...love, with an accent

Lord, your church on earth is seeking your renewal from above;

teach us all the art of speaking with the accent of your love.

We would heed your great commission: “Go now into every place;

preach, baptize, fulfill my mission, serve with love and share my grace.”

---Hugh Sherlock, 1960

I am always interested in the decision of television directors and producers---mainly of news, documentary, and reality programming---to decide to use subtitles to “translate” the speech of characters or interview subjects with broken English or thick accents. I am continually amazed (and amused) by the great diversity of ways that we speak “American English”---cultural, regional, and even generational differences. Yes, generational---I sometimes think folk of a certain age might need subtitles to understand the everyday slang of teens and twenty-somethings, and I know for a fact that lots of the lingo of 'seasoned folk' go right over the heads of young whippersnappers out there! One of the most humorous choices, to a (mostly) southerner like me, is subtitles applied to a thick southern accent---how could anyone have trouble understanding that?!

I think what fascinates me is accent. People who specialize in training actors can sometimes isolate and identify accents not just by country or region, but by city, or even borough or neighborhood in the case of New York City. They can train actors to speak with the dialect of a certain location, a certain people group, a certain era.

Imagine with me what the sound might be of all of us speaking with love’s accent. What would our voices sound like? What words would fill our vocabularies? What tone, what timbre would govern our speech? How does love sound, translated into everyday language? Would the world recognize love’s accent on our tongues?

Would we need subtitles to translate love?