Native language/dialect...disappearing

LizzieMaine said:

Our most notable language here was Penobscot, which is undergoing something of a rebirth on the reservations, and which is still very much a part of our local place names. If you can say "Passagassawaukeag" without stumbling, you're a real Mainer.

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Lizzie I can say it perfectly, even though I'm originally from So. California. Does this mean I'm a Mainah now??

Mr. Hallack said:

Lizzie I can say it perfectly, even though I'm originally from So. California. Does this mean I'm a Mainah now??

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Yessah. Stop by the front desk and pick up your regulation clam hoe.

Mr. Hallack said:

Lizzie I can say it perfectly, even though I'm originally from So. California. Does this mean I'm a Mainah now??

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I thought you were a real Mainah because you say 'wicked.'

Massachusetts is also wicked territory although we're not as wicked as we used to be - I rarely hear it any more.

Welsh is dissapearing too

Last year, I visited my Daughter on the small mid-west island in Alaska, where she teaches. The village is predominately Inupiat and is ~500 people.

She explained that the children cannot talk to their grandparents without the parents to translate. They teach the native language in school but I witnessed the kids not caring whatsoever about learning it.

I was called "a Cossack" many times by older people. Not in a bad way. It was just their word for white people. Someone explained to me that the Cossacks were the first white people they met.

(And then they explained that they usually killed them because they would take their women.)

AtomicEraTom said:

Very proud of my M'waukee accent, though not as prominent as the older members of my family. However, I'm the first of 5 generations not to spend the entirety of their youth in Milwaukee.

I can always tell who's from back home by talking to them and vice versa.

http://www.onmilwaukee.com/buzz/articles/accent.html

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The first time I visited Jackie's family in Cudahy, I thought we were going to have to call out for an interpreter. Her father's Milwaukee accent is very pronounced and her mother is Mexican who speaks English as a second language. Of course, my Southern accent is as thick as molasses in January. We were all speaking English, but communication was spotty at best. Then Jackie's brother came over and kept talking about going "Up Nort" the following summer. I asked Jackie where was "Nort". When she told me I couldn't help wonder what tiny bit of Earth could exist "nort" of Milwaukee. To me, it seemed like if you went much nort of there, you'd soon be going "soudt".

AF