Six Things About Superman that I Miss, and Two that I don't

[Great Rao]

By way of interest, people in the United States have very different accents too, depending on where they come from: now, we know Clark comes from Kansas, so it would make sense for him to speak with his local accent. So what does Superman speak? Wouldn't it be a dead giveaway if he comes off as a Kansan too?

Yes, there are many different accents here in the U.S.  But just as there is an allegedly "correct" pronunciation of British English (which I believe at one time all students at Oxford University were taught and forced to speak) there is also an allegedly "correct" form of spoken American English.  American "Broadcast English" (or "Standard American") is what most television newscasters once spoke.  It also happens to be a mid-western U.S. accent with all regional vocabulary removed.  Since Kansas is in the mid-west, if both Clark and Superman spoke "Broadcast English," most likely no one would notice.

[Super Monkey]

Social scientists estimate the number of U.S. dialects range from a basic three - New England, Southern and Western/General America - to 24 or more . Some researchers go so far as to suggest it's actually impossible to count the number of dialects in the United States because under a loose definition of the term, thousands of cities, towns and groups have their own varieties or dialects.

The authors of American English explain it this way:

When people ask us what we do for a living, and we reply that we study American English dialects, one of the next questions inevitably is, "how many dialects are there?" This question is surprisingly difficult to answer, despite the fact that researchers have been investigating language variation in America for at least a century. Discrete boundaries between dialects are often difficult to determine, since dialects share many features with one another. In addition, even the smallest dialect areas are characterized by incredible heterogeneity. Speakers use different language forms - or identical forms at different percentage rates or in different ways - based not only on where they live but also on such factors as their social class, their ethnicity, their gender, and even whether or not they view their home region as a good place to live. Further, different dialect boundaries may emerge depending on which level of language we chose to focus on.
 - Walt Wolfram & Natalie Schillings-Estes
Listen to people in your town or in your neighborhood or social group. Do you use unique words or have a distinctive manner of speaking? Consider the following:


Dialect Myths and Reality
MYTH: A dialect is something that SOMEONE ELSE speaks.

REALITY: Everyone who speaks a language speaks some dialect of the language; it is not possible to speak a language without speaking a dialect of the language.

MYTH: Dialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.

REALITY: Some dialects get much more attention than others; the status of a dialect, however, is unrelated to public commentary about its special characteristics.

MYTH: Only varieties of a language spoken by socially disfavored groups are dialects.

REALITY: The notion of dialect exists apart from the social status of the language variety; there are socially favored as well as socially disfavored dialects.

MYTH: Dialects result from unsuccessful attempts to speak the "correct" form of a language.

REALITY: Dialect speakers acquire their language by adopting the speech features of those around them, not by failing in their attempts to adopt standard language features.

MYTH: Dialects have no linguistic patterning in their own right; they are derivations from standard speech.

REALITY: Dialects, like all language systems, are systematic and regular; furthermore, socially disfavored dialects can be described with the same kind of precision as standard language varieties.

MYTH: Dialects inherently carry negative connotations.

REALITY: Dialects are not necessarily positively or negatively valued; their social values are derived strictly from the social position of their community of speakers.

Additional Resources

Source:  Wolfram, W., & Schilling-Estes, N.  American English: Dialects and Variation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998.

[TELLE]

[ there is also an allegedly "correct" form of spoken American English.  American "Broadcast English" (or "Standard American") is what most television newscasters once spoke.  It also happens to be a mid-western U.S. accent with all regional vocabulary removed.

This is why so many Canadians are hired away a newsreaders for US networks.
 :wink:

[Genis Vell]

- I have always hated 2 superpowers: super hypnotism and super ventriloquism. I considered them very stupid!

- I miss the WGBS, Clark's apartment at Clinton Street, Lana Lang as an anchorwoman.

- Maggin wrote an issue of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN way back in 1978 featuring the Beetle.

- Bates wrote some of the best stories ever, it's a pity that in Italy he isn't well known. Sigh.

[Gary]

Six things about Superman I miss most:
[list=1]

• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Murphy Anderson, inking over Curt Swan
[/list:o]

[Permanus]

Six things about Superman I miss most:
[list=1]

• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Curt Swan
• Murphy Anderson, inking over Curt Swan
[/list:o]

I agree with the first five points, but on number six I'd have to go for Tex Blaisdell or Bob Oksner!

[alschroeder]

In all honesty, I considered Cary Bates a very "gimmicky" writer.  His stuff was--to me, anyway---workmanlike but shallow.  I preferred the character-driven Maggin stories.

I agree about the robots, at least as anthromorphic lookalikes. I think they had possibilities (it would have been interesting to see one of them guest-star in Metal Men, and it would  have been nice to see if they developed different personalities)---but taking Superman's place seemed useless. It was only intersting when they were turned against him. (There was an excellent Superboy story by Frank Robbins where Superboy had to fight ALL his Superboy robots at once, and was near-overpowered. Superboy's tougher than any one robot, but not all of them.) With my own character, the vehicles can "morph" into duplicates of herself---but just in general outline, not capable of fooling anyone. And larger duplicates can subdivide into smaller versions. (Actually, ad infinitum, within limits, certainly becoming microscopic nanobots...)

And to a certain extent, I agree about the super-intelligence. Indeed, my own webcomics character is an attempt to sort of take Superman's intellectual abilities (including super-memory and---aided by devices---super-hypnotism) and see where they lead.

I'm considering a short story where, similar to All-Star Superman #2, MM does a tour of HER headquarters, and how it would be like, yet unlike, the classic Fortress in many ways. (For one thing, it's in a pocket reality of her own devising...)---Al

[JulianPerez]

In all honesty, I considered Cary Bates a very "gimmicky" writer. His stuff was--to me, anyway---workmanlike but shallow. I preferred the character-driven Maggin stories.  

I love Cary Bates, but that doesn't mean I think he was perfect all the time. What springs to mind immediately:

1. Forgetting Chemical King's powers in the ERG-1 story

2. The ending of ACTION COMICS #502. Read it and see how it gimmicked away one of the greatest "oh, crap" moments in comics history

3. That time he had Chameleon Boy call himself a "confirmed batchelor." Actually, this isn't a minus, because on rereading it, I laughed so hard I nearly embarassed myself. Did Cary Bates just not KNOW what "confirmed batchelor" was a metaphor for?