Tuesday, March 10, 2015

How to Improve Immigrant's English, 1940's instructional film.

See, the problem with the way you talk is, you're going, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.


The Sinhalese guy did seek out professional help, trying to fit in to society. He did bother seeking out the office with the unusually high doorknob. The phonetics instructor did analyze the situation as requested and he did provide the solution. Comments to this video on YouTube are entertaining. They are mostly divided between supporting the video made for its time and those condemning the video for surface racism.

All commenters agree the man is not hard to understand. There was no need for him to repeat his first inquiry about getting to 48 Paddington Street at Edge Way Road. That everyone says they understand the man shows how far multiculturalism has developed. It is not just immigration that produces this improved ear for exotic accents, it is also  media with technology and travel, more thoroughly penetrating cultural exchanges.

My all time favorite phrase in this cadence is Apu frustrated with Homer Simpson, "I.told.you.to.shuh.tup.and.you.are.NOT.shutting.up."

3 comments:

ricpic said...

The word racist is nothing but a weapon. There is nothing racist about the attempt by the speech instructor to instruct the immigrant on the rhythm of an english speaker. In fact he is giving very valuable advice. The only proper response to the smear merchants who are all about and only about shutting up any opposition fro their totalitarian agenda is contempt, utter contempt.

ricpic said...

Hey Lem, could you please add an edit feature so I could correct my brilliant but error prone posts?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I don't know, I don't think that is available.

I think you have to delete and start over.