Ken, over at Digital Common Sense, blogs about Rageboy’s post about Why I Blog. And They Don’t.
Both are amusing and worth your time.
However, the thing that kinda struck a chord was Ken’s comments about geography and how irrelevant it is to blogging and the blogosphere. Ken’s right, of course, the internet does make geography a non-factor, but I often wonder what all these people whose blogs I read regularly sound like. What accent do they have? I love accents, particularly ones I can actually understand (and anyone who’s tried to have a conversation with someone who speaks in a strong Glaswegian brogue knows what I mean).
When I was over on Sweet Addy, I tried to organise an audio-book. We were gonna each read a passage of a short story or something and then I’d put them together on a CD and distribute it to everyone. Of course, trying to organise a large group of people via the net is a bit like herding cats. We managed to decide that we were going to do one short story, but fell over on trying to decide which. Many people were keen on doing The Story of Ferdinand because Elliott has a tatt of Ferdinand, but there were almost more participants than words in that particular story, and no one could come up with another choice. I fancied doing something by Neil Gaiman, but only one other person on the board had heard of Neil. Philistines.
But I still like the concept of having spoken word files that illustrate the wide variety of accents of the people I have come across on the net. Maybe it should become de rigeur for all bloggers to put together some sort of mp3, just for the terminally curious, like me.
Suw, I wonder if that desire to hear how other net contacts sounds is driven by your interest and background with languages? Here in the states we seem to be so mono-lingual that we don't often take the time to appreciate the nuances of other languages and the sounds associated with them. Some are lyrical, even musical. Some sound gutteral and almost harsh in ways. Yet the all add so much flavor to the sounds around us.
Or perhaps it's my telecommunications background that just looks at the sound of voice as another input stream sometimes. I don't know.
Your comment made me step back and appreciate once more the diversity of language we're all exposed to. I wish the net were somehow more supportive of exploring differences in language.
Ken [ken@ipadventures.com]
I'm not sure, maybe you're right. I've always had a fascination for accents, and am a reasonable mimic, although I've never been able to properly nail an American accent.
Maybe it's got something to do with the UK having such a wide variety of accents – from Cornish to Scottish, with every shade in between, you just can't escape accent here. Even though the BBC would like us to believe that everyone speaks as if they come from the Home Counties.
But you remember A Fish Called Wanda? yeah, that's me… 😉
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