American Tongues Film Commentary

The film American Tongues discusses different accents and dialects in the United States. The movie focuses on the way people perceive others with different accents. There are many stereotypes that are associated with different accents. People might judge you by the way you talk and how you say it depending on their accents. People might not like someone because of their accent therefore people are quick to pass judgment. They also make judgments about a specific area due to their accents. People might make fun of you, laugh at you and associate stereotype with you based on your accent. For example, there’s a lot more prejudice against a Southern accent than there is against any other kind. In the Northerner’s mind, a southern accent equals both ignorance and racism and you’ll see that stereotype reinforced in zillions of old movies. Slow-talking Southerner who’s the butt of all the jokes in the military movie. And that’s a stock character in American movies and it really has reinforced the prejudice against the southern accent. Before watching this movie, I didn’t know American will also make fun of people who speak English with regional accents. Because I didn’t grow up in the USA and It is hard for me to tell if the people have regional accent or not.

I grew up in China and my mother langue is Chinese. English is my second language, and the English I speak people name it Chinglish. I experienced any negative reactions to the way I speak English. In my daily life, sometimes I discussed projects with my classmates, some of them will frown and asked me to say it again and some of them will ignored what I said, which makes me feel very upset and stupid. But sometimes, some American didn’t show prejudice against my English, they were willing to talk with me and think my English is good and ask me how I learn it. Besides, one of my