British accent stereotypes - 'news'

[Wilson Gray]

I, too, say [farId], Charlie. Maybe it's an East-Texas thang. A friend
- white, late-twenties lawyer born in California, reared in Hawaii,
educated at Brandeis and Suffolk (Boston is in Suffolk, MA, county)
universities, once questioned my pronunciation. I suggested that she
recite aloud the relevant nursery rhyme. She was actually taken aback
to discover that, by using my pronunciation, she could make the other
couplet rhyme, too! This struck her as being so cool that she decided
to start using "forrid" herself. Hopefully, she's sticking with that
resolution. "Each one teach one," to coin a phrase.

Which reminds me of the time that a Canadian friend had an epiphany
when she realized that the Alphabet Song rhymes fully, if you use
American "zee" and not Canadio-British "zed."

-Wilson

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>
> Subject:      Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Case in point . . . .
>
>  Just a few moments ago in class, mentioning some prominent imagery patterns in a Jacobean play, I pronounced the word "forehead" in my customary way, [farId] (the second vowel may be a barred-"i"). Half the students professed not to know what word I was uttering; the other half delicately referred to my pronunciation as "something out of _Deliverance_"). And this is in Georgia!
>
>  --Charlie
>  _____________________________________________________________
>
>
>  ---- Original message ----
>  >Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:54:33 -0400
>  >From: Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>  >Subject: Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
>
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>  >
>  >---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  >Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>
> >Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>
> >Subject:      Re: British accent stereotypes - 'news'
>  >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  >
>
> >On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Gillian Kyles <vaggmk at earthlink.net> wrote:
>  >>  >Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>  >>  >
>  >>  >Forwarded from the forensic linguistics list.  (Pretty amazing that
>  >>  >research has actually shown that people form impressions of others
>  >>  >based on how they speak...)
>  >>
>  >>  The writer of the above should live in the South where until
>  >>  relatively recently a certain type of Virginia accent and most other
>  >>  rural southern accents were definitely associated with a certain
>  >>  perceived dimness of mind!
>  >
>  >Larry neglected to put in an explicit irony marker.
>  >
>  >--
>  >Mark Mandel
>  >
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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