And it is *too* English.
The "Cleveland"* dialect, spoken basically the same way in both the urban areas of the Great Lakes states, California, and western Oregon and Washington, is the standard dialect of American broadcasting (including CNN), and is the dialect of English with both the largest number of native speakers (and whose native speakers have the highest per-capita GDP of speakers of any English dialect). It also is the dialect which the Jargon File uses for pronunciation purposes. Thus, it is "English" in the same way as the Tuscan of Rome is "Italian" or the Castillian of Madrid is "Spanish" -- it is the gold-standard dialect by which all others must be considered variants of. All other variants are acknowledged (in the United States, at least) to be regional varieties of this one true tounge. Compare to London, which doesn't even have *one* standard dialect, and the idea that any other language (even the dialects of England) is standard English becomes obviously laughable.
And no, I am *not* biased because I was born in Cleveland and was raised in southeastern Michigan, both places where the Cleveland dialect is native. Only people other than me have biases: I know the one Truth. Which is that my dialect is better than yours. So there. :-P
*Called Cleveland because the major networks used to train personnel in this dialect in Cleveland. |
