with a Prince Edward Island vocabulary. I was born on Prince Edward Island, they reason; I presumably have a long heritage on the Island (I'm fifth-generation, actually). Why, then, would I speak in a manner not indistinguishable from that of urban central Canadians?
There are reasons for this. Perhaps the most important reason for this, the one that underlines the others, is that I'm glad not to speak that way.
Why? It's a non-standard version of Canadian English, not the variant that's spoken in prosperous and culturally not-quite-dominant urban central Canada. A week after I moved to Kingston in 2003, in fact, I finally realized that one thing that had been nagging at me was the fact that I was in a place where the people spoke the way that they do on Canadian television. They speak--we speak?--the variant of English that's the public face of Canadian English, the way that the people in power speak.
Prince Edward Island English? Not nearly so much. It's one of many non-standard dialects of English spoken in the Maritime provinces never mind the very unique English of Newfoundland. What marks these dialects? Unusual accents, unusual vocabularies, and their speakers' association with poverty and isolation and a general lack of cultural capital outside of very narrow bounds, like the folkloric or the anti-modern generally. Take the English of Tignish, in the region of West Prince westernmost Prince Edward Island.
It's worth noting that the people of West Prince with their English are the subject of jokes told by other Prince Edward Islanders, much like the "Newfie jokes" told about Newfoundlanders, often founded in a genteel-sounding bigotry about these strange people who seem to be generally incapable and stupidly literal-minded, at least in part because they don't speak "proper" English.
I'm not at all sure that other Canadians really distinguish that much between Newfoundland English and a similar-sounding Prince Edward Island English, at least insofar as these speakers' being able to be taken seriously. I quite like being taken seriously. So, at least in large part because of my very strong interest in things and cultural products and events outside of Prince Edward Island, perhaps because of the tendency of women and gay men to have their speech conform with standard norms, and perhaps because a Charlottetown that's home to migrants from across Canada doesn't have as strong a traditional accent as Tignish, I speak something pretty close to standard Canadian English and, I believe, am taken seriously. There's a few people who joke with me about lobsters and potatoes and Anne of Green Gables, I joke about the family of tourists ritually sacrificed every May to ensure a good tourist season and the death fight versus giant lobsters that all adolescent Islanders must do to demonstrate their right to live, and the (hopefully) low likelihood that I'll be taken as an unserious yokel is diminished accordingly, and I get to define myself the way that I want. In an ideal world it wouldn't be this way, but my relationship language-wise with the current unideal world works for me, too.
This sort of thing is common to every speech community, of course, with some accents and dialects being privileged about others. Penelope Eckart's 2005 paper goes into this phenomenon in detail and breadth. In smaller scales, think Received Pronunciation versus working-class language forms in the United Kingdom, say, or standard French against the langues d'oïl of northern France, or Putongua over China's regional languages. I'm sure that you can think of many other examples. In fact, that's what this [FORUM] post is about: what speech forms in your language community are low-prestige? Are they common or relatively rare? Are they diminish or remaining stable, seen as embarrassments or as representing a regional pride?
Discuss.
There are reasons for this. Perhaps the most important reason for this, the one that underlines the others, is that I'm glad not to speak that way.
Why? It's a non-standard version of Canadian English, not the variant that's spoken in prosperous and culturally not-quite-dominant urban central Canada. A week after I moved to Kingston in 2003, in fact, I finally realized that one thing that had been nagging at me was the fact that I was in a place where the people spoke the way that they do on Canadian television. They speak--we speak?--the variant of English that's the public face of Canadian English, the way that the people in power speak.
Prince Edward Island English? Not nearly so much. It's one of many non-standard dialects of English spoken in the Maritime provinces never mind the very unique English of Newfoundland. What marks these dialects? Unusual accents, unusual vocabularies, and their speakers' association with poverty and isolation and a general lack of cultural capital outside of very narrow bounds, like the folkloric or the anti-modern generally. Take the English of Tignish, in the region of West Prince westernmost Prince Edward Island.
Tignish has one of the most distinctive location–specific accents and original eastern Canada. It is often etymologically described as a blend of English, French, and Scots/Scottish English, and there are many actual English words that possess a unique alternate definition in Tignish, such as "slack". Some of the time a comma, and the word "too" is added after some terms (i.e. "slack, too") to provide emphasis. While English–speakers in nearby towns such as Alberton and O'Leary have an accent and dialect similar to many other communities across the Maritime provinces, Tignish dialect is often described independent from this dialect, and is sometimes not even comprehensible by non–locals.
It's worth noting that the people of West Prince with their English are the subject of jokes told by other Prince Edward Islanders, much like the "Newfie jokes" told about Newfoundlanders, often founded in a genteel-sounding bigotry about these strange people who seem to be generally incapable and stupidly literal-minded, at least in part because they don't speak "proper" English.
I'm not at all sure that other Canadians really distinguish that much between Newfoundland English and a similar-sounding Prince Edward Island English, at least insofar as these speakers' being able to be taken seriously. I quite like being taken seriously. So, at least in large part because of my very strong interest in things and cultural products and events outside of Prince Edward Island, perhaps because of the tendency of women and gay men to have their speech conform with standard norms, and perhaps because a Charlottetown that's home to migrants from across Canada doesn't have as strong a traditional accent as Tignish, I speak something pretty close to standard Canadian English and, I believe, am taken seriously. There's a few people who joke with me about lobsters and potatoes and Anne of Green Gables, I joke about the family of tourists ritually sacrificed every May to ensure a good tourist season and the death fight versus giant lobsters that all adolescent Islanders must do to demonstrate their right to live, and the (hopefully) low likelihood that I'll be taken as an unserious yokel is diminished accordingly, and I get to define myself the way that I want. In an ideal world it wouldn't be this way, but my relationship language-wise with the current unideal world works for me, too.
This sort of thing is common to every speech community, of course, with some accents and dialects being privileged about others. Penelope Eckart's 2005 paper goes into this phenomenon in detail and breadth. In smaller scales, think Received Pronunciation versus working-class language forms in the United Kingdom, say, or standard French against the langues d'oïl of northern France, or Putongua over China's regional languages. I'm sure that you can think of many other examples. In fact, that's what this [FORUM] post is about: what speech forms in your language community are low-prestige? Are they common or relatively rare? Are they diminish or remaining stable, seen as embarrassments or as representing a regional pride?
Discuss.
