=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 7, no. 57 (22 February 2002) Editorial mailing list (digest version) Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A [2sa] Aitches and assle =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2]-- Q & A -------------------------------------------------- ** [2sa] Aitches and assle Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: Jane Lyle, jlyle@indiana.edu David Ibbetson wrote: > I gather that New England, especially Boston, is a center of > the 'erb pronunciation Erb is the usual pronunciation throughout the U.S. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: John Crane, jcrane8@bellsouth.net Viviane Lowe wrote: > Also on the topic of "h" : as a speaker of American English > (oops, should that be North American??) I cook with "erbs" > whereas my husband drinks "herbal" tea. My understanding that dropping the h in pronouncing "herbs" and "heir" is the correct (at least more correct) pronunciation in American English. I think I succeed with "heir"; I'm not sure I always do with "herbs." ---------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: Viviane Lowe, vivilowe@bluewin.ch David Ibbetson wrote: > The hw pronunciation is a sign of the Scots and Irish and > immigrants from these areas. It frequently survives in their > children and in those taught by hw speakers. Yes indeed my mother (from whom I get the hw) is from Boston, but most emphatically of old English stock. My grandmother's generation all spoke what I think used to be called "mid-atlantic" English (think Katherine Hepburn). And they definitely hw-ed. Do the English really make no difference between the Prince of Wales and the prince of whales? I remember a programme heard on the BBC years ago about reconstituting "historical" dialects - a dialect coach for films gave an impression of how George Washington probably spoke, and he sounded (to my admittedly untrained ear) very irish/ scottish (definitely Mass and not Mahss). Has American English perhaps retained some more ancient English pronunciations, while british received pronunciation (i.e. upper-class) developed all those plummy vowels? ---------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: Peter Best, pbest@idl.net.au My Gog (from North Wales, now living in New South Wales) brother-in-law also uses "hw" for "what/which" etc and is very aware of the Australian tendency to use the straight "w" pronunciation. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: John Crane, jcrane8@bellsouth.net Viviane Lowe wrote: > I remember a programme heard on the BBC years ago about > reconstituting "historical" dialects - a dialect coach for > films gave an impression of how George Washington probably > spoke, and he sounded (to my admittedly untrained ear) very > irish/ scottish... I'm sure our founding fathers talked with what would sound somewhat like a British accent to modern Americans. They were only separated from England by a generation or two, and many of the wealthy ones were sent to England for education > Has American English perhaps retained some more ancient English > pronunciations... I've read that it indeed does, especially the speech of the backwood Appalachian Mountains. At least it did as recently as a few decades ago; television may be wiping out those remnants. I understand that upper-class Southerners, until that class was pretty much destroyed by the Civil War, spoke with somewhat of a British accent. Again, many of the kids were sent to England for schooling. Anyway, casting British actors for some of the major roles in Gone With the Wind may not have been too unreal. ---------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@rogers.com Viviane Lowe wrote: > Do the English really make no difference between the Prince of > Wales and the prince of whales? I pronounce wales and whales alike. > I remember a programme heard on the BBC years ago about > reconstituting "historical" dialects American and Canadian English have retained the country dialects and accents of the immigrants. Few of the early immigrants were upper class. They were mainly country men and women. Since WW2 Americans have been more outward-looking than formerly and have absorbed words and accents from the countries their soldiers were stationed in. British English has absorbed words and accents from all over the Empire. Received Pronunciation is said to have been affected by George I's strong German accent. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: Drusilla Calvert, d.calvert@macrex.com John Crane wrote: > My understanding that dropping the h in pronouncing "herbs" > and "heir" is the correct (at least more correct) pronunciation > in American English. I think I succeed with "heir"; I'm not > sure I always do with "herbs." My English pronunciation is "herbs" but most definitely "'eir" - or at least I don't know anyone who pronounces the H in heir - too easily confused with "hair" I would guess. However, there are plenty of English accents/dialects which drop all initial aitches - and some which add them to some hinitial vowels (not just "haitch"). And fratefully posh people of a certain age talk about an 'otel (but I think that may have more or less disappeared - correct me if I'm wrong!). Viviane Lowe wrote: > Do the English really make no difference between the Prince of > Wales and the prince of whales? I certainly don't (I'm from southern England) but most Scots do. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: John Crane, jcrane8@bellsouth.net David Ibbetson (native of Great Britain and resident of Canada) wrote: > I pronounce wales and whales alike. The best I can tell, so do I (native of Mississippi and resident of Florida) I'd like to add that the several threads on pronunciation here are fascinating. How often do you have a group representing the major English-speaking countries -- Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and the U.S. -- in one place making comparisons? ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: Lane Lester, llester@simpub.com John Crane wrote: > > I pronounce wales and whales alike. > > The best I can tell, so do I (native of Mississippi and > resident of Florida) But I, a native of Florida and resident of Georgia, pronounce them differently (I add the h sound to whales). ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: Jane Lyle, jlyle@indiana.edu John Crane wrote: > How often do you have a group representing the major English- > speaking countries ... in one place making comparisons? Pronunciations are a common topic on Copyediting-l, too, so a subscriber to that list has recently set up a Yahoo Groups repository for sound files. Now those of us for whom "marry," "merry," and "Mary" are homophones can listen to others pronounce those words differently! You must be a subscriber to CE-L to subscribe to CE-L Sounds, but you can subscribe and then set yourself to nomail if you don't want to be caught in the heavy list traffic itself. I have to admit that I have yet to subscribe, because you have to set up a Yahoo ID before joining. But I'm told that the latest addition is a subscriber from South Africa pronouncing "ball," "doll," "loan," "scone," and "shown." Perhaps we international Edliners need to get in there and do some comparative files of "gone" and "done"! ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: Michael Lewis, mlewis@brandle.com.au Drusilla Calvert wrote: > ... And fratefully posh people of a certain age talk about an > 'otel (but I think that may have more or less disappeared - > correct me if I'm wrong!). This seems related to the "a/an before h" problem, which was aired here recently. The old "rule" was to use "an" if the initial syllable of the following word was unstressed -- so you'd have "an hotel", "a hot bath"; "an historic occasion", "a history book". Question then becomes: is clear articulation of the initial _unstressed_ h actually an example of over-correctness? Who knows? (Or should that be "'oo knows"?) ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: Kathleen Much, kathleen@casbs.stanford.edu John Crane said: > I understand that upper-class Southerners, until that class was > pretty much destroyed by the Civil War, spoke with somewhat of > a British accent. Just a few years back my born-and-bred Texan son was mistaken for English by his new middle-school classmates in California. We had a good laugh at that one. We'd probably qualify tor the label "upper-class Southerners". Even if the family property disappeared, the breeding and language use stuck with us. :) On the subject of accent: as frequent travelers to England and avid consumers of drama, my husband and I are often amused by British actors' attempts at American accents. They're as bad as the fake British accents heard on the U.S. stage--combining features of half a dozen dialects that never got within shouting range of each other. The best approximation of a U.S. American accent we ever heard on an English stage turned out to be produced by a Canadian. (Yes, we can hear the difference between Canadian and below-the-border accents.) ----------------------- Date: Tues, 19 Feb 2002 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@rogers.com The first play I saw in North America in a Toronto theatre was set in a factory manager's house near Birmingham. Until the third act made things clear I was puzzled. The house was much too big for England, and it's fittings weren't what I'd expect in England, but other things, mostly long forgotten, suggested England. So I wondered if it might be Alabama. In the third act it proved to be Birmingham, England. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Michael Lewis, mlewis@brandle.com.au This might mean nothing to our North American colleagues, but some of the other "colonials" might remember: there was, a l-o-n-g time ago, a BBC radio comedy program called "Hancock's Half Hour". Tony Hancock, the central figure, always announced it as "H-h-hancock's 'alf h-h-hour". This was, of course (???), a spoof on the cockney accent: he put so much effort into remembering to enunciate the H of Hancock (which a cockney wouldn't do) that he got confused about the other two initial Hs. (That's "aitches".) ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Anna Beth McCormack, mccormack@goulburn.net.au It was also on tv in the 1960s, and a habsolute gem it was too. But the rest of the program didn't play on aitches. The famous 'armful of blood' was an 'armful', not a 'harmful', though the way he reacted you'd think it was a harmful ... (she thinks, giggling ...) ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Michael Fitch, michaelbfitch@supanet.com Heard on Channel 4 television the other night: After the break... Jamie Lee Curtis in 'Halloween Haitch 20' ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Peter Best, mailto:pbest@idl.net.au Bill Bryson discusses early American speech and idiom in his MADE IN AMERICA. Additionally, the 1980s TV series THE STORY OF ENGLISH, hosted by Robert Macniel (of Macneil Lehrer Newshour) and possibly a joint BBC/PBS production, identifies an island off the coast of N or S Carolina(?) where the pronunciation and usage (at least back then) was regarded as very close to the speech of England in Shakespeare's time. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Peter Best, mailto:pbest@idl.net.au Oops, Sorry about the typo - it may even be McNeill anyway. And that island may have been off Virginia as well! ---------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 From: Michael Lewis, mlewis@brandle.com.au John Crane wrote: > How often do you have a group representing the major English- > speaking countries -- Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and the > U.S. -- in one place making comparisons? I'm quite deaf, which might account for my failure to distinguish between "gone" and "done" -- but my non-linguist ex, who has quite acute hearing, used to say that I could hear things in accents that she couldn't. I would explain that by saying it's a matter of interest, focus, and underlying knowledge. So, for me at least, it's not just that we have an international group in one place making comparisons. Everyone in this group is in it because of a serious interest in language (in many cases, no doubt, it's a passion). All too often, discussions about any aspect of language are clouded by the prevalent attitude of "what I learned as a child is correct; anything else is wrong". Here, the discussions are informed and tolerant. Fascinating, indeed; also exciting, even wonderful! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 7.57 Admin page: < http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/admin.htm > ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 2001, 2002, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996--2002 Iain Brown Compilation (c) 2002, Iain Brown / The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=