So the dialect of Warrington, it's a little different from here, huh?
Right.
Just like my friends, they don't know what a pack of nabs is.
They call it a pack of peanut butter crackers, we call it a pack of nabs.
[Laughter]
Well, most my life I ended up like coming back and forth to Raleigh
so I'm pretty adjusted to the accent.
But a lot of people tell me I have a country accent.
Do you think you do?
Yes, but it's not indicative of Franklinton, I just have a different, my mom doesn't say
anything like me.
It's just the way I talk, I guess.
When I got here or when I go somewhere else, people can tell that I'm from an urban area
because I talk different, I guess, differently.
It definitely is a different dialect, 'cause I guess there's a certain slang to our words
that, how we talk in Durham, so.
Where is Chapel Hill?
Is it on here?
We took Chapel Hill off.
I was actually born in Charleston, South Carolina, and then I went to England when I was five.
So how do people react to your speech?
They don't understand why I don't sound like I'm from here even though I'm technically
from here, and that kind of stuff.
There's quite a good mix of different dialects, you know.
But nobody who speaks the Ocracoke brogue?
I don't believe I've run into anyone with some brogue yet.
Alright, have a good evening!
When I came down here I thought most people with Southern accents, there was only one
sort of "common" Southern accent, if you can say that.
And now that I've been here, I realize no, there's very different kind of dialects that
people speak with different twangs.
Some of them more pronounced than others.
Kentucky is technically the South and I have what some people would say is a Southern accent.
I sometimes say that the mountains are on my tongue.
And, you know, I think that if you embrace dialects, you're embracing people and different
cultures.
I feel very strongly that language is a critical part of how we acquire and learn culture and
so, to the extent that North Carolina State is an institution that serves all of North
Carolina and in that very broad sense, the language and the dialects, what you hear on
campus is part of the vibrant sort of environment that makes this truly a university.
I think that supporting language diversity is one of the strong points about NC State.
They always say, "I love your accent" and then we'll go from there, so where is this
accent from and things like that.
And then I will talk about Cameroon.
I have all ten colleges represented in my world population and through prospect scores
and many many countries.
So we use the linguistic diversity in my classroom to build trust and confidence and respect
and it makes all the difference in the world by the end of the semester.
It's fast, especially my advisor, I had problems getting almost half of what he was
saying but right now I'm good at it and you can hear I'm also getting some of the accent.
Well your dialect sort of depends on where you grew up at and that kind of defines you
as a person, but I don't necessarily think that it will define your goals or how you
act or what you do.
There are students here that, you know, sound like a stereotypical Southern person, but
they still attend a top university and, I mean I guess thats---
Yeah, they're still excelling, so definitely, I guess it breaks the stereotype or says that
like, you know, even if we are country or we're a farming school, we're the top.
We are intelligent so we're proud of that.
Born and raised in Hickory, North Carolina.
Growing up we were like the only Chinese family around.
I teach English 101 here so I get to teach students, like incoming first years, about
language diversity and about dialects and have them re-examine their own language prejudices.
You know, language is a part of their natural lives, so it's something that they can readily
talk about and, you know, embrace.
Issues of language diversity are really complex, you know they're interwoven with other issues
of race and sex and gender and they make up one part of our identity.
And it's really difficult to try to tease one from the other.
And so since we have a general awareness that it's not right to discriminate against people
based on sex, on race, on sexual orientation, these types of things.
We're just trying to raise awareness that part of all these other identities is really
tied up in the language that people use.
And when we do discriminate against people based on their language, we're also discriminating
based on their sex, their gender, their ethnicity, etc.
We're proud that we have students from all 100 counties in the state and we're equally
proud that we have students from 53 different states and territories in America and we have
students from 119 different countries.
So literally you can walk across this campus and experience a myriad of dialects.
Where else would you find this many people from so many different places in one little
spot?
Where finding the natives is hard.
Yes, it is very hard to find the natives.