I was married to a woman from Toronto and have known a lot of folks
there--lived briefly on the outskirts, now I'm told near the center of
town. "Tronno" or "Tronna" (more usually) is the normal pronunciation, I
suppose like maudlin for Magdalen. Or Wooster for Worcester. Or Balimer or
even Balmer for Baltimore. Anyone care to add to the list? It's a long one.
At 08:23 PM 1/5/2001 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>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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