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No what the hawk is he saying Maxine jags eleven

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one vernacular burn number burn tiling y'all dialing a couple

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All right well have you ever noticed that books don't

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always use english in the way your language arts teacher

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would prefer You know they don't always use complete sentences

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correct grammar or even spell things right Especially when they

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speak in the voice of that character What we have

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here is a classic case of first person narrative talking

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in the voice of the character to give you a

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sense of the guy or girl or siegel or stuffed

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animal or rocking horse telling the story Sometimes doing cell

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means breaking the rules of proper writing and rule breaking

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can be fun when done in the right way Syntax

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basically it's the way sentences air put together so that

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words makes sense It's the anti word salad A set

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of very boring rules you probably learned in english class

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to figure out how to assemble it sends the right

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way Get off those rules aaron place fly breakem why

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would any writer deliberately go against the rules that your

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english teacher is busy pounding into your head One big

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word characterization Well you've probably noticed how A number of

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characters don't talk the way that others do You know

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this guy is a big one so's this guy and

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this guy Well characters break the rules of syntax all

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the time and yet we still understand what they're saying

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Well syntax can usually be examined using one of two

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specific techniques word order and sentence length Word order means

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changing the placement of wards in a given sentence saying

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trying too hard you are instead of you are trying

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too hard for example the greatest practitioner of this technique

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esses yoda But it goes way beyond little green guys

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inside five films But if you applied correctly then the

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grammatical mangling doesn't matter you still underst and what said

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and the mangling actually becomes a delightful character affectation pro

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tip you've got to know the rules of grammar before

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you break him The other key aspect of syntax comes

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from sentence length Well some people use short sentences when

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they speak Check out hawk slinging short sentences my nose

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began to each it it's still the tears come into

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my eyes but i dass and scratch then it begun

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itch on the inside Next i got tow hitch and

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underneath puck spitting out about five words of sentence here

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which you might expect from a thirteen year old kid

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without much education Now my sentence length on the other

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hand Well just starting to stop take a look Well

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one night i creeps to dido posted late into dull

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won't quite shit in a hero mrs tail the widder

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she gonna sell me down to orleans but she didn't

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want to but she could get eight hundred dollars for

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me and it is such a big stack of money

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she couldn't resist I know we've got a lot of

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misspelling in there too We'll get to that for now

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Look at the differences between the way i talk and

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the way huck does well the length of the senses

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becomes a way of showing who we are and how

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we talk letting you know who's talking even if you

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aren't directly told which is why syntax is so important

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beyond sounding like jet i masters and resolutely refusing to

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use a period syntax shows us who the speaker is

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and what part of the world they call home We

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also know this as vernacular why use vernacular well for

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starters it's a quick and easy way to show us

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where a character is from someone who says he all

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probably from the south for example while someone who says

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by jove is likely from great britain and pretty annoying

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syntax and sentence structure worked the same way which is

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why twain sticks to the vernacular and huck finn huck's

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also a kid which means he doesn't know a lot

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of the five dollar words that tween did Look at

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the first line of the book you don't know about

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me without you have read a book by the name

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of the adventures of tom sawyer but that ain't no

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matter Ouch Seriously bad grammar there If you turned in

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a paper with grammar that bad well the failing grades

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would fall like rain And obviously smart guy like mark

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twain knew how to construct a sentence but he wrote

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this way because well it's how hot would talk talk

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wouldn't use big words So why should twain So yeah

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vernacular creates character at least helps twain can tell us

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that huck's a kid he comes from a certain place

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and even that he's kind of racist Through his use

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of slurs Well there's another rule in writing called show

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Don't tell the wren acura louse tween to show us

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all these things about hawk without having accountant just say

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he's a bigot from missouri with a fourth grade education

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Which brings us to another important part of vernacular use

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of dialect Well dialect is a particular way of speaking

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from a particular part of the world Why californians say

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whoa dude texan say howdy and people from the midwest

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say yeah that's right don'tyou know anyway dialect can become

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very detailed when you write specific characters In extreme cases

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you can identify one tiny little corner of territory based

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solely on where a character from that region maybe speaking

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believe it or not twain was going extreme on this

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one twin developed specific dialects for his character's Huck for

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example uses pike county dialect which is a county on

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the mississippi river between the cities of st louis and

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animal btw pike county is reald despite huck's hometown of

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st petersburg being totally made up If you read the

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book you'll notice that i speak in a much different

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dialect than huck does I was an escaped slave and

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the dialogue between used for me was called slave speak

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It stemmed from a lack of education and was part

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of twins Efforts to call out slavery is completely awful

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things as you can see have upped my game Most

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interesting bits of dialect in the book come from the

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duke and the king the con artist we get up

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on the raft they use a very formal dialect with

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a lot of complicated words However it's also clear they

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don't always understand the meaning of those words They're trying

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to convince everyone that their sophisticated when in fact they've

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just couple of buffoons again with show don't tell idea

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We know these two are deceitful and try to look

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fancier than they are without having to be told we

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have to listen to the way they talk well Part

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of making dialect sound comes from using colloquialisms which are

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specific phrases that are well overly familiar For example cap

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got too handy with his hickory is a colloquial way

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of saying my father beat me silly Using colloquialisms is

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a clever tool for keeping the dialect simple sounding like

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the characters would sound in real life While still keeping

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the dialogue interesting if pucks started every sentence with i

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don't expect or kindly lend me your wired era reader

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well you probably be throwing the book at the wall

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by the end of the first chapter But by varying

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the dialogue with colloquial terms twin khun do a number

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of nifty things one show readers how people talk in

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a given location to make the dialogue more interesting to

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read by mixing it up Three give the characters a

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distinctive personality when they speak Books like huck finn have

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a lot going for them which is why the language

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arts students get to read them instead of say twilight

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The way tween skillfully uses syntax is a tool of

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characterization is one reason this book is still being taught

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today not only to show us how the characters think

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and act but to give us a good idea of

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where they come from and to show us something about

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life in that place and time It's pretty slick if

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you can pull it off and it's just one of

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the little tricks tween used to make huckleberry finn all

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kinds of awesome Now if you'll excuse me i've got

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to bone up on my french colloquialisms while huck and

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i might just be planning another trip here in a 00:07:40.549 --> [endTime] few

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