Billy Connelly
I noticed recently
in the wonderful tributes to Seamus Heaney his pronunciation of the
wh words;
whale, wheat, why, when and the wonderful while or whilst etc.
Seamus pronounced
'why' correctly, as most of the Irish do as hwahy
– try it!
The aitch is on the breath
of the double-u as the lips pucker themselves together for the
double-u plunge – fun isn't it?
By the way, as we
are at it, aitch is pronounced aitch – not haitch
as I have heard a lot these days.
The other place where it's
pronounced correctly is Inverness in Scotland; in fact it is said
that the best pronunciations in English are in Dublin and Inverness.
Wouldn't believe that
would you?
But that spreads to the
rest of Ireland and Scotland; thick accents notwithstanding.
When people like Noah Webster come along and try
to change the spelling of the words to make things simple for the
Americans they are obliterating the origin of some words. I mean why
did he take the 'u' out of colour; the 'u' tells us where it came
from – 1250–1300;
Middle English col
( o ) ur
Anglo-French ( French couleur
) Latin colōr- (stem of color )
– I mean why didn't he leave
things as they were? It was a pain, when I lived there, that I
eventually ended up confusing the two.
Someone said to
me at a party one night that the 'U' was only put in to words by the
English to be flashy or pedantic; I didn't comment on that at the
time and I won't now.
When I said
'people like Noah Webster come along' I mean what I say 'come' along,
present tense, as they still do; I knew
a teacher there who wanted to see Americans spell catalogue as
catalog – now what looks better on the page in this day and age of
shortening everything, BTW, the former or the latter?
Yes, BTW, my little joke –
or joak, to use a private family joke!
My daughter was talking to
one of the school mistresses at her son's school, the other day, and she asked her
about the basketball court and the school mistress said - don't you
mean the multi-sports hall?
Give me a break!!
Seamus Heaney also
pronounced Drogheda the way it's spelt without the 'g' but the very
posh English say Droyida – they also pronounce Daventry and a town
in the north east of England in a funny way too but I think they do
that as a test for 'pretenders.' They say Dayentry, by the way.
Do people in other
languages have this kind of trouble? I mean do the Mexicans have
Mexican Spanish and the people from Quebec and various African
countries have their own French spellings? Are they allowed to say
actress in their languages unlike us; The
Guardian always refer to females as
actors – I know a lot of women don't like the word actress but it
isn't exactly a word like poetess or authoress is it? It always
seemed silly to me, when old dames die like Dame Wendy Hiller, being
described as the actor
Wendy Hiller. It seems okay for someone
like Germaine Greer or even Vanessa Redgrave but Wendy Hiller?
As I write this a
profile of Billy Connelly is on the radio and he, as a Scotsman, is
pronouncing his 'wh' properly; the big
Yin is not too great at the moment with
the recent announcement of his prostrate cancer and his Parkinsons.
Ironic isn't it, and he would point it out, that he shot to fame on
the Michael Parkinson Show
in the 70s.
He came on to that show, the first time, and told one
very famous joke and that joke, that one joke, made him a star.
When
he got back to Glasgow he was spotted at the airport and a crowd of
people saw him and started to clap; there were only about 4 TV
stations in Britain at the time and he hadn't quite reckoned how many
people were watching and how he would affect people.
I remember
thinking he was the funniest person I had ever seen and when I went
to see him live in the theatre he was even funnier; he wasn't
restricted by language and he could say anything he liked and that's the
problem with censorship – it's for the narrow minded; I mean what's
the matter with a word; what harm can it do? If we welcomed words,
rejoiced in their original spelling and meaning, things would be
easier for everybody; there is not one name you can call me which
would cause me offence. I know I'm white, reluctantly middle class,
medium height, regular looks but I've been called lots of things in
my life. When I first started on the post office the old sweats would
ask me if I was going on my holidays – they were referring to the
bags under my eyes and I hadn't quite worked it out what they meant.
Then I was called the Mekon (I have a big head), the green man (I was
usually pale) and the incredible hulk. I didn't figure out the last
one till fairly recently; apparently I looked like the guy who played
him on TV – the David Banner side to him.
I do feel it for Billy
Connelly as my mother had Parkinsons and I do realise that the
Americans, with their lack of patience for foreign accents, have
never seen him at his best but I have and I'm not putting that joke
down here – you can look it up – but I can put a picture of my
son with one of the fishes he caught over the weekend. That's a Carp
and I think it's probably 15 – 20 years old as the fishermen, or
anglers, look after them over the years.
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