Attention Brooklyn Frummies:
You were born in America. Your parents were born in America. Why do you speak with an accent?
It's not even an accent that occurs naturally anywhere in the world. It is like you are enunciating every syllable as if you are saying krias shema. Does G-d love you more if you talk like that?
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9 comments:
Why do New Yorkers speak English with an accent? Or Georgians? Or Hispanics in Washington Heights?
MFD - NY accents and GA accents are probably more than a century old, more than likely originating from the part of the British Isles that colonized them. Hispanic accents result from English being a second language.
What I am talking about is an artificially created accent that has no historical linguistic basis, and is not even rooted in the parents' speech pattern. - JF
And you're a linguist and know how accents and dialects originate in cloistered populations....right?
i somehow doubt the elders of Chasidishland, or Oz, of Williamburg stayed up late one night and devided to assur talking English in anyway other that to enunciate sylables. Your rant sounds a bit picayune and self-hating, kind of like i have to stop myself from decidiing that the religious looking guy in front of me in the supermarket today wasn't a jerk. He wasn't. i just automatically wanted him to be because that would validate my reaosns for disliking him.
You should let go of some of your anger. you'll feel better..
Still wonderin': I don't deny that I have some level of animosity. I do hope that one day I can let go of it. It's just that the obsessive focus on (unimportant) externals gets under my skin.
BTW - I will defend my fellow Jews (of all stripes) to the death if neccesary against non-jews, but internal criticism has always been a part of our culture. And I sure have received my fair share of that from the "Brooklyn Frummies".
i know you're right and agree. It's just that I find myself crossing the line from self-critical to anti-semite very often.
I can easily put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn't like jewish people and it makes me feel bad....bad enough to look for good at least as often as i look for bad.
Thanks for the comment. You make a good point.
Why does anyone have an accent if they speak the same language?
BTW, it is definately a universal frummers-have-different-accent thing. On any continent! Probably due to lack of a real English education, mixing of yiddish, and less intermingling with surrounding comunity.
Karl: A friend of mine pointed out this fact to me many years ago. I think it's funny.
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