fruneral

[Jonathan Lighter]

The film I saw was _Ratcatcher_ (1999):

  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171685/

  Very well made and unforgettably depressing.

  JL


Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU> wrote:
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Poster: Paul Johnston

Subject: Re: fruneral
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One film that was set in Glasgow that had subtitles was "My Name Is
Joe" about an ex-alkie trying to save a kid who played football for
him who was on the junk, and whose wife was a junkie, too. I can see
how you'd need them--it takes you about six months to get anything
out of Glaswegian but the sing-song intonation pattern. The guy who
did them goofed up one expression, though--at one point, someone
mentions that someone is "skelly-eed", which got translated as "scaly
eyed", instead of "cross eyed".

Robert Duvall did a pretty good Glaswegian football manager in one
film, I forget the name of it though. The locals HATED it, but I
thought it was one of the better non-Glaswegian attempts at the
dialect. If they hated that, what would they think of Mike Myers?

Paul Johnston
On Aug 7, 2006, at 3:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: fruneral
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Many white Southerners say "srimp." And North Carolinian Frank
> Proffitt, who sang the version (sort of) of "Tom Dooley" that the
> Kingston Trio cleaned up on, sang "_stobbed_ her with his knife."
>
> I may have mentioned that non-North American varieties of English
> have supposedly diverged so far from how we now talk (note
> ethnocentricity), that TV news often provides subtitles when
> running footage of talking Brits and others.
>
> The scary thing is that sometimes they're necessary. It took me
> a good while to get used to the Gecko guy.
>
> I remember reading a comment somewhere by a Londoner who had seen
> _Mary Poppins_ and thought that Dick Van Dyke's (admittedly
> execrable) "Cockney" accent was actually his customary exotic
> American dialect.
>
> (For an Irish example of hit-or-miss comprehensibility, check out
> the movie version of _The Snapper_. It lacked subtitles, but I
> really needed them. There was another film, set in Glasgow, which
> was comparable. Maybe that one had the subtitles.)
>
> JL
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: fruneral
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> ---------
>
> Those pronunciations are all (stereo)typical of BE. "Scrimp" for
> "shrimp" is another one. It's "srimp" for me, but I've heard "scrimp,"
> "stob" for "stab," etc. a beaucoup on e.g. BET, especially on the
> comedy shows. Sometimes, a comedian's whole shtik wil consist of
> speaking with a Deep-Southern, country accent. A good example is
> Richard Pryor's "Mudbone" bit. Of course, Pryor could also do urban
> accents, cf. "Wino Meets Dracula" and "Wino Meets Junkie." Of course,
> this wasn't Pryor's whole shtik, but y'all gnome sane.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 8/7/06, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
>> Subject: Re: fruneral
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>> ----------
>>
>> On 8/7/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>> Does anyone know how authentic the Gecko's current accent really is?
>>>
>>> If the guy who voices him *isn't* really a native, blue-collar
>>> Londoner,
>>> shouldn't he get some sort of dialect award?
>>
>> It's British actor Jake Wood, who also has a role on EastEnders.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Wood
>> http://www.duncans.tv/2006/geico-gecko-voiced-by-jake-wood
>>
>> The second link calls Wood's accent "a hybrid Cockney London
>> style" --
>> not sure what's hybrid about it. Sounds quite a lot like David
>> Beckham
>> to me.
>>
>>
>> --Ben Zimmer
>>
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>
>
> --
> Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
> found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
> imposed upon them.
>
> Frederick Douglass
>
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