British accent stereotypes - 'news'

Scot LaFaive slafaive at GMAIL.COM
Fri Apr 4 20:45:20 UTC 2008


> The very obvious hypothesis is a mordant satire of "My Fair Lady" -- "the rain in Spain ...".

I believe you are right. I hadn't known of this "rain in Spain"
exercise in "My Fair Lady" before you mentioned it, on account of I've
never seen the movie, play, what have you.

Scot

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4/4/2008 02:52 PM, Scot LaFaive wrote:
> >Speaking of rhyming and British accents, there was a Family Guy
> >episode where one of the characters is trying to teach a Cockney
> >speaking child how to speak "proper" British English and he uses the
> >following rhyme to "correct" her pronunciation.
> >
> >"The life of the wife is ended by the knife."
> >
> >Is this just something the writers made up or does anyone know if it
> >is from elsewhere?
>
> The very obvious hypothesis is a mordant satire of "My Fair Lady" --
> "the rain in Spain ...".
>
> Joel
>
>
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