On 'Thorough.'..... >"Standard" English would rhyme > > more with "burra" and 'furra". >from Caio >But not many would rhyme 'die' and 'day'! :-)
Come now Caio...for some reason the world finds it amusing to alight on the narrow form that is used in 'uneducated' Australian speech. This is unfair because a very large proportion of my countryman do not use 'die', for 'day' which movies seem to use exclusively to flag an Aussie character. Still, a lot do and it became really tiresome during the games when most of the TV stations came out with people whose accents were specially intended for the visitors to gape over. They disappeared as soon as the games were finished. Unfortunately to be bi-lingual in Australia means to be adept at using both educated and uneducated forms if only to save time on the phone. This unfortunate practice leads to some bad habits. Still, to hear the really narrow form you have to listen to a native of NZ. : ) There, 'day' becomes 'doi'.
> > My feeling is that in attempting > > to do justice to the spelling of the word, some users, news > > readers in particular, create verbal nightmares. > >I've read and noticed it's a tendency of 'educated' speakers in the US. Once >I was watching an interview with an American scientist and she said things >like '...shIUn', for 'information', for instance, and it's very frequent to >hear 'OL', as in 'all' for ending "-ALs", instead of the schwa, as in >POTENTIAL.
Then there's 'inter..REST' and 'elec..TOR...al' I guess if they have to string out a story anything that lends colour helps the ratings.
I certainly was not advocating the idea of a unified language, merely highlighting the illogical tendency to assimilate the sounds in some words and a strange desire to be obsequious with others.
>But you shouldn't forget that there is a tendency of all colonized countries >to keep older forms of the language, both in pronunciation and grammar, and >also spelling, and to have an independent evolution from the same basis.
With respect, I think this is changing because of all sorts of international interchange. Certainly what you say about the dialects being imported with immigrants is correct while their home dialects change. However, that also applies to the new arrivals in a country. Listen for the West Indians in Scotland or the Greeks in Melbourne. I've been told by one of my Greek friends, (young and educated in both places) that Melbourne Greeks are old fashioned in their customs and speech, but as with this guy, their children aren't. They seem to move towards the worst of the uneducated Australian English they can find. Example..this young Melbourne Greek guy in a fish shop, asked, as it turned out.... "Can I have some sprinkles on my chips please?" No one in the shop could understand him, because what he said was.... "Kenoi ev sim sprunlels unme chupz poollese?" with practically no lip movement.
> The British dropped 'gotten' and exchanged >'burnt' for 'burned' because their people had 'bad English' ( which became >standard because educated people were 'contaminated' ).
To my knowledge 'burnt' is as current as it ever was and to 'have gotten' is just a bad combination of sounds for which 'have got' is more efficient: easier to say, and has less potential for confusion as can happen if the end of the word 'have', should run into the subsequent 'gotten' and become ' I've forgotten'. : ) gotten = ' gone and got '
>The British corrupted the language, and still do it much more >than Americans ( not pronouncing the ending Rs is another 'mistake'
I must be missing something here. Perhaps you mean the rolling of the final R as in Bobby Burns?
Of course it is regarded as the height of bad manners to correct someone's pronunciation or use of English in our culture, but sometimes it happens by accident when trying to help the speaker and this strangely results in everyone being embarrassed.
Maybe there's something I don't understand as well when my CNN tells me that in the land of the free 'the elecTORal college was set up to accommodate the WORTHY VOTERS!!!' What can they mean? Who are the unworthy voters? Does less worthy mean something different to unworthy?
Is the elecTORal college a branch of the x-files intent on maintaining a two party system? Gee with preferential voting they could have had Nader as president, now wouldn't that have been refreshing! An Arab as president and a Jew as vice-president, what a great idea. Next time! And think of the elevated mood in the White House with the colourful furnishings after years of desiccated Protestants and egotistical Catholics. : )
Reg.
|