A-comin' to set the record straight

National Review, Oct 20, 2008 by Richard L. Leed

Rob Long has such a good ear for the varieties and styles of American speech that I was disappointed in his otherwise amusing piece on Sarah Palin ("The Long View," Sept. 29). It ends with her saying, "We're a-comin' to gitcha!"

The lack of a final "g" on "coming" is certainly accurate; she drops them "like there's no tomorrow," as one friendly reporter put it. But in general she speaks a normal variety of northern-continental standard American, without prefixed "acomin'." And forget "git" for "get." She doesn't fake down-homeyness.

Long's linguistic characterizations fit Mrs. Obama's speech more closely. In a brief clip I viewed, she says "attinned" for "attend," "whirl" for "world," and "git" for "get." However, I think she may be trying to code-switch, as the linguists say--she tries to change her "Iraq" from real-people "eye-rack" to elite "ee-rock," but comes up with "eye-rock." So maybe she's as phony as her hubby.

Richard L. Leed

Ithaca, N.Y.

ROB LONG REPLIES: I confess whole-heartedly to taking liberties with Palin's dialect--I was going for a kind of Annie Oakley vibe, a go-getter frontiersgal sort of thing. Artists of my stature--your Oliver Stones, your Al Gores--occasionally have to bend the facts to suit the joke.