Grant (in NY?)

[Aaron Drews]

On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Mai Kuha wrote:

}So, are we all anxiously anticipating this new movie in which Hugh Grant's
}character struggles to acquire a second dialect, only to be told at the
}end: "You sound funny?"?

I could very easily pass up a Hugh Grant movie.  I think Gweneth Paltrow
could play that kind of part very well.  (Please bear in mind that I have
no idea what this new movie is about).

As one who is spending an awful lot of time in a library researching
second dialect acquisition, the "you sound funny" is right.  I'm easily
picked up for an American here, but in the U.S., everyone says I sound
Scottish (which offends my fiancee to no end).

Many young expatriates (to read "some of my subjects that have made a
trans-Atlantic move") have a "no-man's land" Mid-Atlantic dialect.  Also
some English folk that have moved here, or some Scots that have spent a
lot of time in England also "sound funny".   Semi-rhoticity sounds
really funny.... and it provides lots of thesis fodder!

--Aaron

 =======================================================================
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
+44 (0)131 650-3485                      Departments of English Language
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron                          and Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death