British Names (2)

Having dealt a little with the geopolitical history of linguistics necessary to understand the intricacies of English pronunciation it is worth digressing ever so slightly and dealing with the academic view that William Shakespeare actually spoke with a Midlands accent. This is of course incorrect because as we all know Elizabethans spoke in the loud and languid way so amply demonstrated by Kenneth Branagh. It is also a little know fact that Elizabethans never stood too closely to each other when conversing so as to avoid either receiving a clout round the head from an over-expressive arm or an eyeful of declamatory spittle.

Damn good show you’re not doing Shakespeare then!

But to continue with pronunciation: -

The bottom line is that the “a” in any secondary syllable of a word is vital. Pronounced “ar” is posh (eg Bad- carster). The short “a” is working class, which of course we all are! Beware however because a long and rolling “arrrr” is definitely not an epiglottal shortcoming but signifies really lowly farming classes in the outreaches of the country.

Returning to the specifics of the names that you listed: -

Merton-cum-Middlewick - (murten-cum-middlewick)

Badcaster - (BAD-caster)

Wathampton - (wat-HAMPten)

Lax - (lax) What on earth is the context here?

Merthyr-Tydfil - (MER-ther-TID-ville) if you are a non-welsh speaker. If you want to do it with a welsh accent I suggest you practice by stuffing your mouth with mashed leaks and hiccupping as you under- emphasise “TID”. Amateurs should keep a large glass of water close at hand – not to drink, but to throw in the face of the first person who dares to giggle. Hey, but never mind, practice makes perfect. Good Luck on this one!

Blatford  - (blat-ford OR better still BLAT-fud). Bit of a problem this. The former would emphasise both syllables equally – but this is posh. The latter is better. The southern bumpkin would say BLAT-fud, (or BLAT-furd if he were-a-muck-spredin) and the southern posh would also say BLAT-fud just to show solidarity with the great unwashed of the North and Midlands.

Chittendent-Cholmondley - (Chittendent-Chummley) I’m not even going to begin to explain this one! I think its just one of those things one knows - it's a birthright thing.

Ladysmith - assuming reference to Anglo-Boer War? (Speak as written!)

Lor’Lummy - Cockney meaning Lord ??? (It will have come from Gor’blimey or more likely “Lord Love Me”. As you’ve written it so you should say it). Actually better Lor’Lammy. You can use a touch or poetic license here and say co’r luv a duck – that’s a definite winner!

Leicester Square - LES ter Square. Correct!

 

Good Luck!

Oh, and let me know how it all goes . . . .

British Names

Some time ago I was asked to give some advice to a good friend who was about to direct a play written by a British dramatist. As an American she was concerned about the pronunciation of a number of English proper nouns. Aside from being something of a perfectionist I suspect that she was also anxious to forestall any potential criticism from a well healed American East Coast audience drawn from an academic background. I can’t remember the play, or the playwright, it clearly didn’t figure in my rather dodgy but well meaning advice to her which was as follows . . .

As a massive generalization the last syllable of a word tends to denote class, and by class we of course mean a geographically defined status. And the definitions are: - “South of the Midlands”, “The Midlands” and “The North”. This of course excludes Wales, Scotland and Cornwall all of which are, like Ireland, barely tolerated honorary members of the “British Isles” and only just about scrape into the species definition of homo sapiens and are generally regarded by the rest of the country as unreconstructed sheep stealers.

To the Midlanders “South of the Midlands” means a bunch of toffee nosed bastards with more money than sense. “Northerners” means an okay lot who somehow communicate with a set of incomprehensible accents which vary from village to village, but the pubs are great because at least we all drink the same types of beer.

To the Southerners “Midlanders” are essentially coal miners, nail makers and car manufacturers with an inexplicably difficult accent that few are capable of reproducing without sounding like part of the Pakistani diaspora (which might explain why many of the Pakistani diaspora settled there). “Northerners” are of course a bunch of madmen barely removed from their rapine Viking ways who somehow manage to communicate with a set of incomprehensible accents which vary from village to village, and eat black pudding (a sort of thin and foetid boerwurst or bratwurst fashioned from dried bulls blood and the innards of elderly cows) for breakfast.

To the Northerners “Midlanders” are barely tolerated, after all they are the product of a couple of centuries of sporting rape and pillage and are therefore almost of common stock. “Southerners” are of course the same as the French, and it is merely a historical accident that English (english!) is a common (common!) language. What Northerners have never understood is why no one else breakfasts on a sort of thin and foetid boerwurst fashioned from dried bulls blood and the innards of elderly cows.

Having dealt a little with the geopolitical history of linguistics necessary to understand the intricacies of English pronunciation it is worth digressing ever so slightly and dealing with the academic view that William Shakespeare actually spoke with a Midlands accent. This is of course incorrect because as we all know:-

Elizabethans spoke in a loud and languid manner
so amply demonstrated by actor Kenneth Branagh. 

It is also a little know fact that Elizabethans never stood too close to each other when conversing so as to avoid either receiving a clout round the head from an over-expressive arm or an eyeful of declamatory spittle.

Damn good show you’re not doing Shakespeare then!

But to continue with pronunciation: -

The bottom line is that the “a” in any second subsiduary syllable of a word is vital. Pronounced “ar” is posh (eg Bad- carster). The short “a” is working class, which of course we all are! Beware however because a long and rolling “arrrr” is definitely not an epiglottal shortcoming but signifies really lowly farming classes in the outreaches of the country.

Returning to the specifics of the names that you listed: -

Merton-cum-Middlewick - (murten-cum-middlewick)

Badcaster - (BAD-caster)

Wathampton - (wat-HAMPten)

Lax - (lax) What on earth is the context here?

Merthyr-Tydfil - (MER-ther-TID-ville) if you are a non-welsh speaker. If you want to do it with a welsh accent I suggest you practice by stuffing your mouth with mashed leaks and hiccupping as you under- emphasise “TID”. Amateurs should keep a large glass of water close at hand – not to drink, but to throw in the face of the first person who dares to giggle. Hey, but never mind, practice makes perfect. Good Luck on this one!

Blatford  - (blat-ford OR better still BLAT-fud). Bit of a problem this. The former would emphasise both syllables equally – but this is posh. The latter is better. The southern bumpkin would say BLAT-fud, (or BLAT-furd if he were-a-muck-spredin) and the southern posh would also say BLAT-fud just to show solidarity with the great unwashed of the North and Midlands.

Chittendent-Cholmondley - (Chittendent-Chummley) I’m not even going to begin to explain this one! I think its just something one knows - it's a birthright thing.
Ladysmith - assuming reference to Anglo-Boer War? (Speak as written!)
Lor’Lummy - Cockney meaning Lord ??? (It will have come from Gor’blimey or more likely “Lord Love Me”. As you’ve written it so you should say it). Actually better Lor’Lammy. You can use a touch or poetic license here and say co’r luv a duck – that’s a definite winner!
Leicester Square - LES ter Square. Correct!

Good Luck!

Oh, and let me know how it all goes . . . .

Interestingly I never got a report! 

Two Toes in the Water

I’m not complaining really.

So far I have created a blog and proudly posted this success. Since then I have managed to manipulate how it looks with a limited degree of success. The colour scheme is fairly staid and the typeface is safe and homely – but typefaces should be safe and homely. After lots of wrestling with cruelly slow Internet connections I have managed to download two iconic photos, one of Kilimanjaro and one of Yorick, both giants in their own milieu. Incidentally I think that en route I have lost my password, so it could be that this whole thing is destined to be a short lived affair.

I am sure that there are more exciting ways of presenting this stuff but for the moment I am content with the generality of the thing. I am even more content that I have selectively waded my way through tonnes of computer speak in order to reach this point.

Going through this exercise reminds me yet again how far behind I have slipped in my IT knowledge.

Once I prided myself in my abilities to pick up IT technology quickly and be able to manipulate it to my advantage, but no longer. I spend hours on what are laughingly called “Help” pages. Hours, because  what on first glance seems to be a fairly simple one page help script is actually littered with hyperlinked blue underlined words, phrases and even (heaven forfend ) whole sentences. These can’t be ignored because they go to the very root of the subject matter, at least they ought to. I spend these fruitless hours diving deeper into a labyrinth of layered web pages to the point where I cannot find a way back. If only I had a guttering candle I could follow the zephyrs of fresh air to the surface, or a ball of string that I had carefully unravelled as I slid down these dank tunnels that could guide me as I retrace my steps. But no, the reality is to hit the escape button yet again to be able to rise to the surface, bobbing up and down in the swell of computerdom clutching a couple of brand new definitions in my sweaty paw.

And there you have it. It’s all to do with language. Or rather jargon. I do accept that any new discipline or science needs to adopt appropriate and descriptive language but you’d think that some conformity would be adopted so that everyone can understand compuspeak. It seems that we have Googlish competing  with MSski. Both have the same language root but are different dialects. Which brings me elegantly back to spell checkers.

Why is it that even though I slavishly change the setting for new document templates on MS word  to anything but “English (US)”, it reverts within a day to endorsing “color” and “labor”? And it is still a mystery that the “Blogger” spell checker does not recognise “blog” bloggers” and “blogging” except when they are cosseted in inverted commas. Now that is interesting!

Enough of this though, there is plenty of future opportunity to continue this thread.

I have plunged a couple of trepidatious toes into the tepid and turbid waters of blogdom (that last word also comprehensively failed all spell checks). The time for navel gazing is over and some real blank and pristine pages await.

Toe in the Water

So - for someone who normally has bags to say over a good cup of coffee - or more dangerously a middling drop of red wine interspersed with cool beer, setting out to write blog for the first time is a salutary experience. All the more salutary, and if not a little odd for someone who bursts into essay form at the drop of a cat or a hint of a trip, and can wax over-eloquent and acerbically to any one daft enough to browse on face book.

Its a form I've poo pooed for a long time because I tend not to follow them - bloggers that is -  thinking that they are after all the musings of someone with nothing better to do than off-load random thoughts on to potential "subscribers". But there again the rational person allows that so after all did Charles Dickens, and before him John Aubery & Samuel Pepys, and latterly any number of nosey-parker paparazzi reporters actually do just that. Connecting the endeavours of long dead essayist and diarists with the gutter press is a little extreme, but there is no doubt that they would have been ardent bloggists, although their 'oft and spec'l forms of speling would have confounded the most diligent spell checker - especially the american ones that insist in simplifying our glorious idiosyncratic etymology.

On which subject this particular blog engine (if this is the right term) does not recognise the words "blog" or "blogging" or "bloggers", which is very peculiar. This is surely a valid subject for another blog about the tyranny of spell checkers and the conspiracy theory that Microsoft is in cahoots with the US Department of Homeland Security, or Department of State to insidiously erase the silent "u" from many words, thus removing the second person from labo(u)r (how daft is that), and disallowing a personal connection with colo(u)r (how sad is that?).

Well - having got that lot of blank piece of paper angst out of the way here goes . . . . . . and see if I can post this thing . . .