Do you pick up other people's accents easily? If you visit Australia, do you come home talking about having a "barbie" (= barbecue) in a distinctively Aussie kind of a way? Saying for example "that'd be noice, might!" (= 'that would be nice, mate!') ?
It's not always popular if you do that, is it! And I expect you will have encountered a bit of local opposition and antipathy as a result, like that NASA guy who'd just come back down to earth after having had that spell in the ISS (International Space Station) - source: Onion News.
Accents change over time too, don't they. Look at the way the so-called "Queen's English" has died the death in less than a generation: and in the final years of the late Queen's own lifetime, to make it worse! So much so that even the Queen herself adopted a much watered-down version of it, and her grandchildren wouldn't know how to speak it if they tried, something the press has picked up on (source: the Guardian).
One thing that Lois and I have noticed, but most people seem to be unaware of, is that the King's English is now such a distant memory for younger people that young actors, even the ones trained at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), no longer know how to speak it when they're given the roles of "posh" people from the past.
The result is that, even if playing characters like, say Winston Churchill, these young actors can at best only make him speak with the modern Southern British English, or, worst case scenario, Estuary English, or even "worser" than worst, Multicultural London English (MLE).
It's all a bit of a madness, isn't it. And something which really grates on the ears of people like Lois and me, I can tell you!!!!
So we get a nice treat this morning, when our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins, currently staying the weekend with us, say they'd like to watch even more episodes of "The Worst Witch" series, based on Jill Murphy's books, making use of the dying days of mine and Lois's 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, which is nice. The twins got a taste for the series yesterday afternoon - remember?
flashback to last night: the twins, snuggling up to their mum,
become enthralled within seconds to "The Worst Witch"
Yes, unexpectedly, Lois and I find ourselves at home this morning, Normally I would be driving Lois to her church's two Sunday Morning meetings today - but poor Lois had a bad night last night and didn't sleep very well, being awake between about 3 am and 6 am. She wants to take it easy today, and I don't blame her.
So it's bye-bye church, hello Worst Witch, and it's a pleasure to watch our two 10-year-old granddaughters fall so completely under the spell of these stories, based on the 1970's series of books written by Jill Murphy,
me, granddaughter Jessica and daughter Sarah
on the sofa, with granddaughter Lily crouching
between the sofa and the piano, ready to cover
her eyes at the first glimpse of anything too nasty
And our "takeaway" from all this? The King's English now seems to be confined to the UK's witch and wizard community, and it's obviously being artificially preserved mainly to add a clear air of menace to some of the things these kinds of guys usually say. So at minimum it's surviving, if only with what statistically must be very much a minority group, which, at least, is some crumb of comfort for "old fuddy-duddies" and "sticklers" like Lois and me!
I wonder.....!
21:00 And later, when Sarah and the twins have gone home to Alcester, and Lois and I are on our own again, winding down for bed, we're wondering what sort of English we'll hear Lady Chatterley speak, in this second episode of the BBC's 1990's dramatization of DH Lawrence's best-selling shocker set in 1920's Nottinghamshire.
Lois and I are thinking, nevertheless, that Sir Clifford is probably imagining that Connie will do it with some man from their "class", somebody who's a bit more socially elevated than the couple's own gamekeeper, Mellors.
Poor Sir Clifford !!!!
And this second episode is the one where Connie and gamekeeper Mellors first "hook up" in Mellors' scruffy old "potting shed".
Connie and Mellors "hook up" for the first time,
in the gamekeeper's scruffy old "potting shed"
Lawrence, in the novel, seems to make Mellors prioritise mutual pleasure for both the man and the woman, and Mellors judges that this first "go" by the couple failed that test, because Connie "was absent" in an emotional sense, as Lawrence puts it in the novel.
Talking point: did this viewpoint make Lawrence something of a feminist?
A few years ago, Lois and I listened to a radio programme, in which Irish novelist Eimear McBride went on record as saying that both Shakespeare and Lawrence had a sympathetic attitude towards women and both recognised that sex was no good if the woman did not want it. She recalls Orlando's romantic approaches to Rosalind in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" - the very title of the play suggesting an absence of coercion, McBride claims.
Irish novelist Eimear McBride
And McBride says that Lawrence had the same approach as Shakespeare.
In "Lady Chatterley's Lover", McBride says, Mellors immediately senses Connie's emotional "absence" during their first sexual encounter, and he suggests, like Rosalind in "As You Like It", that they should talk, and create the right mood, before trying it again.
And this did the trick, McBride says.
In the TV version, this happens when Mellors has Connie up against a tree, and this "go" is much more successful than the first one, seemingly.
Mellors seems to have no idea of the answer to this question. And Lois and I can't help feeling that for Mellors' poor women, it's going to be orgasm by penetration only - and if the woman doesn't "come off" that way, then it's tough luck!
It's true isn't it? And Lawrence has some distance to travel before he becomes a true feminist, in our viewpoint. Call us hopelessly "modernist" if you like haha!
"So 'DH', we await your next novel with interest!". [I don't think he's going to be writing any more novels any time soon, is he, realistically! - Ed]
Fascinating stuff, isn't it!
And our verdict on the accents? Mellors was authentic "Yorkshire" - well, actor Sean Bean never does it any other way, does he.
As for Lady C - disappointingly just Modern Southern British. Hardly authentic for the 1920's.
What madness !!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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