In a message dated 7/16/99 8:00:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

> If y'all are going to talk like an ignoramous down hair like that your going
>  to find your yankee ass on a bus going North or ...worse;

Stereotypes of dialect are confusing. They seem to derive from stuff like the
Dukes of Hazard. I've been writing short short stories and posting them on a
writer's site using the best local NORTHERN rural speak I know and writer's
(most of them not very well read but great sitcom reviewers) from all over
the world keep accusing me of writing southern humor -- only problem is they
are bothered by the occasional word they have to look up in a dictionary.
Seems another stereotype of dialect is that it is only supposed to be used by
dumb uneducated people. Not so in my experience. Having had difficulty
learning to read I was raised phonetic. It is only as an adult that I learned
to spell and grammar, and I'm still lost most the time. The summation, for me
at least, is people do not really listen to each other in their own
localities, as Clemens did brilliantly, as much as they assume localities, or
class, from speech patterns they are exposed to on television. Truth is, not
everybody talks like they are from middlin class Ohio, which is a standard
for network newscasters.

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