Hi, Matthew--sorry, didn't mean to suggest that you were annoyed by
Helen's (yes, terrific, poem--hello, Helen!), but rather by the Inglond
(was it?) transliteration. And I agree that Tom Leonard's Glaswegian is
brilliant. (As for my own occasional "y'all," I just like to play a
Southerner online sometimes.) What Steven Wright did with that Canadian
Mountie character which seemed so brilliantly comic was not to alter his
own (flat, deadpan) delivery or American speech pattern--except for that
one shift from "abowt" to "aboot" whenever he said "about." It made such
an impression on me, in fact, that when I visited some friends in
Melbourne--one a native of that fair city and the other from "Tronno"
(as Melbourneans call it)--I recognized the Canadian as such the first
time she said "about," rather taking her aback but amusing her Australian
husband. When I left a few days later, he was still begging her to "say
about, just once more, pleeeease." --Candice
>I wouldn't say I was annoyed. I thought Helen's poem was terrific, as a
>matter of fact. And I also think Tom Leonard's transliterations of
>Glaswegian are brilliant, though I'm never sure whether I admire them as
>poetry or just as a technical tour de force. But I think your implied point
>is accurate - you have to know the accent already to do the imaginative leap
>from the transliteration to the voice. And the politics of that process is
>often represented simplistically, whereas it's actually quite complicated.
>
>>As a New Englander originally
>
>What a surprise! I always imagined you with a Southern drawl. I had a
>girlfriend from Portland once, with the result that the Maine accent is now
>the only American one I can do. (She taught me a joke about moose-turd pie,
>but no British people understand it.) But I have to admit I have trouble
>telling it from other New England accents, though she certainly didn't sound
>like JFK.
>
>Ta-tah is exactly how I would write the pronunciation, because for me that
>spelling seems to make a distinction between a short vowel and a long one.
>We had some Californian friends staying with us this summer, and they asked
>us how we pronounced the name of the city Bath. We said Bahth (long A). So
>the mother started pronouncing it that way. Then the son asked how we
>pronounce the kind of bath you get into. Same way. So he said see, that's
>not the name, it's just the way they speak.
>
>I haven't heard Steven Wright's Canadian. Hard to imagine him imitating
>anyone else's voice.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Matthew
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