Thanks, Matthew (Methuw?), for launching this interesting thread. That
was news to me about "ta-ta," which I never noticed was pronounced with
two different A sounds either when I spent a couple of months in the UK
or in my usual mode of Brit-listening via movies and TV shows like
Masterpiece Theatre. The way I recall hearing it is with an upbeat and
slightly prolonged emphasis on the 2d "ta" (ta-tah!). I'm less annoyed
than you are, I guess, by efforts to transliterate distinctive
pronunciations, provided that they strike my ear accurately when I'm
in any position to judge that. As a New Englander originally, I'm used
to actors and writers doing a generic Pepp'ridge Fahm number on such
speech--which elides and obscures the considerable accentual differences
between Maine (the home state of Pepperidge Farm) and Massachusetts,
not to mention the really subtle (real or ostensible) differences
between New Hampshire and Vermont--and it does set my teeth on edge
when an actor, especially, gets it wrong (usually erring toward the
overly broad accent). Maybe not surprisingly, given the typically
greater training of British actors, they "do" both standard and
regional "American" much better than U.S. actors, on the whole.
You must have seen Steven Wright doing his Canadian mountie routine
--was it in a movie? (can't remember)--being such a fan yourself. How
did you like his "oo" for all "ow" sounds (as in "about")? It's a kind
of Canadianism that I heard a lot, growing up in New Hampshire, along
with the French Canadian English-speaker's tendency to add "ay" to the
ends of words. Doug Barbour has probably heard (ad nauseum) the joke
about Canada having gotten its name as a result of somebody's going
C-ay, n-ay, d-ay.
Candice
>The whole question of representing pronunciation is a fascinating one. I
>remember reading a TV review in my teens (early 70s) in which the reviewer
>deplored the 'modern' pronunciation of short A as 'u' - eg, 'puck' instead
of >'pack'. Since I'd never noticed this, my guess was that the reviewer
himself >used the old-fashioned upper-class pronuciation which, to me, is a
short E: >'peck'. By that stage, the tennis commentator Dan Maskell (Den
Meskell) was the >only person on TV using it. And as another illustration of
the problems >involved, on another list a long time ago, a UK member was
explaining to a US >one that the two As in 'ta-ta' were pronounced
differently, the first as in >'cat', the second as in 'can't'. The US member
replied that to him there was no
>difference between the As in those two words. All transliterations assume
>there is some standard pronunciation which will enable the reader to
>reconstruct the accent from the spelling. In that sense, they are perhaps
>not the uncomplicated rejection of standardization they appear to be.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Matthew
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