"Penney, Sean" <seanp at ea.com> writes: > Michelle Goepp wrote: > > > My favorite is this: "In America, people who try to > > adhere to [the rules] run the risk of sounding > > pretentious or haughty." -snip- > I think it is a sad fact that in our schools kids who speak well, are good > at math and answer questions in class are generally saddled with derogative > labels - "brain, geek, nerd, etc". Kids will deliberately play dumb to be > accepted by the mob. -snip- Agreed. Now I'm going to go off on some tangents. Students at college often work hard to hide their accents and to stick to the local dialect because they fear being perceived as being stupid. For example, someone from Tennessee might try to excise "might could" from his speech. Plus, my linguistics professor told us an anecdote of how even linguists who should know better tend to perceive someone with a Southern accent as "cute" or "dumb" or both. But I had an acquaintance who spoke Mandarin Chinese with an Oklahoman accent. That was neat. I really like the way Chinese sounds with that accent. I recently read _Starlight 2_, a collection of SF stories edited by PNH. Two deserve mention for being great and, apropos to (of?) recent discussions here, having interesting linguistic connections: "Story of Your Life", by Ted Chiang "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation", by Raphael Carter Do you go out and read them posthaste. - tky