The virtual linguist

Neds speak differently

'Ned' is a mainly Scottish term meaning a hooligan or otherwise antisocial young man. Researchers found that neds pronounced words differently to youngsters of a similar age who identified with other sub-groups (eg goths, those interested in sport, those more interested in schoolwork). These other groups often had their own distinctive ways of speaking too.

 

Researcher Dr Robert Lawson from Birmingham City University studied a group of Glasgow lads over three years, and found that they adjusted their pronunciation to identify themselves as members of a particular social group. Neds pronounce the 'a' vowel sounds, as in words like bar or man, lower and more forward in the mouth than other young men.

 

Here's the full Scotsman article.

 

Plenty of commentators on the above article have their theories about where the word 'neds' comes from. This BBC article about the forthcoming film Neds, set in 1970s Glasgow, says it stands for 'non-educated delinquents'. That is unlikely. The OED says the origin is uncertain, but that it could be linked to the name commonly given to donkeys -- Neddy.

Leeds accent

I went to university in Leeds, and have a great fondness for the place. It's in West Yorkshire, although West Yorkshire is no longer the official name of the local government area. Yorkshire has a distinctive accent or dialect, but Leeds University academics, who have worked on the thorough Survey of English Dialect for decades, say that Leeds people's accent is more Midlands than Yorkshire.

 

If you are from Leeds you can pop into the Central Library and record your voice, which will help these dialect specialists. There are other exhibitions and talks going on in Leeds at the moment related to the Yorkshire dialect. See this BBC page for an article and more details.

Worst accents in films

The Daily Telegraph recently published a list of the worst 'foreign' accents attempted in films. I don't know who compiled the list, but I don't think anyone could argue with number 1 on the list -- Dick Van Dyke's supposedly Cockney accent in Mary Poppins. Van Dyke blamed an Irish voice coach, bizarrely.

 

Next on the list is Russell Crowe's attempt at portraying Robin Hood. His odd accent was big news at the time the film came out and I blogged on it here.

 

Nicolas Cage's Italian accent in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Mel Gibson's Scottish accent in Braveheart, and Tom Cruise's and Nicole Kidman's Irish accent in Far and Away are all in the list. Angelina Jolie is on the list for her performance in Alexander, and, coincidentally, she has been criticised in the press this week for the English accent she adopts in her latest film The Tourist (eg OK calls it 'dodgy').

 

The Telegraph article mentioned above has links to video clips where you can judge the accents for yourself.

 

Shakespeare in the original pronunciation

A group of actors is putting on a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream next month at Kansas University. It will be the first time that a Shakespeare play has been performed in its entirety in the original pronunciation in North America.

 

Professor Paul Meier has collaborated with Professor David Crystal to get the accent right. You can see a clip from the performance, and hear both professors here. The accent to my ears sounds a mixture of West Country and Irish. In the late 16th/early 17th century accent word rhymed with sword, near rhymed with there and qualities rhymed with eyes.

 

More about David Crystal and Shakespeare's pronunciation here.

The changing pronunciation of English

There were a couple of items on this morning's Today programme on Radio 4 about how the pronunciation of certain words is changing (listen here for another week). Younger people are far more likely to rhyme says with days and pronounce ate as eight than are their parents (whose pronunciation rhymes with fez and net), and to stress the o of kilometre and the second o of controversy, words which older people are more likely to stress on the first syllable. Other words whose pronunciation is changing, according to John Wells, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at UCL, include poor, tour, sure, harass, garage and create. Aitch, the 8th letter of the alphabet, is increasingly being pronounced haitch these days.

 

There is nothing new about the pronunciation of words changing. In a 1928 guide to pronunciation issued by the BBC the final syllable of pristine rhymed with line, combat sounded more like cumbat, respite was stressed on the first syllable and the second syllable sounded like spit and finance was stressed on the final syllable. There are more examples in this article.

 

The British Library is compiling an archive of different, modern pronunciations and visitors to a forthcoming exhibition on the English language can record their voices reading a set passage from the popular children's book Mr Tickle, which has been slightly adapted to include words whose pronunciation is known to be in flux.

 

More on this subject in this BBC article.

Pronunciation of fashion designers' names

Last week's London Fashion Week featured in some television and radio news bulletins and magazine programmes, so the BBC Pronunciation Unit published a guide to pronouncing the names of some of the designers and labels on show. Apparently, the way you pronounce Louis Vuitton shows immediately whether you are a true fashionista or not -- the BBC recommends LWEE vwee-TO(NG) (-w as in wet, -o(ng) as in French bon).

 

It might seem obvious that you would pronounce the name Balenciaga the Spanish way, since Balenciaga is a Basque designer. However, the label is now owned by a French company, so it is more likely to be pronounced the French way, and indeed, the BBC discovered that the company prefers the c of Balenciaga to be pronounced like an s, rather than Spanish th.

 

If you're wondering how to pronounce Miu Miu, Ermenegildo Zegna, Christian Lacroix, Elie Saab, Yohji Yamamoto, Isaac Mizrahi, Ralph Lauren and Hussein Chalayan, read the article.

 

Pronunciation of phth

I bet telling people you're a phthisiotherapist at parties is a real conversation stopper. That's not physiotherapist but phthisiotherapist, beginning with phth. It's not a common word, but it means an expert in the treatment of tuberculosis. Phthisis, or phthisic, is another word for tuberculosis. The spelling phth in these words is a direct translation from the first two Greek letters, φ (phi) and θ (theta), of the word for 'wasting' or 'consumption'.

There are over 350 entries in the OED that contain the sequence of letters phth and most of them are scientific. The Dictionary says that there are various pronunciations of the word. In British English you can pronounce both letters, so that it sounds like fth, or just th. In American English these words are usually pronounced with a th sound alone, or the whole group phth is pronounced as a t (so a Brit might say 'fthizic' for phthisic but an American is more likely to say 'tizic').

When the phth comes in the middle of a word, you never pronounce a t sound at all. Ophthalmology is either pronounced 'offthal ...' or 'opthal ...', and many people misspell the word by missing out the first h because the ph is so often pronounced as a p.

The phth of the words diphthong and triphthong is usually pronounced fth, although the f sound is often missed out of monophthong because it's hard to say. Here phthong is the Greek word for sound.

For more on diphthongs and triphthongs in English see this old post of mine. 

BBC In their own words

I watched an interesting programme on BBC iPlayer this week. It was the first in a series of three programmes called In Their Own Words, and consisted mainly of recordings of novelists made during the 1930s.

It was interesting because of the content; the writers Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Jean Rhys, HG Wells and GK Chesterton all featured. Another thing of interest because it was so different from today was that everyone smoked throughout the interviews - BBC interviewers and interviewees. But it was also fascinating to see how pronunciation had changed over the last 70-odd years. Elizabeth Bowen, who was born in Ireland, had extremely cut-glass vowel sounds; the a in words such as bad sounded closer to an e sound, and off was pronounced 'orff'.

Evelyn Waugh used the word gibberish a couple of times, but he pronounced it with a hard g (as in golf). The OED lists two possible pronunciations for this word -- with a hard g, as Waugh pronounced it, and with the g pronounced as in giraffe, which is the most usual pronunciation these days.

If you are in the UK, you can see this programme for a couple more weeks here.

Amusing dialect 'translator'

I came across this site which claims to translate text into various dialects. It's meant to be a jokey site, of course. I put in the short text "Good morning everyone. How are you? I'm delighted to see you" and got the results below. It's clear that the dictionary behind the site does not contain the word 'delighted' as it has been left unchanged in all the variants. I know what the Scouse version should be -- made up.

Cockney Rhyming Slang
Robin Hood Day's Dawnin' everyone. 'a 're ya? i'm delighted ter clock ya.
Scouse
Awright everyone. y'alright? Am delighted ter see yous.
Yorkshire
Gran' mornin everyone. 'a's teur bin? ah'm delighted ta sithee.
Brummie (Birmingham)
Bostin mornen everyone. arr miskin ya? i'm delighted ter see yaouw
Geordie (Newcastle)
Canny mornin everyone. y'aareet? ahm delighted tuh see yee.
Scottish
Guid morn a' fowk. fit loch en? aam delighted tae see ye.
Irish
Top o' ye mornin' ter ya everyone. 'owaya? oi'm delighted ter clap yer.
Ali G
Heavy mornin everyone. wot's gwannin? I iz delighted to chek yous. Is it coz I is black?
Jolly Well Spoken
Spiffing morning everyone. hoe the deevil aaaare you, one's old bean,? one is delighted to see you, one's old bean. Heavens above! How smashing!

Most confusing accents

The Geordie accent tops a poll of the accents that are most difficult to understand according to a University of Bristol study (article here). In a poll of 6,000 people, 82% of those surveyed said they found the Geordie accent (Newcastle and north-east England) difficult to understand. The Scouse (Liverpool) accent came a very close second with 81%.

I am a Scouser myself, although I do not have a very strong accent these days. I think that one reason people find it difficult to understand Liverpudlians is that so many of them speak very quickly, and it can be hard to keep up with them.

Here are the top 8 accents/dialects in the Most Confusing Accents poll:

1. Geordie 82%
2. Scouse 81%
3. Scottish 75%
4. Welsh 70%
5. Irish 69%
6. Brummie (Birmingham) 66%
7. Somerset 61%
8. Cockney 60%