Can an dialect/accent make someone sound ignorant?

Dialect: Long Island, NY

Now when you think of A New Yorker, what is the 1st thing that comes to your mind? the accent, the attitude, the funny pronunciation of certain words? This is all true. Some people think that NY'ers are dumb or unintelligent because of the way we speak, but being a NY'er myself, I can vouch that that is not true. It's not our fault that we pronounce words like: coffee, mall, dog, water, long, and talk a little oddly, it just comes with the territory!

Borat Clip

Objective: 9th grade students have been studying different dialects and accents of various regions of the United States. The goal of the lesson if for students to determine if some of the sounds that they hear make the readers sound ignorant and why. Students will learn that accents and dialect originated from and also that they do not determine educational status or levels of intelligence.

Assignment 1: Read the link below that discusses dialects and its orgins. After reading the article, write a small paragraph about your thoughts and feelings about dialect. Why do you think we have different languages for each, state, country, region etc.

Dialect reading

Assignment 2: Listen to the sound link below. Does the woman sound educated to you? Why or why not? Pay specific attention to the way the speaker pronounces certain words.

New York sound link

Assignment3 : Look at the "Down South" cartoon (link below). It is a cartoon depicting Southerners as ignorant, uneducated and racist. What is your opinion of the cartoon? Write a 2 paragraph paper discussing what you've learned by studying dialect and whether or not it effects a persons intelligence.


Down South Cartoon

Final assignment: (The fun one!!!): Pick one or two partners and create a dialect using typical NY accents. remember the borat clip we saw (but keep it clean please!) and the sound byte that was read by the woman. Remember the words that we discussed at the beginning of the assignment that are pronounced differently. "A"'s and "O"s are big letters that are drawn out.