The Influence of Accents.

“As a matter of fact, when you talk about pronunciation, there is no national standard even among white speakers, since the difference regional dialects of the country all have their own individual standards.”
- Smitherman, Geneva. “It Bees that Way Sometimes: Present-Day Sounds in Black English.”

I think out of all of the readings that I have read thus far this passage is the one that I relate to the best. This passage is talking about how no matter where you go in the country they are going to have an accent that is very specific to that area. The accent that they use is because of the way that they pronounce their words. For that area it is completely normal that they sound the way that they do and that is what is expected of them. This applies not only to whites but also to blacks. No matter where you go in the country they have these accents. For example the south has the very distinct southern drawl, while the Midwest has the Midwestern accent. Then there are also the ever popular New Jersey, California, Western and Eastern accents. Each of them are very specific to their area but are also very noticeable. In all of these accents the people talk with the same words and most of the phrases are the same. The difference is the way that they pronounce their words. In this quote Smitherman is just explaining this and is showing that the difference is not just between black and white English but that through out all of white English there are many differences in the way that they pronounce their words.
I relate to this passage because for me it is not that my home and school language are really not all that much different, it is just that I pronounce them different and with an accent. I have the Yooper accent and when I use it I pronounce my words very differently, then if I were to have just the straight up Midwest accent. I have also had friends from all over the country and these friends pronounce their words differently. They also are only pronouncing their words the way that they were taught when they were growing up. When I was little my neighbor’s grandson and I were childhood sweethearts and he was from Oklahoma and he had a very thick southern accent. One day he told my mom “Some day I am going to marry your daughter!” When he told her this it was with his accent and sounded very different then it would have if a boy from my school had told my mom this because he had a Yooper accent. The language would have been the same for both of them but the way that they pronounced it was very different. All English is the same it is just that there are different accents through out all of the country making them all sound differently.