Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Palintology--Alaskan English


If I get a doctorate, there are about two or three things that I would want to study. One is multiculturalism within Caucasian Americans that are not recent immigrants. There is an article on MSN about Alaskan English and Palin's accent. Very interesting. Here is a quote from the article:


Others have wondered whether her accent hails from Idaho, where her
parents are from. But dialect features tend to come from one's peers, not one's
parents, and Palin spent her childhood in Alaska's Mat-Su Valley, which is where
she got her distinctive manner of speaking. The next town over from Wasilla,
Palmer, has a large settlement of Minnesotans—who were moved there by a
government relief
program
in the 1930s—and features of the Minnesotan dialect are
thus prominent in the Mat-Su Valley area. Hence the Fargo-like elements in
Palin's speech, in particular the sound of her "O" vowel. (Despite its name,
Fargo took place mostly in Brainerd, Minn.) However, even in the area, many
people speak a more general Alaskan English, the sort one would find in nearby
Anchorage. Palin's frequent dropping of the final G in -ing words and her
pronunciation of terrorist with two syllables instead of three are
characteristic of general Alaskan English (and Western English) rather than the
specific Mat-Su Valley speech

3 comments:

reliv4life said...

Well,that is interesting. I am intrigued to see how the debate goes tonight.

rubyslipperlady said...

I love linguistics. That's always interested me. THat and why people are named what they are named.

Why, of all shots, did you choose that! Love it!

Kimberly Cangelosi said...

I have family from Minnesota and I thought I recognized that accent! Accents are funny things. Now that I'm married to someone from the South I realize how Midwestern my accent is.

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