Tag: English

If you are English your Northern accent may prevent you from being promoted into the high levels of the civil service and other places too

Since I read this article in the times newspaper I have been wondering how much further ahead I would have gone in my career if I did not have a Lancashire accent.

On reflection it seems a mistake to wonder about what might have happened but instead to concentrate on improving the future

I realise that what I could do do instead of learning the queen’s English I could learn to speak with a foreign accent instead.

I am very fond over the singer and poet Leonard Cohen and I have listen to him for hours and hours since being bereaved. He has a Canadian accent.Since a I love him it will be a tribute. So what I’m hearing him singing I try to to feel in my mouth and throat what he is doing with his.

I have got the accent for a few of the words but it’s taking me a long time, and now I have an accent which is a cross between Northern British, Canadian and Cockney.

It will give some researchers work because I won’t fit into one category,: when I was teaching in a university some people thought I was from the USA, other thought I was Dutch.

My name also causes problems because it’s Danish from the Vikings and it’s very hard for certain people to pronounce it or even try. Unless you’ve been living here only a few years you’ll be very puzzled. Someone who had come here from Eastern Europe asked me where I came from because she was sure my name was not English.She was trying to do some one-upmanship over someone who was less capable of adapting to life in the UK.

Is Boris Johnson English? I don’t think but he went to Eton so he has mixed with the the Royal the aristocats and the wealthy. So that is the accent that has learnt

Shall I keep my accent and it’s mixed sounds or shall I try to become totally Canadian? That does not have an answer but it has made me live longer trying to reconcile these differences and I suppose it would have been easier to go to an efficient teacher and learn to talk with BBC English or received pronunciation. That sounds quite religious as if Boris Johnson had climbed Snowdon and received the tablet from God tell ng him how to pronounce vowels.

Words rise up like geese at dawn

York Minster,home of sacred song and word
York Minster,home of sacred song and word

WORDS RISE UP

After writing about maps I began to write about words.Words are very powerful in any kind of society but more so in a highly literate one.Words can be sacred or mundane.They can be loving or heartbreaking.And in English we have so many of them because English was developed from several other languages….Anglo-Saxon,French,Latin,Greek,Celtic…..so more than one word for some things.Here in this poem I compare words to birds [ geese ] flocking into the sky like words flock into our minds

GEESE

Words rise up like geese at dawn

When with pale sun new day is born

The words approach and dance in line

The choice of words is mine

Words spelled here by sense and sound

In clause and sentence weave around.

Which tempting words shall I now use

And which shall I refuse?

The fire lights up inside my heart

So now my writing hand can start/

I sit down at my desk and say

“This is the way I spend my day.

With words I sing and play”.

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The relief of the right words

It tickles me to spell “wrong”  rong… but also it has made me wish to find out why we have all those extra silent w’s at the beginning of words.We don’t call rats,wrats… so there must be some etymological reasons.

We also have silent k’s like  in  Knowledge.I imagine that once that was  pronounced.I’ll do some research by lying on my bed with the etymological dictionary on top of me

If you tell lies in bed I cannot recall if that’s also spelled,

lying in  bed

or if it’s lieing in bed.

That latter way looks wrong to me..

So  if you say,she was lying in bed.it has two meanings I think.As in life the context provides the most likely solution

Please stop lying,dear,whilst you are lying in bed.

I am not lying!

Well cats don’t pour out the tea

I was being whimsical for a change.

Ah,whimsey,I wonder what the etymology of that is?

Stop thinking so much and get into bed

Do you want me to lie with you?

Well,I don’t want you to lie to me.

Learning English is very hard as it combines so many other languages.

Is that why we have combine harvesters?

I’ll harvest you if you don’t give  me some peace!

God knows why I married you!

Well,I am glad to hear it as I thought nobody on earth  knew…. that  I am the nicest person in the entire world.If it’s true

why does nobody know?Maybe it’s a fantasy…

I say,my dear,that’s a  trifle exaggerated but I catch your drift.

What a relief,no more lying after today.Amen