Thanks, George - I always wondered about that. 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
-----Original Message-----
From: George Simmers <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 04 January 2001 08:35
Subject: Conrad says
>Matthew Francis deplored:
>> Conrad representing Cockney
>> by writing 'says' as 'sez', which always makes me wonder how he
pronounced
>> the word himself.
>>
>I don't know how much of a residual Polish trace remained in Conrad's
>accent - but upper-class Edwardian English tended to put a long a into
>"says" - more "sa:is" than "sez".
>
>George
>______________________________________________
>George Simmers
>Snakeskin Poetry Webzine is at
>http://www.snakeskin.org.uk
>
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