Posted on 04/30/2013 2:41:40 PM PDT by AtlasStalled
"Unclaimed," a new documentary premiering at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival on Tuesday night, tells the story of Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson, who was shot down over Laos in 1968 and was long presumed dead.
The documentary actually follows fellow Vietnam vet Tom Faunce, who heard about Robertson's whereabouts while on a humanitarian mission and wants to find him. Faunce does track down someone claiming to be Robertson in a remote village in south-central Vietnam.
* * *
Whether or not the man is indeed Robertson remains unproved. But, as the Toronto Star puts it, the film "makes a compelling case."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Yes, it is possible. There have been many other cases - women captured by the Indians, etc.
Not so. I know people who came here as adolescents and young adults who have lost their native languages.
Sounds like your friend was immersed 24/7 in a Little Cambodia neighborhood for a good number of years. That’s the only possible way he could have lost his American accent while still living in this country.
I’ve known British people who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades, yet still have their native accent. Those folks were all immersed in a place where they never heard their native accent, yet they never lost their own.
Here’s one for you. My wife was born in the hollers of south-west Virginia and lived in West Palm Beach, Florida from about the age of five. A lot of Southerners will tell that Florida ain’t exactly “the South”. She moved out to California when she was 21, and we married when she was 23.
To this day, you can hear the hillbilly in her accent, though she hasn’t lived there since she was a small child.
Come to find out he was returning home (to Vietnam) after spending a couple of weeks visiting family in Texas (where he was originally from). He told me he was a Vietnam Vet who stayed behind and pulled out his wallet to show me why he stayed behind. He showed me photos of his Vietnamese wife and their children.
After all those years he still spoke with a Texan accent.
That's the strange part about it. He was only 19 or 20 at the time so he really didn't have enough time behind him to develop such an accent but I know it wasn't fake. He did spend 24/7 with the Cambodians and perhaps that and the fact that he was relatively young may have played a part in it. I always thought it was rather odd to see that happening. I think his environment and age had a lot to do with it.
I had an aunt Mary who was born and grew up here in Maine but married a WW2 Vet and moved to Chattanooga sometime in the late 1940s. Verbally she was a hillbilly by the time I was born and got to know her, even though she totally denied it. She'd poke fun of the way her kids talked and said she was glad she didn't pick up the southern talk. It was funny to hear her say that because she spoke the same as they did.
Maybe California is somewhat neutral with accents and there are so many people there from other parts of the country that there is no real dominant accent for the region which helped your wife to maintain her accent?
It's true that there are people from all over the country in California, but believe it or not, we natives really do have a unique accent. I found that out when I lived in England. When I first arrived there, I couldn't believe that every Brit I talked to, knew immediately that I was from California.
It was quite a reality adjustment for me, as I'd always felt that we Californians had sort of a bland, nothingburger accent. Thing was, I just couldn't hear it because I'm from there.
The point in my previous post about my wife's accent, is that she hadn't lived in the area that set her accent since she was a small child. West Palm Beach, Florida (where she grew up) is populated by people from all over the country, so the typical Southern accents are kind of washed out.
Nowadays, my wife's natural accent isn't as pronounced as when I first met her, but I think that has a lot to do with her spending the last fifteen years on the phone with our urbane clientele. When she gets on the phone with a real Southerner, you should hear her voice change. It's really interesting to listen to.
He started by telling me that (depending on the annexing of townships any given year) that Phoenix often times is larger in area than the city of Los Angeles. He told me that he measured it once by driving from one corner of Phoenix to the furthest away corner of Phoenix and it was something like 90 miles from point to point.
Because of the huge area he wondered why Phoenix did not have different accents like New York City does.
Then he asked me. "Did you ever notice how they speak like they're from Brooklyn in New Orleans?"
My eyebrows raised. "yes, I did. Why is that?"
He explained that there was once some kind of plague and many people died and they ended up importing a lot of Catholics from New York City to replenish the Catholic church in new Orleans and that's how the accent got there.
Not sure how true that is, but that was his explanation.
Very unlikely any adult American of the time, assuming they were educated and raised with American English and primary education in that language as their “milk tongue” would forget how to speak the language.
After reading about Georg Gartner, a German POW who escaped a prison camp in New Mexico to avoid being returned to the Soviet occupied part of Germany, I don’t doubt he could essentially forget English while immersed in another language. Gartner didn’t know English at first and didn’t speak until he felt he could without an accent, and after 40 years when he did “surrender” he had a hard time communicating in German again.
Interesting. I've never been to New Orleans, so it's news to me. I wonder if that makes New Yorkers feel more at home there.
Me neither. It was something I noticed from TV, radio or people I have met from there. One old gentleman who was a security guard for Humpty Dumpty potato chips company was talking to me and had this Brooklyn accent so I asked "You from New York City?"
"No, I'm from New Orleans"
That's just one of several examples.
BS story. See here;
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=35352
BTW, This blog is great at outing phony veterans and covering war related stories.
I met an Indian guy (from India, not Native American) in a hotel gym in Dubai a couple of years back. He spoke with an Irish brogue.
I asked him about that as he did not have a typical Indian accent at all, and if you closed your eyes, you would swear that he was an Irishman.
He said that he was a member of the minority Catholic community in India and attended Catholic schools where all Catholics spoke with an Irish accent.
It was very interesting.
Interesting indeed.
Also, hearing a black British man speaking English is a reminder to those racist liberals that skin color does not determine the intelligence of a person.
I found it interesting that you can get around easier in today’s Vietnam with English than you can in Thailand. I also noted that Vietnam’s English seems to be more like that of American English while those you do meet in Thailand that speak English speak more of a British English.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.