sounding like the books you read

[motherhubbard]

Does your speech change with the books you read?

I have a friend from the county just south of me. She learned to speak correctly through the books she read. This may sound untrue, but I can assure you that it is. In fact, not long ago a there was a criminal investigation conducted by people from up north and they had to have a translator.

This summer I'm reading books about the these beautiful mountains and the people in them. Some stories are true and some are fiction. So far they are all wonderful.

The other day I posted something that was apparently nonsensical. I know that I use terms and phrases that only make since around here, but I try to not post them. I've always been very mindful of my speech and made efforts to speak without an accent. But, lately my kids have been teasing me a little about how some of my words sound. Hillbilly.

[OrphanPip]

I don't know about books you read, but going to university changed the way I speak quite a bit. When I get back together with old friends from high school I find I no longer speak the same way as naturally. Being immersed in any dialect will probably effect how you speak, and I'm sure you might unintentionally find yourself picking up words from what you read.

[Scheherazade]

I don't think I will ever be able to speak English "properly" and I love learning new words and expressions from the books I read. Sometimes, on purpose, I try on the new things I have come across for fun.

So, it is all good from where I stand. :)

[The Comedian]

I've always loved the way Thoreau used the word "Sometimes" -- and I think that I sometimes use it in his fashion.

[papayahed]

I think I do it unconciously. I remember when I was younger my mom was mad at my aunt for giving me Little Women, I walked around for months calling people cross patches and using phreases from the book. And certainly different characters have different sounds to them..

[kiki1982]

I sometimes use words which I picked up in a book. A few months ago, my hubby said that 'he wouldn't have expected to hear that word from the mouth of a non-native speaker'. It was some kind of posh word, obviously picked up in some 19th century book, I expect... Fortunately English has a huge number of words that have been in fashion ever since the 14th century, read 19th century lit in Dutch and they'd swear you have come through Doctor Who's tardis. :p

But you can also go wrong with it, certainly if you haven't the faintest clue how the word is pronounced. 'Dis-heveled' I used to pronounce [disheveled] with a 'sh' until I used it and then my hubby couldn't stop laughing. 'Ascertàin' as 'ascértain' and 'choler' as [choler] with a 'ch' instead of a 'k' and an 'o' like in 'so'. :rolleyes: Not hearing stuff pronounced is kind of tricky...

[Niamh]

Yeah i think i do. I know after i've read a classic i definitely speak different!

[blazeofglory]

It happens at time. It was more so when I was a young boy. I had indeed encountered too many problems with this while sounding high with my knowledge or eruditions. I read classics and esteemed the values lived in there but the world outside was different than the fictitious ideas germinated in somebody's head. Today I never repeat the mistake of using the affectations of the books I have read at all. I love to be the down to earth sort who lives like the rest, the mass normally and communally. I have my differences on certain levels, intellectual, moral, philosophical. I am a maverick personally or privately who denounce established ideas and I find passions in the books that challenge traditions and that why I like Ayn Rand or James Joyce but since I cannot change anybody now with my ideas or I have not been influential in the degree and manner they had been I never brag about what I know and what I do not know in point of fact. I will camouflage myself with situations. Mostly I do not expose what I know or do not know. I have indeed read some of the best books yet I am the one in the eyes of my friends, relatives the same old fool who knows nothing, a ne'er-do-well boy. I will try to be the same for eternity

[Lokasenna]

But you can also go wrong with it, certainly if you haven't the faintest clue how the word is pronounced. 'Dis-heveled' I used to pronounce [disheveled] with a 'sh' until I used it and then my hubby couldn't stop laughing.

It is pronounced with a 'sh' - at least in my part of the world, but I was under the impression that that was the standard, universal pronunciation?

[Scheherazade]

It is pronounced with a 'sh' - at least in my part of the world, but I was under the impression that that was the standard, universal pronunciation?Cambridge Online agrees too:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/dishevelled

[Sancho]

I love learning new words from literature, or new expressions, or idioms, or old expressions used in a new way. But, I have to admit, that stuff doesn’t usually work its way into my speech. I tend to tailor my speech to my audience. If I spoke the same way to my motor-head friends as I do to my lit-head friends (and vice-versa), an immediate and impenetrable wall would arise between us.

[JuniperWoolf]

Does your speech change with the books you read?


Wow, I thought that it was just me! Yes, I do speak differently depending on what I'm currently reading. Both the content of my speech and the accent changes, when I'm reading The Secret Garden I'm all prim and British (at the start of the book) and I order people around, then I'm nature-ey (still British) near the end, and I usually wind up playing in my dad's garden. What I end up doing with my time depends on what I read too.

When I read about Tom and Huck, I speak a little hick and I don't come into the house very often. I also have a tendancy not to bathe.

When I read Of Mice and Men I'm the same, except that I eat a lot of beans and ketchup.

My speech is superfluous and complicated when I read Shakespeare/Milton. I'm told that this is annoying.

Swamp Thing, I don't wear shoes and I leave my hair down. I also swim around in the lakes and rivers and say "I mean" a lot (like Abbie).

I'm told that I'm depressing when I read Oryx and Crake/1984/Catcher in the Rye.

[kiki1982]

It is pronounced with a 'sh' - at least in my part of the world, but I was under the impression that that was the standard, universal pronunciation?


Cambridge Online agrees too:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/dishevelled

I must be going mad :redface:. Anyway, I must have pronounced it 'dis-heveled' then and not like it should be.

:o

[wokeem]

I viddied Clockwork Orange not too long ago, it was real horrorshow.

[loe]

Usually reading changes my writing more than my speech.

E.g. while reading Kant my sentences got more and more complicated - I even had problems to understand myself then...

Best regards

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well I say, what-ho? Yes reading books does change the way I speak and write (and think) what?