Thursday, April 17, 2014

Dialect Accuracy

           Today in America our literacy rate is 99% so we don't exactly see a lot of illiterate people here, like the slave that Huck befriends named Jim. I wanted to point out the accuracy with which Mark Twain would have formed Jim's dialect. Mark Twain's father was a slave owner, so Twain was around the slaves quite a bit and recalls listening to the slaves tell stories and sing. Although Twain stretched the truth sometimes, I don't believe he'd stretch Jim's dialect for the purpose of the book. Twain was exposed to the true dialect of slaves in his childhood.

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