I came back in to make the bed and found all the animals strewn around the bed, sleeping. Kind of a relaxing sight.
#2 daughter was telling me today that she had used some expression in a group setting and been scolded a little bit. “It’s okay for So and So to say that,” she was told, “because he’s from Texas. But you–”
At this point she jumped in and reminded the speaker that she is in fact a Southern girl.
People are sometimes surprised when an Asian person is from the South. I don’t know why.
Anyway, the point at hand was authenticity. It is, the speaker figured, okay to use Southern expressions if you are from Texas, but not if you were a Midwesterner. I was interested by that. Apparently, if I said, “Yo,” or “word is bond,” when I am not from New Jersey, it would be inauthentic. Not that I do.
I find this an interesting concept. In English, we routinely use loan words — words we’ve picked up from other languages. That’s why we have so many words. English speaking peoples have rampaged all over the earth, picking up words. Then people came to our English speaking country bringing their words. I think this is good. We can talk about ketchup all we like without doing any harm to Malaysia.
This is not the case with all of our imperialist behavior.