Favorite Quotes

[Ken Sheridan]

I have a dictionary of quotations which includes a section on telegrams. My favourite relates to a request by a journalist who was writing an article on Cary Grant and wished to include the actor's age, so he sent a cable to Grant:

HOW OLD CARY GRANT?

Grant replied:

OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

 

[RonPaii]

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization of little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is to late.

Thomas Sowell

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Don't try to translate it, it's completely meaningless. The trick is to say it out loud, but it's important that the French pronunciation is absolutely correct.

Here in Cajun country, saying it correctly is a bit of an ask...

But I'm not afraid to paddle my own canoe. And we have to remember to Dance to the Music as Sly and the Family Stone say "thank you falettinme bemice elf again."

 

[Ken Sheridan]

Here in Cajun country, saying it correctly is a bit of an ask...

Coming from Liverpool I had the same problem learning German. My tutor despaired at my pronunciation of Goethe's name. My Chicago born partner still finds my scouse accent an endless source of amusement. French is not a problem, however. If anything the Liverpool accent helps.

 

[NauticalGent]

Scouse <> cockney then?

 

[DickyP]

Coming from Liverpool I had the same problem learning German. My tutor despaired at my pronunciation of Goethe's name. My Chicago born partner still finds my scouse accent an endless source of amusement. French is not a problem, however. If anything the Liverpool accent helps.

Not surprised - the rest of us can't understand a Liverpudlian at all!

 

[DickyP]

I still like Terry Pratchett:

"If you trust in yourself and belive in your dreams, and follow your star . . . You'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things who weren't so lazy"

 

[Ken Sheridan]

Scouse <> cockney then?

Cockneys come from the east end of London, scousers from Liverpool. The word scouser is derived from lobscouse. It's OED definition is:

lobscouse /0ˈlɒbskaʊs/ noun. dial. & Nautical. E18.
[ORIGIN Corresp. to Dutch lapskous, Danish, Norwegian, German lapskaus: ult. origin unkn. Cf. loblolly. See also Scouse.]

A sailor's dish consisting of meat stewed with vegetables and ship's biscuit etc.

lobscouser noun a sailor L19.

In Liverpool we call it scouse. My great grandfather probably cooked a lot of it, as he was a ship's cook. He moved his family to Boston, Massachusetts and my grandmother was brought up there. For some reason he moved them back to Liverpool. Otherwise I might well have been born American, and now be eating hamburgers rather than scouse.

 

[Ken Sheridan]

Not surprised - the rest of us can't understand a Liverpudlan at all!

There are parts of Liverpool where even I have difficulty understanding people!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Accents are all relative. In the History Channel show Swamp People, which is shot in south Louisiana (on location always), the producers subtitle the lines that, to me, are perfectly clear. They are just spoken (unscripted) in rural English with a slight Cajun accent.

 

[DickyP]

Accents are all relative. In the History Channel show Swamp People, which is shot in south Louisiana (on location always), the producers subtitle the lines that, to me, are perfectly clear. They are just spoken (unscripted) in rural English with a slight Cajun accent.

As you say, it's all relative. We were on holiday from UK in South Carolina when there was a hurricane warning and state governor came on TV to warn people what to do. The next day we were talking to a local who said that he had a dreadful SC accent that most people didn't understand. and that she felt sorry for us However, we had followed him perfectly as his accent was very like "English" English.

 

[Isaac]

Accents are all relative. In the History Channel show Swamp People, which is shot in south Louisiana (on location always), the producers subtitle the lines that, to me, are perfectly clear. They are just spoken (unscripted) in rural English with a slight Cajun accent.

I sometimes wonder about this, in fact so much so that I believe I made a post to this end a few years ago when we were discussing accents.

Are all accents really relative - or is there, according to whatever you consider the authoritative source on the matter (a dictionary, for example) - one right way to pronounce the majority of words in a given language? For the sake of simplicity, let's keep this discussion to English and let's assume for the sake of argument that Merriam Webster's Written/Print Dictionary is an authoritative source.

They don't really have an entry in the dictionary, for example, that says:

"CAR is pronounced /kɑr/ unless you live in Britain then it's pronounced /kɑː/

... do they ??

Let's restrict the subject even MORE. Let's restrict it to English, within United States only.
They don't really have a dictionary entry that says this, do they ??

"CAR is pronounced /kɑr/ unless you live in Boston, then it's pronounced /kɑː/

I think not. Some accents really are less or more correct, given a premise restricting yourself to a given country's dialect of that language.

 

[Ken Sheridan]

Are all accents really relative - or is there, according to whatever you consider the authoritative source on the matter (a dictionary, for example) - one right way to pronounce the majority of words in a given language?

In the UK we have what is known as Received English. When I was young it was called Queen's English. This was the standard for broadcasting agencies like the BBC in the days when radio announcers wore dinner jackets (I kid you not!), and was English as spoken by middle or upper class people in the south east of England. Outside of that minority English was, and is, spoken with a wide variety of regional accents, and nowadays these are regarded as correct in any context. What is far more important is not the pronunciation of words, but the clarity of diction. You'll hear many different accents among broadcasters these days, but everyone, whichever part of the country they are in, will understand what's said.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Oh, Isaac - you know as well as I do that folks will try to put some spin on things to make them their own. And the biggest issue is that very few of us carry around a definitive reference - a dictionary with International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation guides. I remember getting a dictionary from the Winn-Dixie Grocery store that was a ginormous book you put together one section at a time for something like 20 to 25 chapters. Damned thing was literally either six or seven inches thick, fully assembled. Next time I need to pronounce something, I'll use the method we were all taught in grade school - look at and sound it out.

English is a flexible and forever growing language that changes a lot. You can expect all sorts of new words, coined phrases, and idiomatic constructs that weren't in last year's Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

Be grateful, though. If we were all German, their rules allow you to hang pieces-parts together. For instance, unabhangigkeitskrieg is a perfectly good word made by tacking together parts to make the "War of Independence". "abhangig" = dependence (hanging on to something), "un" is the negative - so if abhangig is dependence, unabhangig is independence, Then "keits" = a state of (in this case, the state of being independent), and "krieg" = "war." (Like blitzkrieg = "lightning war".)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

And then, there was My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn - with the song Why Can't The English -

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique
...
In France, every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed"
The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly

(with the last line spoken as an "aside" comment...)

If you have not seen that movie, @Isaac, I strongly recommend that you do. It will truly make you appreciate the English language.

 

[KitaYama]

And then, there was My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn - with the song Why Can't The English -

Since some people may have not seen the movie or have forgotten, here's the scene:

 

[Isaac]

And then, there was My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn - with the song Why Can't The English -

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique
...
In France, every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed"
The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly

(with the last line spoken as an "aside" comment...)

If you have not seen that movie, @Isaac, I strongly recommend that you do. It will truly make you appreciate the English language.

I will put it on the list, thanks! maybe i can watch it with my parents, i 'm going to visit them with my sister here in a couple days

 

[Isaac]

Oh, Isaac - you know as well as I do that folks will try to put some spin on things to make them their own. And the biggest issue is that very few of us carry around a definitive reference - a dictionary with International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation guides. I remember getting a dictionary from the Winn-Dixie Grocery store that was a ginormous book you put together one section at a time for something like 20 to 25 chapters. Damned thing was literally either six or seven inches thick, fully assembled. Next time I need to pronounce something, I'll use the method we were all taught in grade school - look at and sound it out.

English is a flexible and forever growing language that changes a lot. You can expect all sorts of new words, coined phrases, and idiomatic constructs that weren't in last year's Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

Be grateful, though. If we were all German, their rules allow you to hang pieces-parts together. For instance, unabhangigkeitskrieg is a perfectly good word made by tacking together parts to make the "War of Independence". "abhangig" = dependence (hanging on to something), "un" is the negative - so if abhangig is dependence, unabhangig is independence, Then "keits" = a state of (in this case, the state of being independent), and "krieg" = "war." (Like blitzkrieg = "lightning war".)

My insinuation, however dangerous it might be to say in the middle of a diverse and growing group (ha ha) is that, for example in the United States there are people who are pronouncing things more correctly than others - my Car example would prove that, supposedly anyway.

But yep - people not only believe their accent is correct, they're proud of it - they go beyond 'correct' and into that it's a distinct part of their cultural heritage, even if that means Boston vs. California (and even if that means Wrong vs. Right dictionary-wise)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

We have to also remember that some folks grew up in households with immigrants for whom vowel sounds and accenting patterns might be different than yours or mine because of their countries of origin.

I am frequently getting called down for not having a New Orleans accent (birthplace and home for 70+ years) OR a Cajun accent (wife's family) OR an Alabama accent (mother's family). My accent is American Midwest because when I was six, Mom and Dad both worked, so when I stayed home in summer, I watched network TV news shows - for which the primary NBC commentators at the time were Chet Huntly and David Brinkley - two men from the Chicago area, with a mid-west accent. My step-daughter, who is an elementary school teacher, told me that when a kid reaches six, he begins the phase of "rote learning" and that is also when accents start to form. Therefore, when you wonder where you got your accent, ask where you were when you were six, seven, and eight.

 

[Isaac]

that's interesting that you didn't pick up much of where your majority time was. i believe what your step daughter says, although I did notice I picked up a southern accent while living in Tulsa OK for 8 years, and more or less lost it after moving to AZ for another 20. I certainly have no midwest accent which is where I was when i was a child. then again, we didn't socialize much lol and my parents did not have that typical great lakes/midwest (like ohhh, ya know) type of accent so I guess your daughter is right, i ended up with basically no accent