August 2010
70 posts
Something you don’t experience on the airplane, or even in the car, is the slow, gradual shift in accents across the country. The cacophony of the train, especially as each new batch of passengers comes on board, brings about new ways of speaking English. New pronunciations, new rhythms, new diction.
As we approach Chicago, the languages change altogether: Spanish, Mandarin, languages I...
There are two women on the Pittsburgh-bound train making their way to Montana.
“Montana, Pennsylvania?”
They laugh. They’re taking the 8-hour passenger train from New York, then they switch to a sleeper car that will get them to Chicago and straight on over to Montana for a one-week stay. I know nobody there and very little about the state.
“How are you coming...
