I was reading on someone else's blog about how his culture is losing it's language. I think that is happening everywhere. We live in an area where people are holding on dearly to their dialect and I often kid about it, but I'm glad that someone is trying to preserve who they are. Our language is becoming so generalized here in America. I can tell when I watch old black and white movies from the 50s just how much our language has changed. We use a very limited vocabulary now, compared to a few decades ago.
I think we need to read and make sure our kids do too. Then use those words we pick up from books.
In my case I am going to keep reinforcing to my kids their linguistic heritage by speaking in the northern dialect and using a northern vocabulary. (I consider my kids Northerners, even though Mr. C lived in the North less than 10 weeks.)We will use shopping carts (not buggies), water the flowers with the hose (not hosepipe), turn the lights on (not cut them on), and push buttons (not mash them). And if they decide to cover a neighbor's trees with toilet paper they will TP the house (not roll it). (And then they will get in trouble for it afterwards, no matter what they call it.) We use short vowels in words with the CVC and VC patterns: dog instead of doe-g and on instead of own. And we will pronounce the long I as I instead of ah. With that being said, I am glad that they are being exposed to another culture's language. I believe that more and varied experiences can only improve who we are and broaden our knowledge of who we share this small planet with.
This is a humorous conversation I overheard in the shower house the last time we went camping at Yosemite. I was listening to a group of teenage girls from the UK.
Girl 1: Why do you think they call cutlery, silverware?
Girl 2: Maybe because it looks silver.
Girl 3: No. They even call the plastic kind silverware.
Girl 1: How strange!
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