Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2738 talk.philosophy.misc:1648 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: <1830@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Date: 29 Nov 88 21:25:32 GMT Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA. Lines: 30 From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) >In article <1821@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes: >> but at least here >>a child of working class parents can become a professional >>without having to learn to disguise an accent. > >(c) A child of working class parents cannot become a professional in the > UK without having to disguise an accent. Maybe I disbelieve this > because I studied in Edinburgh, but I visited friends in Oxford where > there were N different accents, _and_ working-class students. I agree that this probably isn't the newsgroup for this discussion, but I will just make this one explanation of what I said. I didn't mean this as a universal absolute about the UK but intended to mock the spirit of Cockton's stereotypes of the US. I also studied at Edinburgh and at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. My statement was based on my personal experiences in the UK. I met professionals from the working class who had changed their accent. I remember one chap that as he drank more beer at the pub his accent changed from "BBC" to Geordie. There was definitely the idea that a proper physician simply could not speak with a working class accent. That certainly is not true in the States, where some of the most prominent neurologists I know have strong New York City accents, for example. Others sound like the Southern sheriff in "Smokey and the Bandit". While a Scots accent in Edinburgh was fine, I wonder how it would play in London? I found British society to be an order of magnitude more class conscious than that of the US, and accent was the main way you were typed. This may have all changed since I was there (1976), but I doubt it. No one should get the idea that I don't like the British. I had a great experience and made a lot of friends, but all cultures have their faults, not just the US, ok?