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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Ginko biloba: The maidenhair tree. Loveliest leaves on earth--fans and fishtails and maidenhair, too--all these three moving the wind or the water or a receptive, heaving chest. Ah, it's good to think on the Ginko!
Best regards,
WordWonderer
PS: I do like off-rhymes!!! Throw off those chains of exactness! What a bore! What a bloody bore!
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (played by actor David Ogden Stiers) had a "Boston Brahmin" accent and Stiers had it down pretty well. Even the OED says that a brahmin is "a highly cultured or aloof person especially a member of the upper classes of Boston, Massachusetts, USA."
What most consider a Boston accent is softer. For instance a Bostonian says gen'lemen where a Brahmin says gentleMEN a la Major Winchester.
I have never heard a regular Boston accent imitated well by any actor who was not born into it.
I cringe every time Cliff the Mailman says Bahstun on "Cheers."
No help at all wot?
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
February: Fowler (1926) doesn't give a pronunciation, which suggests there was no question mark over it then. Old OED (using its own phonetic symbols which could sometimes impede ready understanding) gives only one pronunciation, with unstressed -ua-, but it's not clear to me whether they mean it one diphthong or two syllables, the second a neutral vowel. Modern Chambers (which has a Scottish influence) gives it as four syllables, with unstressed short -oo-a-.
I was trying to work out my own pronunciation the other day. I think Febr-a-ri with the natural tendency to slur it to Feb-ri (as it has a neutral vowel before a continuant).
I can't tell from this whether a generation earlier than OED and Fowler would have regularly said it with the full -air- vowel.
Compare a word in a similar but not identical situation: military. OED and Chambers make it four syllables, without alternative, the -a- being neutral; and Fowler doesn't mention it or have anything about the -tary ending, which suggests the modern British pronunciation as three syllables is recent. But in the US it's given the full -air- vowel, isn't it? So (if so) is this lengthening a new development in the US, or is it the original pronunciation everywhere, and in Britain -air- dropped to -a- then has now disappeared?
Going back several hundred years I think it would have been a long vowel pronounced in full.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
military ... suggests the modern British pronunciation as three syllables is recent.
Coincidentally, Pirates of Penzance is again on point:
For my mil-i-ta-ry knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major General!
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
There's probably four or five *major Boston accents with subdivisions of each one. You have some that are primarily regional and some that are ethnic, but the difference between regional and ethnic can be hard to pin down since the different ethnic groups tend to clump together in different regions. It's been years since I've lived there but I would think that Cliff's accent was sort of a Southie accent.
Then there was the time I was at a play that had a character who was supposed to be southern. the actor's accent was an OK generic "southern for the yankee audience" accent but it kept slipping up to a Down East accent in the middle of a sentence. Rather disconcerting, really.
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