>>There's just something about a phrase like 'educated refinement' which sounds horribly old-fashioned and snobbish.<<
Agreed most definitely.
Agreed most definitely.
Do English teachers in England speak RP? Should they?
I sometimes think people put too much emphasis on temporal changes in language and do not look enough at the dialect of the author. I found Chaucer hard to understand until I realized that there were strong similarities between the phonetic spellings and modern day East Anglian accents. The mistake that people make is pronounce the words exactly with no emotion or feeling. Once I started to read it with an East Anglian accent in mind the language instantly came alive. Similarly just for fun, I've read Shakespeare in a Birmingham accent- as well as being quite amusing it gives the verse a poetry and sense of rhythm that you will never hear in a modern day RP performance. I started to realize how sterile this sounded compared to how it may have originally been performed.
Rick Johnson, of course, though, one must still remember that Chaucer would have used significantly different vowels than East Anglians today would have, considering that his language was definitely pre-Great Vowel Shift, and thus had a vowel system more like that of Scots or that of New Low Saxon than that of Modern English. Hence why it may look like "phonetically spelled" modern East Anglian dialects does not mean that it truly sounded like them at all.
Maybe not, but what he means is that by assigning Chaucer's writing the modern accent suggested by the spelling, Rick was able to tap into it emotionally and enjoy it more. That's probably more important for a modern reader than rendering it into period gibberish.
>>That's probably more important for a modern reader than rendering it into period gibberish.<<
Hey - I like period gibberish! ;)
Hey - I like period gibberish! ;)
It's nice being bi-lingual...I speak Gibberish as well. Maybe I'm tri-lingual as I'm pretty adept at Rubbish as well, so I'm constantly told.
Anyway, British kids are increasingly dissing foreign Languages at 14 years of age. The want the easier options of drama and media studies...nae guid to my mind.....very top heavy professions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/04/nedu04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/04/ixhome.html
Anyway, British kids are increasingly dissing foreign Languages at 14 years of age. The want the easier options of drama and media studies...nae guid to my mind.....very top heavy professions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/04/nedu04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/04/ixhome.html
For anyone interested in learning about the Great Vowel Shift and how it progressed, here's a great site:
http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/dialogue.htm
You can click on the different time periods to see how the shift progresses. Of course, this text isn't fact-checked to make sure its morphology and structure are necessarily time-appropriate for all periods but it does give you an idea of how the shift progressed over the decades and centuries. Besides the idealized dialog which I linked to, the site also has other ways of explaining the shift, including a cool java illustration. A great and detailed introduction for anyone interested in how Modern English got its vowels :)
http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/dialogue.htm
You can click on the different time periods to see how the shift progresses. Of course, this text isn't fact-checked to make sure its morphology and structure are necessarily time-appropriate for all periods but it does give you an idea of how the shift progressed over the decades and centuries. Besides the idealized dialog which I linked to, the site also has other ways of explaining the shift, including a cool java illustration. A great and detailed introduction for anyone interested in how Modern English got its vowels :)
Aww, everyone's so mean to Guest.
Don't be so uppity though, Guest! I didn't mean any offence when I used the word "posh". Being posh isn't a bad thing!
I'm just curious and surprised at how you could have developed a cut-glass RP accent in the multicultural, multiethnic, ultra-liberal, ultra-random, and rather messy environment of an international school!
(This is assuming, of course, that your international school is like mine and most other such schools in Hong Kong!)
Take it easy, matey ;)
Don't be so uppity though, Guest! I didn't mean any offence when I used the word "posh". Being posh isn't a bad thing!
I'm just curious and surprised at how you could have developed a cut-glass RP accent in the multicultural, multiethnic, ultra-liberal, ultra-random, and rather messy environment of an international school!
(This is assuming, of course, that your international school is like mine and most other such schools in Hong Kong!)
Take it easy, matey ;)
If you Englishman spoke your local accents, we Americans wouldn't be able to understand you. So, in the name of our language union, stick to RP.
>>If you Englishman spoke your local accents, we Americans wouldn't be able to understand you. So, in the name of our language union, stick to RP.<<
Well, I don't think most Americans'd have that much of a problem with Estuary English myself, even if they may not find as, well, clear as, say, conservative RP. However, what you say does apply better to various dialects in the UK which are further than RP than Estuary is, for example, Scouse.
Well, I don't think most Americans'd have that much of a problem with Estuary English myself, even if they may not find as, well, clear as, say, conservative RP. However, what you say does apply better to various dialects in the UK which are further than RP than Estuary is, for example, Scouse.
"If you Englishman spoke your local accents, we Americans wouldn't be able to understand you. So, in the name of our language union, stick to RP. "
Why don't you Americans stop speaking your local accents and speak RP?
Why should some Sceptic tank tell us Brits what accents to speak?
Try going to Moss Side in Manchester and tell the natives not to speak with a Manchester accent and to speak RP instead and see what happens to you.
Why don't you Americans stop speaking your local accents and speak RP?
Why should some Sceptic tank tell us Brits what accents to speak?
Try going to Moss Side in Manchester and tell the natives not to speak with a Manchester accent and to speak RP instead and see what happens to you.
{Why should some Sceptic tank tell us Brits what accents to speak? }
Adam you're an idiot ! An American in UK is not called a (Sceptic tank ) is a called "Septic tank" (from yank)! You don't even know how to spell "septic"
Adam you're an idiot ! An American in UK is not called a (Sceptic tank ) is a called "Septic tank" (from yank)! You don't even know how to spell "septic"
I don't have a problem understanding most UK varieties of English I've been exposed to. I get BBC America and sometimes shows come on with people with very non-RP accents, but after a little bit of getting used to it it doesn't seem to cause much confusion. The only time I can remember not understanding everything was for a some during a sitcom which was obviously emphasizing and exaggerating the accents of the characters, and I lost some of what they were saying. Otherwise, I have no problem understanding 99% of everything else on there.