Friday, August 10, 2012

Act One

              The play opens up with a mother and a daughter trying to find a taxi in pouring rain. Then a flower girl comes into the scene trying to sell flowers. She has a quite particular dialect and is really persistent. Then an old gentleman comes into the scene exiting from the rain. The flower girl tries to sell him flowers as well. Then the gentleman points out that there is a note taker in the shadows; the company all thought he was an undercover cop. However, every time someone spoke he said where they were from. Everyone thought this was rather particular. Everyone started to clear out except the note taker, flower girl, and the older gentleman. The gentleman and the note taker both realized who they were. The note taker was Professor Henry Higgins and the gentleman was Colonel Pickering. Higgins explained he studied dialects and could change a lower class dialect into a high class dialect. The flower girl is very interested in this and asks him about it at the end of Scene One.
       
            After reading the first Act of Pygmalion I was thinking how Professor Higgins could tell where somewhere was from their speech, but after thinking about it a while i realized it was very easy to tell where people are from based on their accents. For example, there are accent regions of the United States, and we can tell which part of the country people are from, from their accent. The two pictures below relate to the first act because you can tell where people are from by their accents. The second picture is a spoof on the "Keep Calm and Carry On" from the Hunger Games. It's saying how easy it is to change ones dialect like Professor Higgins does.
This map shows all the dialects of the United States.


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