While the content of Levy's speech is fascinating in its own right (especially the parts about the relation between language and identity), I post it here mainly as a warning to young Americans living abroad about how an extended stay in a non-English-speaking country can adversely affect your English speaking ability. Levy is obviously hamming it up a bit, pretending to be less articulate than he really is, but boy is his delivery weird as all get up.
The scary thing is, after a decade or two of limited exposure to demotic English, we're all bound sound like this. Levy is not the exception, he is the rule. (Trust me, I know many long-term ex-pats, and nearly all of them talk like this.) So make sure you fellow native speakers band together and form English-speaking support groups to keep this from happening. And when no native speakers are around, talk to yourself.
4 comments:
Hearing (seeing?) Sally Suzuki, who is usually so prim and formal in tone, use the phrase "weird as all get up" is, for me, weird as all get up.
His thorough enjoyment of his own faux alterity is breathtaking. What a dunce.
Please do not forget your native language. mother
I'm afraid this is very trivial, but I cannot help noticing it--this is the most ill-fitted toupee ever. Awkward inside out.
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