Er, yeah. I know. That's my point. The word has already made the trip once, and the new trip is adding absolutely nothing to the language. Using it as if it had just arrived from French is cringingly pretentious. My suggestion is that any attempt to justify such oo-SARZH will probably be gar-BARZH.Originally Posted by Sancho
Last edited by MarkBastable; 06-01-2012 at 12:41 PM.
Well, I’m not sure where the pronunciation over here came from. I don’t know if it floated across on the Mayflower and then got changed back by pretentious Francophiles, or if it was always here as a result of all those Frenchys in the huge swath of land in the Mississippi River Valley - which we bought from Napoleon at a bargain-basement price, I might add.
I just don’t know. And I don’t care. It is what it is. But the fact that you assume it’s pretentious probably says more about you than it does about us.
I also don’t care that certain Americans like pronounce “ask”- “axe”. It is what it is. In fact, I think “ask” was pronounced “axe” in Middle English. And I don’t think that going back its original pronunciation is pretentious.
Last edited by Sancho; 06-01-2012 at 01:25 PM. Reason: speling
Uhhhh...
If Americans had always pronounced it that way, you'd have a point. But I believe that the Mayflower folk would have pronounced it HOM-idge.
I'd say the new usage is a twentieth century phenomenon, and my guess is that the hipness of French arts - especially cinema - mid-century led to the use of the French pronunciation amongst the chattering classes. 'Of course, the scene with the dove is an om-ARZH to Truffaut'. And it caught on from there.
And if I'm right, then pretension is precisely what it is.
Last edited by MarkBastable; 06-01-2012 at 01:44 PM.
Could be. But it would surprise me that such a small group of Americans could hijack the pronunciation of a perfectly good English word and force down everybody else’s throats. I mean, French films don’t have a lot of car crashes, and Americans generally don’t like to watch movies without car crashes.
Uhhhh...
Nobody would have to watch the movies to pick up on the use of the word. All it requires is for people in the media to use it that way. This is how fashion works. These days, people are coached and paid to use certain words in interviews, precisely because viewers do pick up on these things.
All pretentions aside, I notice that place names, particularly in the South West, are starting to be pronounced in fully inflected Spanish rather than in Gringo-ese. I kind of like it. We’ve got an avenue in Atlanta called "Ponce de León" that so far it’s retained its Southern White Cracker pronunciation: Pons-DUH-lee-on. At any rate, this shifting of pronunciation is just the nature of language, I think. Also, I suppose, there’s a certain pretension in human nature. Did you think it was pretentious when Linda McCartney all of a sudden wound up with a British accent? And did it sound true to your ear? I read a Nick Hornby book a year or so ago that had an American character in it. I enjoyed the book, but I thought I could hear Hornby’s British peeking around the corner of the character’s dialog.
Uhhhh...
I don't think it was pretentious of Linda. Most people tend to pick up the accent of the people they are with.
In the nineties, when my wife was a radio broadcaster doing a drivetime show in Columbia NC, she used to mock Madonna mercilessly for having adopted an English accent and for using so many British idioms - on precisely that principle - that it was a pretension.
Eleven years later, having lived in London for all that time, my wife has developed what to all her friends in the US sounds like a British accent, and she says 'telly' and 'pavement' simply because that's what everyone around her says.
Interesting.
Was that Columbia in North Carolina or South Carolina? My H.S. Spanish Teacher (A woman on whom I had a blazing crush) insisted we pronounce it Co-Loom-bia as opposed to Co-Loam-bia, which she reserved for the country next to Ecuador –Colombia. Both places were named for the same guy, but spelled differently and pronounced slightly differently. Speaking of Columbia (the one in S.C.) there is a street there named Huger Street. It’s a French name and everybody used to pronounce it U-gee street, but that’s more-or-less fallen by the wayside now, and most folks just call it Hugh-ger street.
Ah well, speaking of place names, during WWI there was a vicious battle (several actually) around the town of Ypres in Flanders. As you probably know, the British insisted on calling it The Battle of Wipers. I love that kind of stuff.
I hate to go all mooshy-whooshy here, but Paul and Linda had to have had one of the great loves of all time, I think.
Last edited by Sancho; 06-01-2012 at 05:11 PM.
Uhhhh...
Yeah - sorry. SC.
Back in the 70s the Separatists went on a translation spree with the street names in Montreal, Pine became Avenue des Pins, Mountain became de la Montaigne, Church became De l'eglise and so on.
This causes a lot of confusion between old Montreal Anglos, like my family, and newer arrivals who often look at us with blank stares of incomprehension when we use the older English names for the streets.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 06-01-2012 at 07:14 PM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
There is official Big History and there is a sneaky, unwritten sub-history that still lurks in places like pronounciation and accents.
During WWII, some American GIs stationed in Norfolk walked into a village pub and found themselves surrounded by locals who spoke as they did. It turned out their Ancestors had emigrated from there and settled in the Appalachian Mountains, where the thrust of American History had passed them by, leaving their accents and idioms almost pristine.
I don't know how much of a backwater the Appalachians were, but in a similar story from there, Mike Harding (The Rochdale Cowboy) was making a documentary about American Folk Music. He was filming some good ol' boys playing together on their porch when they started playing a song he'd last heard played years before in a room above a pub in Manchester.
Nearer to home, that Yorkshire Anthem "Ilkley Moor Baht 'at" is adapted from a Cornish song and was brought North by Cornish tin miners in search of work.
I wonder if GG has ever heard "Shoals of Herring" played in Texas.
ay up
That Mike Harding documentary tracing the journey of British folk music across America was great.
I recently came across a British folk song that was obviously the ancestor of the quintessential cowboy ballad Streets of Laredo. Can't remember what the hell it was now...*
However, here's a Welshman doing an excellent Euro-rock version of an American folksong derived three hundred years ago from an ancient British root.
*Aha. Found it.
I really enjoy the fluidity of this thread, it flows seamlessly from one topic into another.
One can't imagine how thems foreign words get butchered down here; "fill it - mig non" for example. I'm planning to head over to the Kimbell Art Museum this weekend to see an Impressionist exhibit along with a touring Poussin. I will not attempt to sound out the Texas version of Poussin.
As for street signs here, the recent trend among activists in the larger metropolitan areas is to force the renaming of long established street names in honor of a particular cultural icon. The solution seems to be the naming of new streets in their honor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ov81aogaxg
I have now! followed by a wipe of the eye. Very nice. Thanks
Interesting history and variations on the tune. Having finished some brief research, I see the tune is also referred to as "Cowboy's Lament". The performance I am most familiar with is by the great folk singer Burl Ives... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61XaTltS8E4
Speaking of Folk music, I learned that Neil Young and Crazy Horse are about to release Americana, a collection of American folk songs. Among the tunes from the album, is The Gallows Pole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mai...om_the_Gallows
Here is Leadbelly's take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsgGNWlNAfA
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Me and Mrs P went (once) to a folk (or Put yer Finger in yer Ear )night in the village hall. It's not really my kind of stuff but we went with friends. Happily there were indeed many earnest vocalists singing with their finger jammed in their ear (probably trying to block the accompaning hurdy-gurdy.) Then a young girl got up and sang "Matty Groves" and I was transported back to my college days when there was a pirated reel to reel tape of Sandy Denny singing it live going round. Took me right back. I bet if I went to another one I'd hear the same songs, sung in the same way.
ay up
When I was at school, we had a series of music teachers who - I'm sure - adpated what they liked and made us sing them. The first music teacher we had - a sadistic fellow who looked like a big Milky bar Kid whose way of compelling you to be quiet was to pull the hair by your ear - (oddly painful) - had us singing modern versions of bible stories. The next - a lady whose name I forget but who had an unusually long stride - (odd the things you remember) - had us singing The Streets of Laredo with the words printed in nice smelling banda copies. Our next music teacher had us singing The Beatles, which I thought was a great improvement in terms of if you had to sing something, sing something good.
Incidentally, my Mum and Dad loved country music, and would often sing El Paso as we drove back from visiting relatives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn3JB51NH_M
It was touchingly romantic in what was often a dfficult relationship.
When I was about 16, my dad would sometimes take me out with him to the local pub - The Whinney Moor. They would have Country and Western bands on, and you would get the old guys whooping along to Don William's songs.
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