Determination!!!
Pleasant, fairly uneventful, weekend. Yesterday, at scrabble club, our usual table of four people managed to fit four games into our two hours, and, rather unusually, we also managed to win a game each! I've been working on a grandfather clock this weekend- I think I've mentioned this one before - by an Ipswich maker - well, with a bit of luck and a tail wind, I think by the end of the week, I'll be able to take the 'after' photograph of it. This morning our usual choirmistress was off sick with a sore throat, so our organist (an octogenarian of very uncertain temper) took the practice, which is a rare event and is generally rather dreaded. It went fairly well (indeed at one point he even said we were "not too bad", which is high praise from Michael). Then during the practice of the last hymn he suddenly roared with rage, and gave us a long diatribe on our 'dreadful East Anglian diphthongs'. "But we are East Anglians" reasoned our one tenor (I am the one base). This only brought down further invective on his head, but after practising the offending passage four more times, the organist pronounce our diphthongs improved, and asked us if we felt more confident about the matter. We all assured him that we now had our diphthongs under control, and retired to the vestry to robe. The tenor came over to me (as a delegate from the rest of the choir, I think) and said "Mike, what's a diphthong?"
11 comments:
I recall Jimmy Fletcher having much the same furious intolerance to pure East Anglian vowels which are not in reality diphthongs. Spoken in East Anglia the word 'I' (a single vowel) is pronounced as lesser dialects would read Oi! or even Oy! But of course folk of lesser dialects (and minds) can only concieve of such a sounds as being diphthongic; their expressed rage is really frustration at not being able themselves to produce such purity of speech.
So, what is it?
Hi Crowbard. He did indeed, as did at least one of our English teachers.
Hi Lori. I thought someone might ask that. The answer I gave the Tenor was 'a double vowel sound', then had to think of examples. I've just looked it up in Chambers' Dictionary, and it's given as two vowel sounds pronounced as one syllable. Sometimes in old books you see the letters 'a' and 'e', or 'o' and 'e' conjoined, and these,too, are diphthongs (the original meaning to my mind). Hope that's nice and clear. I think my real point was that you cannot expect people to sing vowel sounds in anything other than their everyday speech sounds. Although most of my generation were bilingual- i.e. their original area dialect / standard English.Comments, please.
I think perhaps 'Received Pronunciation' was the cause of all this kerfuffle; I believe 'Standard English' was more about spelling and grammar.
It was very 1950s bank-managerial thinking that there could not possibly be more than one Right Way to do anything, particularly pronouncing English as she should be spokeded! Strange how in a culture dedicated to politically correct behaviour it has become de riguer to fly to the support of dialectal and linguistic variety.
Children in Wales must learn Welsh whether they wish to speak it or not. Stranger in these changing times I have a Hindu neighbour who speaks in a rich old Leicester City accent that has been rare to find since the 1950s attitudes obliterated it from the face (mouths?) of this City.
Pootatu gives 'horth' as the v-word... and that's straight from the horth's mouse!
I wonder if the Sufolk extended 'a' is aaaar'terall a diphthong?
Hi Carl. In the forties and fifties correct spoken English would have been known as 'B.B.C. English', I think.
P.s. Or 'Oxford English', although that was rather a drawl, as well as correct English.
Oehr Yaah, Ai raicawll Awksf'd Inglish, nawstie beurnch awv diphthawngz doernchernoer?
Slightly exaggerated brother, but I do know what you mean.
There's nowt wrong wi Oldham English if tha don't mind!...;-)
It's probably nearer to that spoken by Messrs Chaucer and Shakespear than anything you'll hear on the wireless today.
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