American Tongues

Jun 24, 1987

0h 57m

★ 7.0

A film about the way we talk

Overview

Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak. From Boston Brahmins to Black Louisiana teenagers, from Texas cowboys to New York professionals, American Tongues elicits funny, perceptive, sometimes shocking, and always telling comments on American English in all its diversity. (PBS)

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Center for New American Media

American Tongues Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

No Cast found.

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10.0

We Will Speak

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The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a State of Emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 2,000 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The covid pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and the youth must now lead the charge of urgent radical revitalization efforts to help save the language from the brink of extinction.

No Image Available

10.0

Noam Chomsky: Knowledge and Power

Oct 23, 2015

An in-depth look at the work and views of the man described as 'one of the greatest minds in human history'. He first emerged through his pioneering work in linguistics in the 1950s but later became a political activist and a critic of US foreign policy in Vietnam, its neo-liberal capitalism, and mainstream media. Consisting primarily of interviews with Chomsky and other writers, academics, philosophers, social commentators and broadcasters, this film explores the breadth, originality and importance of his work; and the alternative narratives he has advanced at some of the most critical periods in recent history.

6.9

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A series of interviews featuring linguist, philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky done in hand-drawn animation.

7.6

If These Knishes Could Talk: The Story of the NY Accent

May 16, 2013

The story of the New York accent, as told by New Yorkers.

0.0

To Save a Language

Nov 20, 2020

Linguist Indrek Park has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan tribe, who live in the prairies of North Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri River. The job involves a lot of responsibility, and he is running out of time – his language guide, the 84-year-old Edwin Benson, is the last native speaker of Mandan.

0.0

Running Fields

Oct 30, 2024

Three images of a person running in the void through the movement of speed and abstract images

0.0

CodeSwitching

Jun 24, 2019

CodeSwitching is a mash-up of personal stories from three generations of African American students who participated in a landmark voluntary desegregation program. Shuttling between their inner-city Boston neighborhoods and predominantly white suburban schools in pursuit of a better education, they find themselves swapping elements of culture, language, and behavior to fit in with their suburban counterparts – Often acting or speaking differently based on their surroundings, called code-switching.

0.0

Running Fields II

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Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.

0.0

Talkers

Nov 8, 2016

The three speakers represent two of the dialects, with the most common one - the middle dialect spoken in Riga and central parts of Latvia - not featured in the film. In intimate surroundings, a farmer, a schoolteacher, and a herder of ostriches talk about perceived differences between Latvian speakers, and about language policy and their lives.

0.0

Running Fields IV

Dec 13, 2024

Twenty-four images of a camera running in the woods, a moonlight and a cemetery through improvised gestures, mechanical abstraction and saturated colors

0.0

Running Fields III

Nov 29, 2024

Twenty images of a camera running next to a chemical platform and capturing abstract light throught improvised gestures and asymmetrical motion

0.0

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0.0

Omegäng

Jan 19, 2024

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4.0

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0.0

At a Traffic Light

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We all have a dream... Nelson's dream is to learn how to read. He works at a traffic light in Maputo selling car products to people who stop. Every week a teacher joins him and all the others like him to teach them. With the hope of learning, Nelson never misses a class. It is with the hope of better days that Nelson lives.

No Image Available

0.0

Anton Habovštiak - Oravským chodníčkom...

Jan 1, 1995

No overview available.

9.0

The Unanswered Question II : Musical Syntax

Jan 11, 1976

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: Syntax refers to the study of the structural organization of a sentence, or as Bernstein summarizes, "the actual structures that arise from that phonological stuff."

American Tongues

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

American Tongues Trailers

Cast

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