Pronunciation.

                                              BILLY CONNOLLY
 

I have put this up before, some years ago, but I came across it and wanted to put it up again:

I remember 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 of 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.

The leader of Sinn Féin was on the radio with a vocabulary to die for and using it like a beautiful tool to confound, mesmerize and confuse English journalists into hypnotic states.

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 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 in the arse, 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 as Dayentry 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.'

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?

I was listening to Billy Connelly on the radio and he, as a Scotsman, pronounced his 'wh' properly; the big Yin is not too great at the moment with his prostate cancer and his Parkinsons but soon responded when Michael Parkinson, an old chum of his, said that the big Yin wasn't compos mentis.

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 solitary joke, made him a star.

When he got back to Glasgow, after the broadcast, 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 to short, 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 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 in the 70s – 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.