Should regional English accents be encouraged or discouraged?

Encouraged

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by Dennis Krivda

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In Bucks County, Pennsylvania - some twenty miles north of Philadelphia - William J. Levitt first conceived of his sprawling town of affordable housing back in 1951. His plan was as simple as a Ford assembly line: build cookie-cutter homes all in a row to reduce costs and make home ownership more affordable than ever before.

Workers could assemble houses by the hundreds because every two-by-four, every shingle, every piece of plywood could be cut and assembled in a very short span of time since there was no constant changing of equipment settings. Construction crews could simply set the saw at the beginning of the project and not have to worry about changing the setting until each section of town was completed. From house to house, measurements for the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and garage were all the same. Problems in construction were only solved once for each of the six model homes.

Levitt's plan worked wonderfully! With 41 different sections to choose from, World War II veterans now had an abundance of affordable housing spread out over ten square miles of mostly flat ground far from the grueling traffic of the big city.

Levittown, Pennsylvania - as Levitt's massive housing project was so named - had only one very frightening flaw: in each separate section of town the houses all looked the same. So much so that it was not uncommon for someone to walk into the wrong house after a night of imbibing, or after an especially tough day at the mill. Visitors to Levittown often found the maze of look-alike houses to be quite intimidating and nearly impossible to find the specific house they were looking to visit.

There was something almost mind-numbingly insidious about Levittown, Pennsylvania. The uniformity of identical houses all lined up in a row for as far as the eye could see reminded perceptive people of a giant machine that ground out automaton lives for its denizens. If the houses were all the same, did that mean that the people were all the same, too? For anyone who grew up in Levittown, sometimes it seemed that way.

Ironically, with all of its monotony fifty years ago, Levittown, Pennsylvania stood as a testament to the value of individuality! That is to say that humanity would go nuts if everyone in the world lived in houses that all looked alike. Likewise, humanity would go nuts if everyone in the world looked exactly the same; dressed the same; ate the same foods; produced the same art; sang the same songs, wore the same clothing; and/or spoke the same language.

And so it is within the English language. We often don't realize just how much of an accent we display whenever we speak English. Most Australians, however, can easily identify a Yank the moment he opens his mouth. Most Americans can identify a Limey the minute she whispers a word. And many Brits can discern a Kiwi's accent within seconds.

Canadians similarly speak English with an accent. In fact, there's an old joke that goes something like this:

Q: Why do they spell Canada the way they do?

A: It makes it easier for Canadians to remember - C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?

All kidding aside, those subtle differences in the spoken English language are what separate us from one another. We should celebrate our ability to visit New Orleans and hear the Cajun dialect! We should derive great pleasure from traveling to Ireland where the emphasis on syllables differs widely from the way Americans speak English in Hawaii or the way Australians say, "No worries, mate!"

We should never settle for a world where we all live in the same houses. Humanity should never eat bland food that's the same from Mongolia to Managua. We must never accept a planet where the curry in Bangalore tastes the same as the curry in Bavaria! We'd be crazy to wish for a world where Korean women wear the same clothing as Cuban men! When music from Zambia begins to sound just like the music from Sapporo then it's time to think about destroying everything and starting all over again.

Likewise, we should never accept a rigid standard in spoken English. The dramatic difference in how a Pittsburgh steelworker and an Australian ballerina say the word town is what provides us with our entertainment! It's what makes us feel as though we've left the comfortable confines of our own living room whenever we visit places such as London, Wellington, Vancouver, Pretoria, or Honolulu.

Celebrate the differences! Disdain the monotony! Speak your accented English with pride! Your accent is what distinguishes you from all the other people on the planet!

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