Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
He prolonged the a's and o's, as the Southern trick is, and imitated to such perfection the pleasant localisms of Virginian pronunciation, that keener critics of speech and accent than these galliard troops would have been deceived. But suddenly his voice breaks, he falls into the clear, distinct enunciation of New York the only speech in the Union that betrays no sign of locality.
It was, perhaps, increasingly an urban crowd, and was subject to those epidemics of detailed delusion with which sensational journalism plays on the urban crowds of to-day. The last blow, however, could hardly have fallen but for one of those illogical but almost lovable localisms to which the English temperament is prone.
In marrying a New Yorker she espoused all New York, its customs, its prejudices, its morals, its vices, everything, even to the high pitch of its voice; and so well did she succeed in identifying herself with it and with its narrow localisms, that in a few years after her arrival, not to visit and be visited by Mrs.
Her beauty was none the less than when he had first seen her, a rosy-cheeked mountain girl, who looked at every strange thing in wide-eyed, timid wonder; who blushed when she was spoken to; and finally, when her timidity wore away, talked with him in her crude mountain idioms and localisms.
Its vulgarisms, negroisms, localisms, and common place slang! Its tendency to pervert public taste, and corrupt public morals. How remarkable that a work of its character, should have been so much read and admired! We may boast of our intelligence and virtue to our hearts content, the reception of this work is a sad commentary on the age in which we live.
Of course, words can really be counted hardly more than ideas or impressions, and compounds, dialects, obsolete terms, localisms, and especially technical terms, swell the number indefinitely. A competent philologist says, if given large liberty, he "will undertake to supply 1,000,000 English words for 1,000,000 American dollars."
It is suggestive to observe that localisms are less pronounced among artists than among untrained persons. Trained singers and actors belonging to different countries or sections of country, show few differences among themselves in English pronunciation. Among localisms the letter "r" causes frequent comment. In singing and dramatic speaking, this letter is best formed at the tip of the tongue.
Although they were contiguous geographically and extended over a time span of approximately two thousand years they were aggregates rather than monolithic civilizations, retaining their localisms and avoiding any strong central authority.
Into that speech were at first absorbed, as has been said, the peculiarities, localisms, and provincialisms which had inevitably grown up in different sections in the days of non-communication.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking