SSC: The voice

[muckefuck]

As a linguist, I know that no particularly way of pronouncing English is inherently superior to any other. As a person, however, I am so totally gay for certain accents. Particularly certain British accents. Is the result of early and prolonged exposure to Masterpiece Theatre? Of too many viewings of Another Country and Maurice during the impressionable years of puberty?

Whatever the reasons, we had a visiting prof from London stop by the front desk today and make me his bitch with the first words that came out of his mouth. It wasn't just his plummy Basil Rathbone Home Counties accent, it was the whole twee, well-mannered, self-effacing, quinquagenarian Hugh Grant package it was wrapped in. I must've spent a fifth of my shift trying to impress him with my knowledge of the ins and outs of our institution. (Backfired a bit when I forgot how to spell "O'Faoláin".) It was a surprisingly busy day, so this meant having to deal summarily with various minor interruptions. "What do you want? Down the hall and on your left! Now, as I was saying, sir..."

For my pains I was rewarded with a lot of charming twinkles and a some amusing comparisons to the British Library. He recalled perusing Fanny Hill in their reading room several decades ago and having the custodians pass by at regular intervals, presumably to ensure he wasn't getting too excited. "I don't know if they had concealed water pistols to cool me off if I was getting too overheated or what." I swear, one or two more anecdotes like that, and I'd be begging my bosses for time off to pick up his dry cleaning. Limey bastards and their hypnotic powers of speech!

Comments

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

RP?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I was avoiding that term because for some people it conjures up the repulsively snooty diction of the Queen's generation, whereas this was what Wells calls "progressive RP". Call it the "BBC English" of a generation ago.

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Got it.

My favorite example is in Scots novelist Alasdair Gray's book Something Leather. Joe Bob says check it out.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Did you get his name? And his department? It would be totally legitimate for me to contact him and get him to sit for a recording for me-- which I'd love to do...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You better believe the cyberstalking began the moment he left the desk! Check your e-mail for details.

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

See a home counties accent completely rubs me up the wrong way. I think it's the smugness that goes with the territory. Particularly teenage girls with the accent. I want to pull their long artfully-tousled but expensively-highlighted hair, and stamp on their smug little faces. And I'm a pacifist vegetarian.

I also used to work at Oxford University, and encountered some of the rudest, most childish and unreasonably entitled people I had ever come across there. There's nothing like being dismissed as "common" (of which I am nothing of the sort) and treated like a skivvy to set your mind against the accent. It's my "ou"s that give my Medwayness away I think, haaas vs a nice round house.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See, this is my reaction to excruciatingly posh RP, but a regular educated superregional accent doesn't have that kind of baggage for me. I'm rather sad to see Estuary English spread at its expense, even though this does represent something of a welcome class leveling on the march.

And, trust me, I'm no stranger to unreasonable entitlement, I simply associate it with a completely different set of a verbal and non-verbal cues. Less than an hour before meeting our tweedy little don, I'd been joining a friend in lunch and slagging the whiny EBs who assault our offices. Nothing gets on my nerves quicker than a grown woman who tries to wheedle me into doing something by adopting the modes of expression of a spoiled child. Die in a ski accident, wenches!

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

As someone from the genuine Thames Estuary, fake estuaryness pisses me off. People who try to put it on because it "sounds cool" also tend to be the people who make fun of me for being some kind of cockney (which I'm not).

Listen to Billy Childish rekkids and you'll hear a good Medway accent.

When I was back in Medway I was teaching a Russian woman, who was taking advanced classes, and I had to give her lessons on being able to understand the accent. Poor woman, spent all those years learning such flawless english, and then had to learn to understand english with all the word endings cut off, with the vowels replaced with aaaa and spoken at machine-gun speed. I also had to give her lessons on mumbling and umming and erring (highly discouraged in Russian) and their usefullness in English English.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

My wife went through this, too... although she got her own back, when I had to deal with Carioca - the accent stopped me cold for about a month, until I'd worked out some pronunciation rules.

I met some utter dickheads at Oxford, but I'd still rather be there than at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, which combines the same entitlement with a disturbing, Stepford Wives conformity that made me suspect midnight lynchings.

[nitouche.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've read porn in the British Library too. To give them credit, they only made me blush once (when supplying me with "Lady Bumtickler's Revels" -- I grant they had great forbearance otherwise). But things have lightened up with Private Case texts considerably.

I'm curious who he was too!

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

So, did you catch The Bachelor: London Calling on ABC last nite?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'll assume that's a rhetorical question and take no offence.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

I hear he's come to America to take all our women, plus he has a lovable South-West London accent.