Big. I never assumed I was smarter than you, look in my post and find where I said that or even implied it... I didn't, you are the one who assumed. You also assumed I was attacking you, I was not. If you remember correctly - in some ambiguous list on the General Forums, I expressed my fondness for you as a forum member. However, you did come out sounding like an elitist a-hole.
(Note: I never called you one, I was just observing that you came off like one - in my opinion - to whoever it was that said they liked Old School country)
You were very condescending to that person - calling their idea of music damaged - basing this on 2 lines of non-formal writing. I hate when people think they are the sole possessors of some great tome of musical knowledge. I hate elitists.
And now you have taken an offensive- I understand that you misread or misunderstood my intentions of pointing out that you were coming off in a manner that is not best fitting of you- and I wish that I could have explained that better. But you are wrong about dialect and accent. They are not the same thing. And I'm glad you looked up an online thesaurus in conjuncture with your "linguistic classes" - so, I will offer my own proof... and I'm sure you've read a book or two, as I have never doubted your intelligence and will not attack it, because I am without an inferiority complex in that manner.
In spoken language - in this context - this is the correct definition of "accent"
b. One determined by the phonetic habits of the speaker's
native language carried over to his or her
use of another language.
now.. dialect...
a. A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the
standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: ie.
C0ckney is a dialect of English.
Southern American English is a dialect of Standard American English
www.dictionary.com - do the 5 second search yourself if you don't believe me.
You see, the "PROOF" you had also includes lamens, and slang. Accent, when used as - oh he has a redneck accent - is SLANG. Not proper.
While I am sure you took SOME linguistic courses. Let me now flaunt my own expertise in the field - and I'll be a little bit less vague than your own claim.
I am a Theatre/Screenwriting double major. While at first glance that may not prove to be an impressive statement for this conversation- take a second to think about what that means. In case you've missed it - I'm an actor and writer, part of the trade of acting and writing is LO and BEHOLD speaking/writing in -accents/dialects... that being said, my schooling at the conservatory includes Accents and Dialects I, II, III- and Advanced Studies in Accents and Dialects... I have taken all of these classes, as well as attending more than 10 seminars given by reknowned experts on the subject of Accents and Dialects... if someone talks to me, I can get them
at least to the region of the state or country that they are from. Most of the time I can pin them to a city, and some times I can narrow it down to the section of the city (especially European accents).
Long story short. I know more about this particular subject than you do. I am not being elitist in this manner, I do not think I am better than you in any way, this just happens to be what I do on a daily basis, that I have been doing since I was 6 years old.
And as for "disregarding your points" - I did not disregard them, in fact I thought you were very well informed with your knowledge of the music theory. Therefore, I had no reason to bring them up. I was merely saying that, yes, country music as a genre was born right here in the South.
Well, I'm in Chicago now. But I'm from Georgia.