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Language Variation
Task B - our answer to question 1
We have highlighted / emboldened the words we have changed for ease of
reference.
(1) With a small
screwed up protestant face and
a head of black hair I was born,
in a state of original sin. (2) My
mother didn't like me, but who's
to blame the poor woman, because
I didn't look like a catholic
child at
all.
(3) The state of original sin didn't last long. (4) That's one
good thing about my mother. Maybe
she didn't like me but by god she did
her duty by me and
didn't leave me lying
there in the clutches of the devil.
(5) That very day I was taken
to the chapel at the top
of the town by my
godmother, who my
mother didn't like either, and
her husband who could have been me uncle if me ma had
married his brother who was handsome
and beautiful and everything
my dad
wasn't. (6) But my mother,
on a point of principle, jilted him, and
he went to England with
a broken heart and married an
old woman and
made a lot of money.
The grammar of sentence 5 in particular is also rather loosely structured,
but this does not seem to be a regional dialect feature as such. Rather
it is probably an attempt to indicate that the narrator is not well educated.
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