TV Talk

   In the early days of television when the flickering talk box was a default babysitter in many inner city neighborhoods, it was believed that children who spent hours listening to speech in the "standard" dialect would lose the accents they heard from their parents.
   It didn't happen.
   This was true not only of children in Harlem and Brooklyn, but also in other dialect regions throughout America, where the regional dialect or accent continues, no matter the social level. There's no mistaking the Texas accent of former President George W. Bush, for example, or the South Carolina speech of Sen. Lindsay Graham.
   As for "uptalk," the style of speaking once popular among teenage girls that started in Southern California, that has largely disappeared. That style led to every sentence ending on a rising tone, making it sound like a question. More recently, it has been replaced by the use of the word "like" instead of the verb "said."
   Speech changes. How, when and where can be documented and makes great fodder for academic studies and parlor games. Why do dialects change? That question makes for many hours of speculation, some of which may actually be valid.
   One example of dialect variety can be found among the cities of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. One reason why people of Boston speak differently from Philadelphians is likely because the Bostonian upper class sent their sons back to England for their education, while the families of Philadelphia, mostly Quaker, did not. This was because they would not have been welcome even if they had wanted to, which they did not.
   Then, as Americans moved inland, away from the coastal areas and across the Appalachian Mountains, there was less contact with England, and regionalisms were lost as speech patterns consolidated among the various settlers. Meanwhile, the Appalachians were settled by many newcomers from Scotland and Northern Ireland, who brought their own cultural and language preferences, as well as their sense of individual independence and music. Moreover, these mountain folk maintain these traditions even today.
   At the same time, the westward movement of the early Americans meant a broadening of dialectal coverage areas so that the so-called Midwestern  accent, or North Midlands Dialect, extends from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Upper New York State to Ohio and Illinois all the way to California.
   Even so, dialectal differences remain along the East Coast, even within the major cities, and many of these depend not only on geographical boundaries such as mountains, rivers and swamps, but also on social status.
   For example, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a Democrat, still speaks with the Brooklyn accent of his youth, even though he has lived for many years in Vermont. And former Mayor John Lindsay's speech identified his background growing up in the Silk Stocking district of Manhattan.
   In Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan and its heavy population of dockworkers, people speak with the same accent. But in nearby Newark, natives of that city have a different accent, since the Meadowlands swamp area between the two cities discouraged restricted travel and communication. That, of course, was long ago, but even though dockworkers have moved on and roads and bridges enable easy travel, the language differences remain.
   Another dialect difference can be found among social classes, even within a city. This is found among Londoners with the Cockney accent, and those who are able to mingle with the monarch, speaking in what's called the "received pronunciation" or RP dialect.
   In New York City, a linguistics researcher documented the speech of sales staff at department stores in Manhattan, and found that staffers at high-end stores spoke the same dialect as their customers, and those at bargain-basement retailers did the same, matching their dialect to that of lower-income customers.
   All of which means that listening to the various dialects and matching them to different geographical areas and social levels is fun. However, it should in no way be judgmental.