There was a discussion among some friends yesterday about My Fair Lady and the issue of class as communicated by language and vocabulary.
Part of the conversation revolved around black English and the dialect of the Black community which instantly reflects an outcast background.
My contribution to that issue dates from my years as manager of a black church. I was invited to one black party. It began at midnight and lasted until dawn when everyone left for work. Sleep had occurred from the end of work the previous day until the party started. While I knew black English from my work, I was not prepared for 100% of the conversation to be in black English. It took some time to get used to it.
I never list black English as one of the languages that I know. But it is a new language when you are fully immersed in it.
Which is not the point I was getting to in this blog.
I once had to rent out a family house in the nearby mountains. My father had built it. I found that having a weekend getaway was not appealing. It was in the fog much of the year. That meant washing the sheets and cleaning the house every visit to the house and extensive effort to close the house up when leaving. It was never ‘a place to relax’ in my mind, even though it was only a half hour’s drive out of town.
One of the people who wanted to rent the house claimed to be an art dealer. I asked him about the art he sold and about his favorite art. The weird thing about art is that knowledgeable people know how to pronounce the names of important artists, while people with book learning don’t.
This potential renter pronounced Van Gogh wrong and the same for Manet, Seurat and Degas.
People in the art field and those who took college art know how to pronounce these names. It is an insider vocabulary.
I didn’t rent to him. His vocabulary said he wasn't who he claimed to be.