[PRCo] Re: English

[John Swindler]

>Fred Schneider reminded us:
>
>Remember the lyrics from The King and I ..."Why can't the English learn to 
>speak?"  I've never heard any well spoken English man or woman butcher 
>number and case like you mentioned.  Of course, the British are known for 
>many years for discriminating in employment if a person cannot properly 
>speak the language.  The them of The King and I  has not changed a bit.  If 
>you listen to the morning or evening news on BBC in England, the language 
>is so close to what we understand that you would hardly know you were in 
>Britain.
>

I suspect that radio - and even more so TV - have tended to erase these 
regional dialects.

When we visited England earlier this year, came across a newspaper article 
that mentioned that the BBC tried to hire speakers from the vicinity of 
Yorkshire (I think a weather-reporter was the article's subject) because 
people from that area had the least accent.  (sorry about my grammar, but 
I'm from Pittsburgh, so I'm allowed to have butchered grammar (:>))

Likewise, we were at a B&B north of Stirling a few years ago and found it 
impossible to follow the conversation of another guest from Glasgow.  And I 
also remember having some trouble following the "dialect" of a merchant in 
Exeter until I dropped a (pounds) 20 note from the Bank of Scotland for a 
purchase.  Amazingly, the dialect immediately disappeared.

John



>In the same song there was a line, "The French really don't care how they 
>speak,  as long as they pronounce it correctly."
>
>And then there was there were the two stanzas, in speaking of English, 
>"Some places they really don't know how to speak English.  Why in America 
>they haven't used it for years."
>
>And I love the fact that you spoke of American's using a totally separate 
>language called American.      Perhaps Eubonics (remember that one?) is as 
>close to American as the latter is to English, and as English is to Cockney 
>or Bristolean.
>
>Bob Rathke wrote:
>
> > I just returned from a week of meetings in New York City.  The business
> > sessions featured three British speakers, and it was two days before I 
>got
> > used to their handling of singular and plural verb forms.  Example: "The 
>car
> > are on the street",
> > "The subway stations is uptown"...  The lone Frenchman spoke slowly and 
>with
> > an accent, but he used proper English.  Same for the Swedes.
> >
> > The Americans spoke perfect American.
> >
>-- Trailing quotes stripped by Listar --


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