The virtual linguist

Babies cry in a French or German accent

Some German biologists are claiming that babies cry in different 'accents' depending on the native language of their mother. This has led the researchers to hypothesise that babies begin to pick up language before they are born. Here is an informative and erudite article from today's Times, and here is a rather less erudite one from the Daily Mail entitled Ee wah gum! Babies cry with regional accents. The German study compared the crying of French and German infants. The Daily Mail has its own hypothesis, namely that British babies born in different regions of the country to parents speaking different dialects and with different accents, will also have their own distinctive crying patterns.

Not all linguists are convinced by the study, which showed that French babies' cries built up from a low to a higher pitch, while German infants' cries were the other way around, matching the intonation rhythm of the French and German languages.

Ee wah gum, by the way, is meant to be a pun on the northern dialect phrase ee bah gum, which means 'golly!' or 'well I never!'. It's supposed to be a Yorkshire phrase but I went to university in Leeds in Yorkshire and can't remember ever hearing anyone say it. The phrase by gum is in the OED. Gum is a corruption of God, as is the interjection golly.

Glaswegian interpreters sought

A translation company has advertised for Glaswegian interpreters to help business people understand the Glasgow accent. It has been inundated with applications, apparently. The Glasgow accent and dialect are incomprehensible to a lot of us south of the border; apparently in the 1960s and 70s MI5 tried to bug the Communist Scottish miners' leader Mick McGahey but were completely foxed because they didn't understand a word of what he said.

There is an article here with links to some recordings so you can listen to the dialect. There was also an interview on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. That will be here for another week; scroll down to 08.50.  

Chris Eubank's lisp

Several newspapers have carried the story of Chris Eubank's decision to have his teeth fixed in order to cure his lisp, but the BBC page gives interesting information about different types of speech problems. Eubank is, or was, a champion boxer. He was often mocked in the press because of his lisp so it might appear that he is embarrassed by it. However, he also wears jodhpurs, a monocle and a bowler hat, so he doesn't seem to be concerned about attracting attention generally.

Eubank's lisp means that he is unable to say the letter S (unfortunately, he was set up when he was guest presenter on Top of the Pops, when he was asked to introduce Suggs singing Cecilia at number Six). Other speech impediments explained by the BBC article mentioned above are dysarthia (defective articulation, according to the OED definition), rhotacism (inability to say R), apraxia (inability to say correctly what you mean), cluttering (repeating syllables or phrases several times), dysprosody (poor rhythm and intonation) and selective mutism (refusal of a child to speak in certain situations, eg in school).

Innit

The word innit in the headline of a mid-market newspaper is usually a sign that the accompanying article is a diatribe against 'yoof-speak', or the way young people speak English nowadays. "Innit isn't a proper word" say the critics. Innit is, in fact, in the Oxford English Dictionary, and there is a quotation dated 1959 - "That's right, innit?" and one dated 1962 - "Dead right, innit?" The dictionary definition is: "vulgar form of isn't it".

These days innit is more than a corruption of isn't it, as it is used in place of other tags, eg I is well rich, innit?, Yo, look at my new car, innit!, Now I can start calling you that, innit? Moreover, it is not necessarily used in questions only. It's used mostly by kids in urban areas of Britain, and was popularised by the character Ali G, a creation of Sacha Baron Cohen, in a show he did about 8 or 9 years ago. It is believed to have come from Hinglish, or the English spoken by people from the Indian subcontinent; haina is a Hindi tag attached to the end of sentences, which means 'and no?' (see article here). One researcher found that innit was used more by female speakers, low-social-class members and ethnic minorities (see this very erudite book review where innit is considered from a sociolinguistic and pragmatic viewpoint). I'm not sure I agree with that.

Mockney

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's post on Estuary English was mockney (sometimes written with a capital M), which is similar. The word itself is a pun on mock and Cockney and refers to a form of English, or an accent, which is put on by someone who really has a much 'posher' or more middle-class accent. People adopt mockney in order to appear matey and appeal to the wider public, who generally have a negative view of the cut-glass vowel sounds of the Home Counties.

The word mockney can describe the speaker as well as the accent. A mockney, therefore, is someone who exaggerates features of Cockney - glottal stop, saying f instead of th (I fink), h-dropping at the beginning of words, vowel lowering (saying sparra instead of sparrow) and tags at the end of sentences (know wha' I mean?). The celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is a mockney. He grew up in a middle-class Essex household, but affects a working-class mockney accent. Another mockney is the film director Guy Ritchie, who makes films about London criminals, but is himself from a very upper-class background (his mother has the title Lady Leighton).

Mockney has entered the Oxford English Dictionary this month (March 2009).

Estuary English

I gave a talk at the Royal Over-Seas League this evening (Over-Seas is always spelt with a hyphen for some reason in the title of the organisation) and there were lots of questions after the talk, one of which was "What exactly is Estuary English?"

I do not speak Estuary English, as I am a northerner, so all my information comes from articles and websites (eg this BBC page). Estuary English is an accent somewhere between RP (received pronunciation) and Cockney, and is popular with many people, as it is not as 'posh' as RP so appeals to those who wish to hide their upper-class origins, yet it is not perceived to be as working-class as Cockney. Tony Blair is said to have adopted Estuary English to sound more ordinary and more appealing to Joe Public. RP speakers adopt some, but not the most extreme, features of the Cockney accent, and this is what gives them an Estuary English accent. So, RP speakers pronounce t in words (water, daughter, bottle, right etc) and Cockneys don't - they use a glottal stop instead. Speakers of Estuary English drop the t in some positions (usually at the end of words) but keep it in others (eg in the middle of short words). The final l of words (eg bill, feel) is likely to be pronounced like a w by Estuary English speakers.

The term Estuary English was coined in the 1980s by David Rosewarne. Here's an article from English Today which he wrote in 1994. It is a fashionable variety of English and has now spread beyond the south-east of England, both northwards and westwards.

The pronunciation of Ralph

I got chatting to the man sitting next to me on the train last night, and he turned out to be the actor Alfred Burke. I had been to the National Theatre and he had recently appeared in a performance of Oedipus there, so he was telling me about working with Ralph Fiennes, who had played the title role. It got me wondering why Ralph is pronounced Rafe (to rhyme with waif) and although I have spent some time researching that point today, I'm still not that much the wiser.

All I can discover is that the pronunciation Rafe is an old British English variant. Many people regard it as an upper-class or 'posh' variant; I remember knowing several Ralphs when I was growing up, but they all pronounced their name to rhyme with Alf. The letter l is often silent in English words, where its function is to indicate a particular pronunciation of the vowel in the word. So, if the words calm, talk, yolk and would didn't contain the l we would want to pronounce them completely differently. The traditional pronunciation of golf is gofe (rhymes with loaf), particularly in Scotland, and this pronunciation is reflected in the name of the Loudon Gowf Club.