Word: dialectical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...divided as the two distinct groups of workers squatting in the heat, swatting away flies and filling their bellies before their nine-hour, seven-day-a-week shifts begin again. In one huddle are local laborers chewing chunks of sweet potato and the canned fish known in pidgin dialect as tinpis. In another clump are imported workers from China who dig into rice topped with pork belly and chili - black bean sauce. The Chinese, who were shipped in by the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. that has invested $1.4 billion into this faraway outpost, can understand neither English...
...diverse population throughout the region. These people are one of many unique segments of American immigrant societies—poor, subjugated, and concentrated into local majorities—that incubated and grew a coherent cultural and artistic style. The culture has produced Zydeco music, its own French dialect, a vibrant social culture with a penchant for raucous festivities, and an incredibly flavorful cuisine which reflects the rich boldness, economic poverty and diversity of the culture that created...
...anxious as the evening wears on. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out sheets of paper - his acceptance speech, in English. While Pacquiao has no problem understanding English, which is widely used in the Philippines, he is much more comfortable speaking Tagalog, the national language, and Cebuano, the dialect he grew up with. But he is a hit with the New York City audience. All he really has to do is grin, and they are in his hands. A Filipino listening to the speech, however, senses the trouble Pacquiao will face if he decides to run for office...
...Precious' case, having been invisible to the world for most of her life, she would like to be heard, and it is of enormous credit to Gabourey Sidibe - an unknown actress making her screen debut - that we feel an obligation to catch every confusing piece of dialect or distorted sentence out of Precious' mouth. Sidibe speaks in a soft mutter - not always intelligible but warm and highly addictive. The story is set in 1987, in Harlem, and in the movie's first minutes, Precious - having been held back many times before - is in a junior high math class, projecting...
That's just one of the reasons the movie is ultimately stronger than the book. Push had the inevitable self-consciousness of something written in dialect; it spoon-fed us Precious' illiteracy along with her shattered innocence. If you didn't understand something in the text, you could move on, sure you were at least getting the gist of it. Sidibe is too commanding a presence to allow such laziness on the viewer's part. The reader also had the option of softening elements of Precious' story (even though Sapphire shared a few sensationalistic details with us that the movie...