Word: dialects
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...size (181,000 sq. mi.) and population (almost 3 million), Papua New Guinea is roughly equivalent to New Zealand, but there the resemblance ends. The population is scattered among more than 700 tribes, each of which has its own dialect. Most of the people hack out meager livings as subsistence-level farmers in remote rural areas. The country has no railroads and few paved roads, relying for transportation on bush pilots and 476 air strips...
Dramatically, Treemonisha calls for a certain amount of forebearance. Its message (improving the lot of the Negro) is treated naively, and its solution (education) is somewhat simplistic. Treemonisha works for an audience of today because Joplin kept his touch light despite heavy use of dialect ("No, dat bag you'se not gwine to buy, 'cause I know de price is high"). His is a fable that James Thurber might have appreciated...
...problem is compounded when racial sensitivities are involved. Should teachers try to enforce the prescriptive rule of standard American English on black children who have learned a dialect at home that is quite different, that is "incorrect" by the standard rules? Ghetto students are often faced with the choice of accepting the teacher's standards or retaining those of family and friends. Says William Smith, associate professor at Boston University's School of Education: "If a child is told the way he speaks is ignorant, he has only two options: ridicule or silence...
...professor of English at Temple University, writes vehemently: "To the extent that the establishment depends on the inarticulacy of the governed, good writing is inherently subversive ... Black English, the shuffling speech of slavery, serves the purposes of white racism." Of course, there is angry argument over whether black dialect is "the shuffling speech of slavery...
...born, in any event, right into comedy. Brooks was one of the four sons of Harry Einstein, a radio dialect comedian who performed under the name Parkyakarkus. At 15, Albert had got up his own act (a short-lived double with Joey Bishop's son Larry). At about the same time, he landed a job at KMPC in Los Angeles as a sportswriter; he made up most of the baseball scores. After studying acting for two years at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech, he took the family name of Brooks and became a TV comedy writer on a show...