Vignettes

I recently discovered the late author and conversationalist William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008). Unfortunately a few months too late. Belated interest is a terrible burden of youth - by the time we young people come to our senses about any particular issue, all the important things have been said and, even worse, all the important people who said those very things have died. In any case, YouTube let me see Buckley in action without having to wait for some network to publish a retrospective.

What a character! His demeanor and eloquence instantly impressed me; especially in the light of an ongoing discussion I have had about the virtues of American vs. British English. Often, and not only in Europe, American English is considered second-rate and scoffed at as uncultivated. While this is the case at times, It most definitely does not have to be the case. Perhaps Buckley is a bad example - his English was without a doubt extremely idiosyncratic. I read a number of obituaries about him that variously described it as “patrician”, as an “aristocratic drawl” “preposterously mellifluous” or even “Shakespearean”. Mellifluous, sweet and flowing, drawing and pulling the words like a confectioner would handle a hot candy mass, is a spot-on description. I have always admired well-spoken Southern accents, and while Buckley’s was not purely Southern, his parents’ drawl left an unmistakable touch on his diction and prosody. Slate has a very interesting discussion of his way of speaking here.

I have spent a few hours today and yesterway watching Buckley’s various interviews, speeches and conversations alone and with notables like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky. I especially liked his TV-debate with Vidal from the late 60s - Buckley with his “aristocratic drawl” becomes even more wonderful to watch when juxtaposed with Vidal’s formal, deeply neutral almost newsreader-like Standard American style. I actually like both styles; they each give their own distinct impressions of the speaker as mostly well-bred or well-trained. The newsreaders of the hey-day had gloriously razor-sharp articulation, but a rather dull and scientistic phrasing - I almost have to mention Hugo Weaver’s rendering of Agent Smith in the Matrix as a modern example of this style.

As for my self, I am not quite sure how best to characterize my English. My father is from Montana, and my mother speaks an English that to most Americans is impossible to pinpoint regionally. Sometimes people guess Canada, but it is in fact more the product of many different regional influences. I consider my own English rather standard, (i.e. close to General American), though I am ever-mindful of a Scandinavian influence - ten years of residence must somehow have left a touch. I am not up to date with slang and popular phrases in the US, which I suppose reveals me as somewhat of a foreigner in that regard. But I do try to speak properly - by not saying “try and speak..”, for instance. But it is without a doubt difficult to maintain a clear pronunciation. I might be overly sensitive to the whole issue.

Maybe a linguist or English teacher can tell me something about my dialect. I had my last stay in the US in Up-State NY in Clifton Park. I came there from Puerto Rico and then Denmark, then went to Norway and Denmark. I have never had voice training, and I’d be glad to supply a reading sample, such as the Stella text (press for .mp3).

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.