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 this morning 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 was on the radio and he, as a
Scotsman, pronounced his 'wh' properly; the
big Yin is not too great at the moment
with his prostrate cancer and his Parkinsons but soon responded when
Michael Parkinson, and 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.
(THE BIG YIN)
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