We ought to have some modern day professor henry higgins on silk .. -- srs (blackberry)
-----Original Message----- From: Tim Bray <tb...@textuality.com> Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus....@lists.hserus.net Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 14:03:36 To: <silklist@lists.hserus.net> Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi It’s awfully nice that in the British Isles, there’s still a vigorous ecosystem of regional and class accents; and it pleases me that the BBC lets non-RP-speakers on the air. If you watch Al-Jazeera English (and you should) they have this shiny-black-skinned gent who gives the world weather in the most outrageously plummy upper-crust-English-via-the-Caribbean imaginable; one can’t not smile. To my ear the most pleasing of English accents is educated-black-South-African (white-SA is nice too) and the original Colorado accent, now being swept away, like most other regional US Englishes outside of the deep South. -T On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Bonobashi <bonoba...@yahoo.co.in> wrote: > There was, actually, an Anglo-Indian (as in Brigadier Hugh Stevens, not as in > Sir Henry Gidney) accent that preferred it to be 'wottah'. So, too, 'caw', as > in 'moto-caw', of which you bought the best you could buy, to impress the > 'gels'. A terminal 'g' was never, ever pronounced. People with proper RP > accents like Philip Crossley, Assistant Editor of The Statesman, visibly > blenched when they encountered this variant (except for dropping the 'g'). > But that was a clash of extremes. Steven Miles, a career diplomat, had a far > easier accent, one closest to the older breed of Indian Army Indian officers, > and quite easy to cope with. > > Sent from my iPad > > On Jun 2, 2012, at 10:11 PM, ss <cybers...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wednesday 30 May 2012 1:03:25 am Thaths wrote: >>> "So how do you pronounce it - >>> is it Woad-house or Wood-house?" >> >> It's ironic that Wodehouse's main character Bertie Wooster bears a name that >> is a spoof on Worcester. >> >> It believe that World war I - (a war fought between nations who thought that >> the plains of western Europe constituted the whole world) was the great >> leveller that brought the British upper (uppah) classes down to the same >> level >> as the lower classes. >> >> The "uppah" class of course had all these wierd liinguistic, sartorial and >> culinary affectations including the intense need to keep their language pure >> and different from the hoi polloi. Even today Prince Charles is likely to say >> "hice" for "house". "About the house" is "abite the hice" in the upper class >> Bertie Worcester accent. >> >> The female who cleans your house is a woman, not a lady. A lady is a lady, >> not >> a woman. The Brits threw off the uppah class affectations ages ago, but >> Indians >> have tended to hang on to them with fond, if faux, "memories" of days gone >> by. >> >> Some time in the late 1980s I was somewhere in England and needed to meet the >> man in charge of something or other (accommodation IIRC) I was told that I >> needed tomeet Mr. Woodwood? Woodwood? wtf, I asked. I was told "Not >> Woodwood. >> Woodwood." Eventually I asked for a spelling and got "Woodward" >> >> And for the Kannada speakers I have this one. My sister in law from the US >> was >> baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl >> said "I want woota". So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal >> (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said "No not oota. Woota" >> >> She meant "water" which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America >> thought water was "wa'er" in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for >> Indians. >> >> shiv >> >> >
