On British Accent in America

I recently read an article about parents in America noticing their toddlers developing British accent and vocabulary (and also snorting at the end of the sentence), very different to their parents'. The children are influenced by the British based animated TV show "Peppa Pig".

The show follows a life of Peppa Pig and his brother George, and his family and friends. I think it is quite addictive, the little children (animal children) speaking in cute lisping British accent. They say 'mummy', 'daddy' and 'biscuit', pronounce 'tomato' with a long /a/. The characters speak in British, but in different accent, but mainly in southern accent.

The show attracts children around 2 to 5 years old, a very sensitive age for acquiring language and accent.

We can read on Twitter tweets of parents about their children's British accent, and a lot of them sound quite happy and find it cute that their children are developing, to them, 'foreign' accent.

To Americans, the British accent seems to be attractive, charming. Maybe it brings up the impression of the Royal family, and monarchy is something that America has never had in its history since the discovery of the continent.

This reminds me of one of my favourite movie, "Love Actually" (2009). Colin Frissell, perpetually girlfriend-less caterer living in London, thinks that British girls are stuck-up and that is why he cannot find a girlfriend. He hits on a great idea, to go to America where his cute British accent will be a killer to American girls.

'American girls would seirously dig me with my cute British accent'

He also says in another scene,
'Stateside I am Prince William without the weird family.'
Well, a lot of people have the idea that girls are waiting for their prince charming.

And Colin's British accent instantaneously pulls the American girls, 3 all together, later 4. Well, it's a movie.

An American student studying in England called this "Colin Frissell Effect" in his blog. He asked his English uni friend who has studied in the States if the friend confirmed this effect. Unfortunately it didn't work so easily as the movie for him. The blogger however does think that British accent, no matter which, automatically gives the Americans the impression of James Bond, Hugh Grant, Harry Potter and Jude Law rolled into one (and would you not be attracted if all of them came in one package?!).

I remember from an interview of Kazuo Ishiguro talking about how he speaks (accent), when he was asked about his Japanese origin and his British-ness. When he wants to be recognized more for his British side, he tries to sound like Hugh Grant, and that sort of awes his listeners.

I found another article about trying to confirm with American guys if Brit guys' accent was an advantage when it comes to meeting girls. Some of them do believe that British accent has 'the charm', surely becomes an icebreaker, and the Brits get a head start.

Accent has power to charm the listeners, and 'charm' is a topic I want to write about in the future

Phoneticians as Reformers 02

Phoneticians of 19th century

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced, but phoneticians in the 19th century worked in a little different way from what they do today. In those days there were phoneticians who proposed or developed new system of writing to faithfully represent how the words were pronounced.

English spelling has many irregularities. A very famous example displaying the irregularity is the clever respelling of "fish" as "ghoti" ( 'gh' as in 'enough', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in 'nation').

Why so many irregularities? Here are some of many reasons.
-Words came into English from foreign languages retaining their original spelling but the pronunciation adapted to English.
-There was the Great Vowel Shift that changed the pronunciation of Middle English long vowels but the spelling staying as is.
-There were words which the spelling were reformed to reflect Greek or Latin etymology.

Phoneticians thought 26 letters in the alphabet were just not enough to phonetically describe the English words accurately -- too many irregularities, no standardized spelling or pronunciation. This issue was one of the motivations for Bernard Shaw to write "Pygmalion" (Phoneticians as Reformers 01).

Here are what phoneticians of the 19th century did to tackle the issue of the inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation:
-Regularizing: applying existing spelling rules more consistently. Some were proposed by an American English-language spelling reformer Noah Webster, and resulted in the difference in American and British spelling.
-Standardizing: Using the English alphabet and adding new diagraph (eg. <th> →/ð/, <ng>→/ŋ/), new spelling was proposed. This was proposed by Issac Pitman, who also invented shorthand system that is widely used in Britain.
-Renewing: replacing all alphabet with newly invented symbols. Bernard Shaw invented the Shavian alphabet. It had 48 letters all looking nothing like the Latin alphabet, and were "phonemic" as possible.

Against the effort of the reformers of the 19th century, English still retains its irregularities in spelling and inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation, and diverse Englishes flourish in different parts of the world.

Yes, English can be weird

English is difficult to pronounce.

Sometimes "notorious" for its gap between the spelling and the pronunciation.
It surely stands out, if compared, for example, to Spanish, where we are almost able to pronounce words just as we follow sounds of Roman alphabets.

The photo below clearly shows the crux of the issue.


  
IT IS weird. (also weird, as the sentence makes perfect sense!)

The sound of "th" / "ou" / "gh" varies, and also there are some mute letters.

It is surprising to see the same spelling having various ways of pronouncing!

Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable point out that "the chaotic character of its spelling and the frequent lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation" are one of the "liabilities" unique in the English Language. They go on to note:

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In English the vowel sound in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see, is in each case represented by a different spelling. Conversely, the symbol a in father, hate, hat, and many other words has nearly a score of values. The situation is even more confusing in our treatment of the consonants. We have a dozen spellings for the sound of sh: shoe, sugar, issue, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia, pshaw. This is an extreme case, but there are many others only less disturbing, and it serves to show how far we are at times from approaching the ideal of simplicity and consistency. (14)
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We are trained to articulates words just as told.
Taking a step back and think, English spelling is really bizzare and tricky, making us almost feel like giving up mastering it.

However, there is a story to tell.

Works Cited:
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 5th ed. London: Routledge, 2002.