This one is an excellent take on the English language
by CJ | Apr 28, 2012 | Journal | 44 comments
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I came across a shorter version of this poem years ago and loved it. I made a copy but misplaced it somewhere along the way. I remembered the poem again recently when I was talking to one of the international students at the college where I work. I searched online using phrases of it that I remembered, but couldn’t find it. Thank you for the link.
Lovely, the old Charivarius poem! And you got the link from the main blog to work!
I’d read it before somewhere, ages ago, and forgotten it.
There are quite a few single words I don’t know how to pronounce in there, as well as several lines where I didn’t realise there would be a problem, which means I am saying at least half the words in them wrong.
I wonder if there’s an audiofile of it out on the internet, maybe on YouTube?
It’s a great guide for odd words, even for native speakers, who often get made and bade (mayed and bad) confounded.
I was thinking yesterday how MANY words English has: we get a word and we never give it up. And so many descriptives apply so very narrowly: example: spoiled. Rancid butter; sour milk; spoiled food; a spoiled child; or a spoiled holiday; moldy bread—all variations on a theme of being unfit or ruined. We say we walk or amble, shamble; stagger, reel, promenade, prance; dance; stride, stroll or stamp off in a huff. We run, race, speed, fly down the course.
When I was a child trying to improve my vocabulary to be a writer, I used to play a game of thinking of as many words as I could that express related ideas, or all the adjectives I could think of to describe, say, a fire, in all its moods. Then I took Latin, and our first year study required us to find 3 unrelated English words that came directly from a given Latin word, and state their meanings. For instance: ambulo, ambulare: walk: > English: amble, to walk slowly, at a comfortable pace; ambulance: a vehicle conveying injured persons, ie, walking for them; ambulatory: regarding a patient, one who is permitted to walk about. We also get pram (perambulator: walkabout) a baby buggy; and perambulations: a fancy, old-fashioned word for strolls or walks about an area. One would automatically think of old people on tour.
I really love the expressiveness of all those variations!
I like to keep those different words in use, but can only use them with people who know me, and have tolerance for my love of words. Nowadays, it’s often regarded as showing off, or being stuck-up, to use more than the most basic expressions. I regard that as a great impoverishment of the rich language we still have, but don’t know what else to do about it except try to get a few kids interested in reading books that use a richer language than they encounter every day.
My friends occasionally tease me about my love of words. Or I will use some odd word they’ve never heard, and they’ll challenge me to prove it’s a real word.
And of course we have our stories about folks not understanding a new word. “You have angered the gazebo!”
Guilty of confusion on bade.
Re: Using adjectives. In political seasons I often find it entertaining to take a black Sharpie(TM) to political stuff and censor out all the adjectives, occasionally adverbs. (“Outrageous?” “I’ll be the judge of that–scratch that.”) After that I’ve usually got a better representation of what the real issue may be. (“Just the facts, Ma’am.”)
Adjectives provide “color” in stories, but they’re also where politicians try to substitute their own opinions for our own. (“Mine are quite good enough, thank you.”)
Personally, I agree with the author of that poem: it’s time to straighten out some of the kinks of our orthography.
It’s like asking the Chinese or Japanese to give up Kanji. 😉 Besides, some accents handle these changes more accurately than others, and whose accent are we going to favor when we revise it all?
I don’t think we can straighten out ALL the kinks, but how about the worst ones, the 100 top most often misspelled and then every generation or so take on the next crop?
Hanneke, don’t feel too bad, native speakers can’t agree on pronunciation either, sometimes even within the same dialect. I think the best solution is to be sure your dictionary has pronunciation values, and to listen to English in as many spoken forms as you can get, and copy as closely as you can.
There *are* patterns and historical reasons why English does what it does, but our spelling is a hodge-podge left over from an uneasy fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. The Saxons were literate early on and had a fairly sensible spelling system. The Norman French came in and had real trouble with English sounds. It never did quite jell into a simple system. To be fair, both English and French pronunciation changed so drastically, neither is exactly representational, so there are a lot of clusters and exceptions to remember. (In French, my favorite besides “eau” is “queue,” the line or tail or hair braid (or the data structure). “Queue,” as though they couldn’t decide when to stop with the vowels! The modern form actually comes from colla or collina, or a spelling close to that, meaning a little tail. Then several odd things happened, including L->W sound change, O->E/U, and reduction and elision.
Pronunciation in English varies on some words, even within the same dialect: Though “to bid,” in the old sense of to ask, request, beseech; or in another sense, simply tell; is “to bid, bids, bidding, bade, bidden,” where bade can be pronounced like bad (short a) or bayd (long a).
English has at least a couple of verbs where we didn’t quite agree on the standard form for the past tense or past participle: to squeeze, squeezes, squeezing, but then usually squeezed, squeezed, though sometimes you’ll hear squoze, squozen. (Those last two are not really standard, yet you’ll see and hear them a lot.) — But the real puzzler, as to why it varies so much, is the parallel pair: to (a)wake, (a)wakes, (a)waking, and then we get a little sleep-muzzy with: (a)woke or (a)waked, and (a)woke or (a)woken or (a)waked. To make it more confusing, there is another related pair: to (a)waken, (a)wakens, (a)waking, (a)wakened. To clear up all but the variation in past tense and past participle, here is a take on the definitions. To wake means to wake up, to stop sleeping and become conscious again. To awake is almost the same, and the a- at front is an Old English prefix for (a- = at, on), so it is more narrow than wake, and to awake is more like to come awake, to wake quickly. To waken or awaken means to rouse someone/something else or for someone/something else to rouse yourself from sleep. Hmm, now that I think of it, that is a very close and fuzzy distinction. I think I’ll look it up. Also, “rouse” is from French and Latin, and I have no idea of the derivation of German, “Raus! Raus!” (two S’s?) “Get moving, hurry, rouse yourselves!”
English pronunciation usually varies strongly by dialect in its vowels, and a bit less in its consonants, besides the spoken or silent R divide.
Evidently, the early Modern English didn’t ever quite decide on how to pronounce things like the 2nd and 3rd person present tense forms, things like dost/doest, doth/doeth, saist/sayest, saith/sayeth, and a few others, because you’ll hear them either “single syllable with short vowel” or “dual syllables with long vowel then short e/i or schwa e.”
I never did hear a really good explanation for why Modern English wound up with an -s in the present tense instead of the older -st and -th. I know it was a case of how the dialect worked, but it didn’t explain why other cases of th (either unvoiced thorn or voiced eth/edh) didn’t also change to ss and zz, or tt and dd.
Yes, I could go on and on about this. Hazard of being a language geek. 😉
My own pet peeve is the usurpation of the totally unrelated “j” for the French soft “g”. (There was nobody named “Geezus”. The name is descended from Esau. It should be a “German” J as in the Bach tune.) Maybe we hadn’t made good use of the i, j, y triplet, confusing things more by using “y” when “th” was meant. “God rest thee merry, gentlemen”, (carefully note the comma). But if we’re going to “fix” things we have to start with the letters! “Why must Q always be followed by U? Do we need a variant letter of K?”
Geoffrey Sampson, in a book “Writing Systems,” that I use for my linguistics class, points out that English is very difficult to learn to write because of just what the poem points out — there are oh so many, multiple pronunciations for both single and combinations of letters s. But, it turns out that difficulty in writing actually makes it easier to read: written word recognition is high for fluent readers of English because similarly-pronounced words are frequently spelt very differently from each other (right, write, rite and wright). The English writing system is partially “logographic” (words are identified by their look), similar to Chinese and Japanese Kanji. We have to memorize the spelling of each word rather than generate spelling by a phonetic system.
Supposedly (as in, I vaguely remember hearing somewhere), German does not have a word for “to spell” because it is not a problem for children. I’m a crappy speller but a very quick reader. I also adore the etymological clues embedded in our historical spelling system and wouldn’t want to see it change. On the other hand, a close friend and avid (but not historical) linguist wants to see spelling standardized across the board. Whose pronunciation we would select is another matter entirely.
Reading the poem turned up a couple of dialectal differences:
Reading versus reading? Is the place-name “redding” instead of “reeding” ? I should know, but I’d thought it was the same as the participle.
Breeches: Old timers, and apparently the English today, say it “britches,” and would as often spell it the way it sounded. But for more formal usage, I say “breeches” with a long ee. Huh…I can’t think of other instances with EE going to IH (short i) but quite a few with OO long or short, or gone to OH or UH (short/schwa). Boot but book, but always teeth.
GH wouldn’t be so bad if the Normans had left it Saxon H or soft-G yogh.
I/Y with only one letter, versus OU/OW with two, would’ve had an U alone like I, until the Normans spelled it OU like their plain OU (OOH sound).
—–
The poem didn’t point out:
* aunt “ant or ahnt or awnt”; * gauge “gaydj”; — and I don’t recall if “gaol” is modern spelling in the UK, but gaol = jail, the American spelling is simpler;
* read (long e) versus read (short e); why not redd instead for the past forms?
* wind (long i) versus wind (short i); why not a Y for the long one, or some other convention?
* lose (“loohzz”) versus loose (“loohss”); Wouldn’t it be easier as, luze, luzer, luzes (luzez?), luzing, loss, lost? Or double the O and use a Z. — But loose, looser, loosest, looses, loosing, loosen, loosened could stay as is.
* chose (“chohzz”) versus choose (“choohzz”); This one had trouble because of Middle English forms of choose and chose. But why not chuze, chuzes, chuzing, choze, chozen? We almost wound up with cheese or chayse (or -z-) or something like them, so I guess I should be glad.
* Silent U versus U-as-W after G, and silent H after G, to show hard G. Then H after C for Greek KHI.
* Skeptic instead of British sceptic.
* I would be fine with thru, tho, altho, which have been abbreviated as such for a couple of centuries at least.
I’ve seen so much client work (setting, proofing, editing) that I went through all the stages of grieving for English spelling and grammar. The general population will continue regardless of the dictionaries and textbooks and classrooms, for better or worse, the language will change.
(Although some things, I put up with in writing, I still cringe at subject/verb agreement and sometimes at -ly dropping. I’ve nearly given up on “whom,” though.)
Whew, English language reform. Messrs. Webster and the founding American generation tried that with -U- and a few others, and so today, we have two spelling standards, just because the language didn’t separate, but rejoined, loosely still.
I am almost used to “prolly” and “praps,” almost. But my dialect says, “probly.”
Ahem, I will not mention the one very off-color example I didn’t know about until I started editing UK spelling! Much embarrassment for all sides of that discussion. (And I was left with some uncomfortable speculations on how the meaning shifted.)
Language changes a lot. And cats come to sleep on typists’ hands…. Hi, Smokey!
Yep, I glitched on Reading [the place], as in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” –aka the ballad of Redding Jail… because it was first in the line: if I’d encountered it medial in the line, I’d have realized.
Redding, California.
Yep, I glitched on Reading [the place], as in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” –aka the ballad of Redding Jail… because it was first in the line: if I’d encountered it medial in the line, I’d have realized. OTOH, they could have used ‘leading,’ as in guiding; or leading, (ledding)–meaning the channeling they use in stained glass windows.
In the links to an earlier version, it was written as “Reading, Reading…” and “Job, Job, …” so it would stand out that the second ones were meant to be the names. I don’t know why the changed that, maybe it was just something like Word changing it back without them noticing.
At least in Massachusetts and England, the town of Reading is pronounced “Redding.” My mother’s side of the family are from there (MA) so I always knew how to pronounce the place. I had no idea what a “gah-ohl” was for a long while, however, and was flabberghasted to find out it was the same as “jail.” Re. spelling: I attended kindergarten to grade 3 in Canada, as well as living in Scotland as a grad student and sprinkle “u’s throughout my “or”s without realizing I am doing it. I also have no idea which system uses “grey” and which “gray.”
Until a couple years ago, my spouse thought “apothecary” was pronounced “apo-THEC-cary.” There’s so many words we have read but never heard aloud, at least that we are aware are the same word!
My understanding is that grey and gray are acceptable on either side of the Pond. Historically, you could argue for grey, given the Earl Grey and Jane Grey, but also historically, the closest cognates are gris in French and grau in German, plus whatever the Dutch equivalent is, so no particular help on vowels either way.
‘Gray’ would be unacceptable at any of the many UK publishers I’ve worked for – it is always ‘grey’ in UK English titles, and ‘gray’ is always thought of as a US spelling.
For interest, some examples of place names that many people visiting the UK find a puzzle:
‘Gloucester’, pronounced ‘Gloster’.
‘Beauchamp Place’, pronounced ‘Beecham Place’.
‘Leicestershire’, pronounced ‘Lester’.
‘Leominster’, pronounced ‘Lemster’.
And so on (and on).
Thanks, Sapphire. Better to be sure of “grey.”
There is a Gloucester, Massachusetts, and there is Worcestershire Sauce by Lea & Perrins over here, so those shouldn’t trip up Americans too badly. But Beauchamp as Beecham would’ve tripped me up. I’d have tried it the French way.
A name used in the Old South was Beauford, which was “Byooh-ferd,” probably by analogy with “beautiful.”
Yes, this stuff could go on and on!
Raesean’s reference, that English is partially logographic because of things like this makes a certain kind of sense.
BCS: in actual fact, ‘Leicestershire’ is pronounced ‘Lestershirr’ in the UK, even though ‘shire’ on its own is pronounced as one would think it should be pronounced.
‘Worcestershire’ is pronounced ‘Woostershirr’ in the UK – I believe in the US it is pronounced according to the way it is spelled? I’ve heard Americans pronounce it thus (used to work for Time-Life in London many moons ago).
@BCS: from my little bit of school-German ‘Raus’ is not a verb, it means ‘out’ and comes from ‘heraus’ which means approximately ‘out of there’. Normally one would just use ‘aus’, ‘raus’ has some unpleasant associations (at least in formerly occupied territories, because of razzias and such) and indicates gruffness, anger, curtly ordering someone about. It has nothing to do with waking up, even though it sounds similar.
@Rasean, German doesn’t have much spelling ambiguity, but it does have a word for spelling: Rechtschreibung (‘writing right’). German (and Dutch) allow one to almost endlessly create new words by combining existing ones, or adding adjective or verb endings to nouns, etc., so the fact that it’s a combined word doesn’t make it an unofficial construct. This is why they can have such long words, where English is much compacter.
@BCS-2: ‘Redding’ is the way the place-name is pronounced on the BBC, and ‘breeches’ can not only be ‘britches’ but also ‘breeks’.
One thing I’m uncertain about is “Real, zeal”, another is “Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth;” (I’ve always mentally pronounced the first two words of each triplet the same), nor do I know the difference in “actual, but victual”.
This poem taught me the difference between the G in Gertrude and German, but then how about “Geoffrey, George; ate, late” – are the Gs there different too, or is it only the -eo-, as I thought?
Then the different spellings that are probably pronounced the same:
“Sally with ally, yea, ye
Eye, I, oy, aye. Whey, key, quay”: I’ve always said half of them wrong! I recently heard ‘quay’ pronounced ‘key’ on the BBC, and lost the next sentence puzzling it out… I always thought it was ‘kay’.
“Face but preface, but efface;” “joust and scour, but scourging,” (I think that’s joust and skoar but skurging?).
I’ve always thought “wear and tear’ rhymed with ‘there’ but apparently that should be be ‘ear’ for ‘ere’?
And I think both Steffen and Steven are legitimate ways to pronounce Stephen?
And then some single words like skein, sward, hough…
I followed the link to the added information, and from there to the proposed new simplified spelling, and I found it not very helpful. The many ways to write the same sounds, and the many sounds for the same letters are quite a lot to learn, but once you’ve learned to recognise them they do give a lot of assurance that you’ve got the right meaning.
The simplified spelling didn’t make some of the vowel-distinctions that I know I’ve heard on the BBC (probably because there are a lot more vowel-distintions than vowels, and they didn’t want to add a set of diphtongs to denote these), but this meant that I was still guessing at the sound for some of the words, while finding the right word-and-meaning became a lot more difficult.
Also, you lose a lot of visual cues about the relationships between words, and learning the meaning of new words, or conjugations of irregular verbs, won’t get any easier by losing their visual relationships, both within English and with other languages.
I just worry about kids growing up with a lot of abbreviated writing and incorrect spelling all around them not learning to recognise the word-images correctly – the same way I can’t recognise if I’m writing the English or American spelling (e.g. grey or gray), from having read both a lot, unless I have a neat rule to follow (like -our is English and -or is American).
I thought of writing out the pronunciations for the poem, but I think it would be easier to hear it recorded. It would get long and confusing, written out. All of it deals in contrasts.
I think the poet was English, because of some of his contrastive choices, a few of which don’t contrast as much in American speech.
One of the real troubles with proposals to simplify English spelling is precisely the different dialects, chiefly that both US and UK speakers argue their way is equally standard. A spelling reform would have to account for the A and AH divide, particularly. I think the growth of global communications will slowly smooth out spelling and pronunciation. Australian friends say their country (and New Zealand) are getting a big influx of American usage from mass media.
British “Received Pronunciation” has differences with the American Midwestern used in broadcasting, in its number and contrasts on vowels, long versus short, and what happens when R follows.
OK, tonight before bed, I’d better dig out my extra copy of the Chanur Saga 3-in-1 to try recording the alien chatter, for fan fun.
My native accent is “big city educated Texan,” and it’s usually close to the mass media broadcast American Midwestern accent, but I may drift some, especially if doing something local interest. One college roommate, who had such a deep East Texas accent, we called him Grampa, once complained my accent sounded neutered. Hahaha! Ouch! But a careful listener should be able to hear the Texas in my accent a little, unless I’m very mindful to watch it.
@hanneke, on “raus”. My first personal experience with the word was in the mid-80’s, used to me by a ticket collector on a train. In Western Germany. It was in the middle of the night and he slammed open the door waking us up with “Raus! Raus! Fahrkarten, bitte!” and I have since heard it used in just that way, several more times. The last time, however, was in late 1995, so customs might have changed.
Oddly enough, “Raus!” was used in the comedy/satire US TV show, Hogan’s Heroes, back in the 60’s/70’s, chiefly by the “Sgt. Schultz” character. :: shrugs ::
BTW, Oktoberfest has gained popularity here in Texas and the US. There were a large number of German, Austrian, Czech, Polish, and other immigrants into Texas in the 1800’s, so there’s a heritage there, especially in towns like New Braunfels and Fredericksburg.
An interesting article I just read, not specifically language related, but I think it has a bearing:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/uoc–sft042312.php
On the language, I’ve never liked the “real” pronunciation of “heroine” and so stubbornly stick to my misreading of “hero-in”
As a curiosity, Spanish is well known for its very regular spelling. And it *is* regular indeed. Which does not mean that it does not contain quite a few oddities:
– The “k” sound (as in key) has three graphies: c followed by (a,o,u), qu followed by (e,i) and k (some specific words, uncommon).
– The “th” sound (as in thin) has two graphies: z followed by (a,o,u), c followed by (e,i).
– The “c” is reused in the ch digraph for the “ch” sound (as in channel), which is amusing, because “h” is always silent in every other case (even in cases like “deshacer”, read as des + hacer).
– b and v used to represent diferent sounds, but that difference is long lost, so they are identical nowadays.
– The “g” sound (as in get) is either g followed by (a,o,u), or gu followed by (e, i).
– As said above, “u” is silent in the qu and gu digraphs, unless you write it with a trema, ü (then it is pronounced).
– The “j” sound (like the ch in loch) is either j (plus any wovel), or g followed by (e, i), or x in some ancient proper names that have retained the old spelling (like Mexico, Oaxaca).
– However, x is pronounced as k+s always except in the old “j” spellings described above.
– In Spain and other (but not all) Spanish-speaking countries, “ll” and “y” represent the same phoneme (I don’t know an approximate correspondence in English).
– “y” in fact is a consonant, but it is used alone to represent the “i” (ee) sound in the conjunction “y” (and).
– “w” represents an “u” sound (like in Walter) in anglosaxon words, and a “v” sound in germanic ones (Wamba). Historically, the “v” sound was more common because Spanish has many words (and some proper names) from visigoth origin.
– “b” is silent in some semi-obsolete spellings, like obscuro (most commonly written, and always pronounced, as “oscuro”).
– “p” is silent in the prefix “psi-” (like psicología or psiquiatría).
All in all, the b/v, g/j, ll/y and silent h cases represent the real difficulties, because there’s no rule, you have to remember the word’s spelling.
Aside from spelling, Spanish has a few curious phonotactic restrictions and general weirdness:
– n cannot be followed by b or p; n changes, phonetically and in writting, to m (we say and write Amparo, not Anparo), which is most noticeable in the common prefix “in-“, which becomes “im-” in these cases (like imposible, from in+posible)
– We Spaniards have trouble with words starting with s+consonant (all foreign, there are no native words with such configuration), so we add an epenthetic “e”. We say “espiderman”, not “spiderman” (and “Estar Guars” for Star Wars). Some cases have become lexicalized, like “espagueti” for spaghetti.
– Clusters of three consonants are always consonant + [b/p/t] + [l/r], and even so the consonant+tl cluster is rare or non-existent, except perhaps in words from nahuatl origin (the pair tl is uncommon in Spanish, “atlantic” aside).
– Clusters of four consonants are limited to [n/b] + str (obstrucción, monstruo), or x + tr (remember that x = k + s, so the cluster is kstr), which is very common because of the “ex-” prefix (extra, extraño, extremo, extracción). The kstr cluster is often pronounced (but never written) gstr.
– Spanish has only five vowels, all short, so duplicate vowels are usually avoided. That forces the “o” (or) conjunction to become “u” before “o” (“unos u otros”, instead of “unos o otros”), “y” to become “e” (“derecha e izquierda”, not “derecha y izquierda”), and the use of the masculine singlar definite article “el” before words of feminine grammatical gender (“el hacha”, “el arma”, “el agua”) though the feminine article is regularly used in the plural (“las hachas”, “las armas”, “las aguas”). However, o+o exists in some words, mostly prefixed with co- (cooperación, coordinado, etc.)
And don’t get me started on stress marks (accents). Isn’t language funny?
Hi Lektu! Your summary is great, and you mentioned a couple of things that vary, either for English speakers learning Spanish, or within Spanish dialects.
Both HRHSpence and I are in the Southwestern US, with a lot of crossover between Latinos and Anglos, and the Spanish spoken here tends to be a mix, with a lot of bilingual or partially bilingual speakers plus dialect going back in history. Spanish words borrowed into English tended to become Americanized up until very recently, when there’s better education, availability of Spanish classes. So anyone who knows Spanish does what’s called “code switching” between the two languages a lot. It has to sound very strange to a non-English speaker to hear Spanish words pronounced as they are here for many American uses.
For English speakers, at least for Americans, the best way to explain LL is to say it is a “y” sound like in “yellow” in most of Latin America. In Castilian (Old World) Spanish, it is “ly” almost like in “million, billion.” Later, students can learn the “y” shifts to almost an English “j” sound in some dialects in the New World, especially in the Caribbean. American students usually now learn a more New World or Mexican pronunciation, instead of Castilian, so we learn that soft C and Z are an “ss” sound, while the unvoiced “th” is Castilian. Spanish teachers usually also tell that X can have a SH sound in some words, and they try to get across the proper H and KH sounds of jota, reloj.
Hah, but RR gives everyone, even native speakers, trouble. I can do R versus RR OK most of the time, but I have to be very careful. For English speakers, R is a single flap R, and RR is two or more flaps together, tiger-like.
Ah, Spanish. I just got home from performing in a concert of Chilean and Argentinian music. Now our conductor is from outside of Barcelona, so Catalan is her first language, Spanish her second – english is her fourth. She sees no problem with making sure we use the proper language and dialect for every song we sing. So we – more or less – know the difference between Castilian and Andaluzean, Cuban, other latin American, and tonight, Argentinean, where y and ll are pronounced as a soft j, as in Joe.Of course, the choir’s name is ‘Jubilate Singers’ with a hard or latin j – You-bi-latte … we all know how to say la-tay, right? 🙂
Why don’t we all learn IPA – Internanational Phonetic Alphabet – from birth? The we really could spell things as they sound.
“La Jolla”: A favorite story about Americans and Spanish about a picturesque Southern California town.
It’s meant to refer to “jewel”, an apt description of a very prettily situated and developed coastal town. That’s what they wanted to call it, but some American tried to spell it phonetically, knowing about the Spanish “ll”. In Spanish “The Jewel” is “La Joya”. “I can do this, why should I ask a Mexican?” Oops! That’s why. 😉
I’m doing a rough and ready recording of the poem and should have it posted tonight or tomorrow, despite an annoyance or two with my recording setup, which I hope to fix.
I did fine in a take to test it, but flubbed the pronunciation a couple of places, and ran into the dialect difference there. …I also slipped and pronounced “chalet” in French instead of English, bilingual hazard. I’ll post a link when I have the recording available.
Salut à M. Bastien Chevreux, aussi.
There is now an audio recording of “The Chaos” at http://www.shinyfiction.com/audio/the_chaos.mp3 — or go to my site, go to the Voice and Audio Work page, and go to the bottom of that page.
Have fun listening and following along with the written version. On my audio page, a link cites the text on chevreux.org.
There are some technical issues with my recording setup (chiefly latency, an echo and down-in-a-well sound, and microphone placement) which I want to correct, so this isn’t a strictly professional quality recording. This recording is fine for a draft.
Enjoy listening!
THANK you, BCS, I was thinking about doing that,but you’ve done it very well indeed.
Frankly, I think it should be a drinking game at conventions. If, after one room party, you can read it flawlessly, you should be handed a Toxic Waste cocktail and sent on to the next party. 😉
But is one reason why English is such a rich language – we borrow and steal from everybody and never, or seldom, throw anything away. Coupled with the extreme relaxation of the rules of grammar and you have an incredible soup. It does make things troublesome at times with strange spellings and pronunciations, but that’s half the fun.
Bravo BCS! I heard only a little bit of Texas. I was born and raised in Cleveland Ohio so I grew up with standard American Midwestern. I’d say your voice has more depth than straight Midwestern and your clear enunciation was a pleasure to hear.
CJ, what’s in a Toxic Waste cocktail? Sounds wicked.
Well done BCS!
I just listened twice, and have learned several new things. Saying mica as ‘mice’ is one I’d never ever have guessed!
There were a few instances where I’d have expected words to rhyme, and they didn’t, like Terpsichore and trickery; and I’m wondering if that might be because the English pronounciation has drifted a bit, or just a difference between English and American.
Some of those, I think I’ve heard before in the rhyming style, like saying Rafe for Ralph, to rhyme with ‘safe’ (it sounds like that in the name of composer Ralph Vaugh Williams on the radio), chamois-leather being said as shammy-leather (for use in washing glass), sieve pronounced ‘siv’ and gunwale as ‘gunnel’ (Swallows and Amazons ahoy!).
And I know there are two ways to say lieutenants, one American and one English, but I don’t know which is which: one has the slightly Frenchy ‘ljootenants’, and the other is said as ‘leftenants’. I’d expected the latter, as contrast with “in lieu of”.
Some of the variability might have been part of the poem from the start, as the writer wasn’t an Englishman.
Mr. Trénité was a Dutch teacher, who lived for a while in California (teaching the Dutch Consul’s kids, according to the link below the poem). Dutch teachers were supposed to teach correct English spelling and pronounciation, not American, but with having lived in America for a while his ear might have become a bit confused about his rhymes.
PS. Gray in Dutch is ‘grijs’, that dipthong that I can’t find a direct English equivalent for, like in CJ’s Overijssel ancestors. It sounds a bit like ‘grays’, only dropping the jaw a bit more.
I read “mica” as “mice?” Oops! “Mica” = MY-ka, rhymes with pica; I must’ve misread the A for an E. 🙂
Terpsichore — The final E may be pronounced, a long E, but I’ve heard it with the final E silent. The proper pronunciation ought to follow whether the original Greek has a long E (eta) for that final E, which I’d expect. But yes, American and British English both make some exceptions with Greek and Latin (and Hebrew) names.
Ralph — Americans say Ralf, short A. British people say Rafe. In Middle English, it would’ve been either with a short A or an AH, with the L pronounced, as in German or Dutch or Danish.
Chamois — It used to be always, shammy, and still is very common. I speak French, so a “shammy cloth” didn’t even cross my mind. I’m used to saying it shah-mwah’. — Yes, chamois cloths are often used for glass and cars/trucks and silverware.
Gunwale — Either “gunnel,” more accurate for sailors, or “gun-wale,” more for landlubbers. But topsail and mainsail come out topsul and mainsul. Oh, and a boatswain is a “boh-sun,” and the whistle too.
Sieve — That one varies by region/dialect and sometimes education. You’ll hear “siv” and “seev.” I grew up saying “seev.” My grandmother, Texas and Oklahoma farmer origins, always said it “siv,” as did one of my computer science profs. You will also hear some Southerners and Southwesterners call a lien (on property) a “lin” instead of a “leen.” (In French, of course, it’s neither, it’s a “lee-e~,” nasal eh, which always sounds to me more like a nasal English short A.
Lieutenant — Americans say, “loo-ten-unt” and the English say “left-ten-unt.” You might hear “lyoo-ten-unt” in America, but that’d be rare, I think. Actually, the EU there, and unstressed long U generally, can vary in American English. In some cases, it drops to long OOH (boot) or short OO (book, put). But more often, it is either “YOOH” or “YUH” (schwa uh) or…a sound that’s like short “IH-W, IH-OO,” said almost as one sound, like lieu, dew. But few is “fyooh” or…hmm, it can also go to “fyihw.” That IHW is between a diphthong and a single vowel, it’s so light. It isn’t, though, a short u-umlaut. English doesn’t have the o or u umlaut vowels, only short a, originally an umlaut. — Lieu, in lieu of, is “lew” or “lyooh” on both sides of the Atlantic, and may drop to “loo” in America. (Oh dear, bathroom humor….)
Trénité — in that case, I mispronounced his name badly as “Treh-night,” pardonnez-moi, M. Dr.!
Hmm, I’ll have to find an example for Dutch IJ pronunciation. So they borrowed the French word and altered it to Dutch vowels over time.
You’re welcome!