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! 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 accent 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?
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