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ruder than rude

02/28/12 13:37

Henry Alford, author of Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners, said on WLRN's Topical Currents today that asking people with accents where they're from is rude. The reason, he explained, is that these people may have lived here for a long time and probably want you to think of them as Americans, not, he said, "as Nigerians or Serbo-Croatians."

He got that right. Especially if they're Serbian. Or Croatian.

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1 comment

Comment from: Leonie [Visitor]
Leonie

oh Tom, this is PERFECT!!! I get SO tired of having to explain my English accent. Surely in a country like America, where a New Yorker and a Southern lay claim to the same citizenship but have different accents would understand that there really isn’t ONE accent for all the people on one island. The worst was recently when I mentioned I’d be visiting family in Wales and the person said, “Oh your accent is so WELSH". I am quite certain he had no idea where Wales was….

03/06/12 @ 14:29


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