Word: dialectic
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Barrientos was also a man of vision who hoped to include in his own brand of forceful democracy the Indian campesinos whose Quechua dialect he spoke so well. "I have the idea that every citizen must be a participant in building his country," he once said. "In order to be a participant, he must know what the problems are and how they can be solved. In order to know, he must receive information and believe it. The destiny of telling the campesinos has fallen on me, a good friend of theirs." By plane and helicopter, Barrientos pursued his destiny, often...
Black Laughter. Nor, they hasten to add, is it necessarily a superior one. Although educational psychologists have long insisted that Negro dialect shows all the characteristics of cultural deprivation, Stewart and his fellow investigators argue that linguistically it is as rich and diverse as standard spoken English. Many white Americans were astonished when Muhammed Ali, who earned reams of sports-page attention with his endless flow of doggerel, flunked an Army intelligence test. Psychologist Stephen Baratz, of the National Institute of Mental Health, insists that there was really nothing particularly surprising about his jab at poesy: Negro children usually start...
...enemy-man. Their white coats have long been prized for boot and glove trimmings and for fur jackets. In the gulf, a horde of hunters invade the floes on foot, by boat, on ski-equipped planes and in recent years by helicopter. Hundreds of sealers-"swilers" in the Newfoundland dialect-conduct a brief but grimly efficient slaughter. With stout oak clubs they move systematically through the herd, beating the whitecoats to death with raps on the skull. Only if a hulking 300-lb. cow seal chooses to fight for her baby will a swiler sometimes spare it. But most cows...
Argot Born. One day in '92, sitting around the Anytime Saloon, Reg and Tom Burger and the Duff brothers started putting some of their old Scotch-Irish dialect words together with some on-the-spot code words into a language that the enemies-be they womenfolk, their rivals, their elders, their children-could not possibly understand. It caught on, rapidly losing its value as a code; soon "Boontlingers" and their friends were eagerly trying to shark (con) each other with new inventions...
Other words came right out of old Scotch-Irish dialect-wee for small, kimmie for man, tweed for young man, deek for look at. Still other words were borrowed from the Porno Indians, who moved off to a reservation after an early settler set up his general store in the middle of their camping ground. A few words are corruptions of French, like gorm (gourmand...