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Hello all. Back after a bit of an odyssey, and thought you might like to tilt at this…
I wonder how many of us here speak in sentences? How many, if any, even attempt to do so?
I think this stems partly from a passage I read in David Crystal's "Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language": a transcript from the Watergate Tapes. The particular passage I refer to is apparently the crucial one in which Nixon (or one of his senior aides) actually makes the incriminating statements regarding bribes and other shady deals. The transcript itself could not convey, of course, intonation, pause length, rising tones and the like. Even so, as purely written language, it was well nigh incomprehensible. I presume that whoever prosecuted the Watergate affair (in the media and otherwise), could not have relied upon the transcripts themselves, since they seem virtually to be gibberish, but used the tapes themselves, where the voices would, perhaps, help make some sense possible.
I have also read works in which people have been praised for speaking in complete sentences. I believe Oscar Wilde may have been one such recipient of kudos.
Finally (why are my preambles longer than my posts?), in a former life, I used to make a fair number of presentations, and was once told that people were intimidated by them, because I used 'long words' when I spoke.
On a Board like this, as we might say, the sesquipedalian attitude is the prevalent one, and most classic English literature doesn't shy away from it either. So it was a surprise to me to discover that most people regard me as I (when a child) regarded grown ups - they used long words like oxygen and democracy, and so they seemed to be speaking a different language.
Yes, I confess, I do try to speak in sentences. I often, since I also have the habit of changing my mind mid-sentence, also get into the most convoluted periods. No doubt we have all seen these parodied in works that contain dialogue like: "So now, you see, I know that she knows that I know what she thinks I think…. I think."
So - how many of you speak in sentences, or try to? And do people think you're strange if you do?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Yes, I tend to speak in sentences - obviously so when I'm speaking to an audience, but also in private life. What tends to go - or tends to be different, perhaps - is the use of grammatical constructions. For speech, I have no qualms about using prepositions to end my sentences with, or all the other things that have been YARTed to death and back in this forum. My main problem these days - with advancing years - is that I, from time to time, find myself stuck for a word, which can really mess up your sentence construction. For really snappy complete spoken sentences, you can't beat a good imperative: "Go." For a short while, I worked as a dog handler and found the imperatives used there were very satisfactory 
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Oh my goodness, shanks, I knew I'd be glad of your return!
Confess I don't always use complete sentences. Depends on the atmosphere, I think. If I am trying to explain something, I use complete ones. If I'm just mouthing off
(giving my own opinion, for ex.), prob'ly not. Don't even
always use correct grammar or syntax, esp. if I'm excited about something (a frequent occurrence). One trait that you and I share, that, I think, probably drives most of my
friends crazy, is my tendency, or rather, predilection, for speaking in a very convoluted way, because often in mid-speech I will decide that bringing in an explanation is necessary.
The Watergate trial took over TV here while it was going on.
I seem to recall that they did play the tapes.
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Hi shanks,
No, I often don't speak in sentences. I think with language - both spoken and written, but more so with spoken - there's a great tendency to adopt the prevalent style, and I'm afraid to say that I'm guilty of following the mob on this point.
On a slightly different tack, I am often accused of being too verbose in my emails. I use email as a necessary part of my job, and I also correspond with a few friends using the technology. People in both groups have told me "Email is for bullet points, not essays." I disagree, particularly for social communication. My cousin in America is - I think - equally happy to receive a three-page air letter or a three page email, perhaps even happier with the email because the news is a week fresher and he can reply same day if he chooses. I make little distinction between the two media.
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i would say that whether i speek in sentences depends on where i happen to be.
for example
at home we have our own little sub-language. sometimes complete words are not even necessary.
some times one of my biggest downfalls in a work or school setting is my tendency to fall back on such. i may begin a sentence and mid way through, i assume that my listener can infer the rest, which is not always so. i may start a sentence... 'this watch is water resistent to 100 m. so you don't have to worry about...' at which point my customer thinks 'worry about what? spilling soda? showering? scuba diving?' when infact i could have listed any of those things to accurately finish my sentence.
finishing sentences is something i make a conscience effort to do. but something i neglect because i forget that people don't know me as well as my husband or brother might.
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Pooh-Bah
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Hope you didn't have to fight off to many ancient beast and you didn't have too much trouble with the sails, it can be a bit choppy in the Atlantic.
Glad to see you back.
I speak in two ways:
(i) At enormous speed, with excessive detail and frequent meanderings
(ii) Staccato, with missing key nouns and other important signposts as to what on earth I mean.
My latest irritating habit is to make on of those duty calls to a member of the family whilst opening my e-mail! The other day I was discovered - I was OK until I hit a comment in AWAD and dissolved into hysterical laughter!
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Hi Shanks, A great subject ! Proof is the copious echo you already got. I wonder if we actually know whether we speak in sentences most of the time? Because we can't review our utterings before they are broadcast, and often forget the beginning when we reach the end . One occasion when everybody notices this is when speaking to an answering machine on the 'phone: how often do you prepare those sentences in advance? e-mails are a truly new type of hybrid between the spoken and the written word.
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I have to confess that though I rarely place prepositions at the ends of my sentences (when writing), and sometimes even pay heed to the split infinitives shibboleth, I tend to do much the same when I speak. In fact, if I end a sentence with a preposition, I am more than likely to restate it (to the utter confusion and frustration of my 'audience') with the preposition in the 'correct' place. By this point, of course, I am more often than not in 'lecture' mode, and then it is impossible to stop the meandering, frequently retraced, often repeated stream of verbiage that passes for my conversational style. Ah well...
I would hate to feel that I am 'getting on in years', being only in my mid-30s, but I have to confess that I too suffer from words (that used to be so easy to retrieve) now getting lost in the thickets of my memory. As you say, the result can be a number of exceedingly convoluted sentences, or a great deal of 'whatchamacallits', 'thingummyjigs' and 'whatsfaces' peppering my speech. Alas these fallen times, and morals all agley.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Jackie
Nice to be remembered, even though, oh horrors, I am still a newbie - are you sure your prestige won't suffer from being associated with a tyro? Don't they graduate you just for having been here a long time, whether or not you post? Questions, questions.
Anyway, more germane, of course, is the issue at hand, that of speaking in sentences. And I agree with you almost completely. I too, have the irritating habit of trying to explain, qualify, contextualise (apologies for that neologism) right in the middle of a sentence. My most commonly used phrases, are, therefore, 'it seems', 'it appears', 'probably', 'tend/tendency', 'try to' and so on. I thought about it the other day and realised that, when I speak, I probably (!!) sound like a politician: incapable of providing a simple, unqualified answer to a question. Did someone once say that we are all doomed to turn into that which we most deplore?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Marty
For reasons unknown, I tend to be verbose in posts, but terse in e-mail. As for letters, it has probably been a few years since I last wrote a 'real' one.
I believe that the fact of there being a significant difference between the written and spoken languages (in any language) can be referred to by a single word. I don't think it's 'diglossia', but maybe something similar. Anybody here have any ideas about it?
For what it's worth, my nominal mother tongue, Malayalam, suffers from this to an even greater extent than English. Being able to speak the language, and knowing the alphabet, is not enough to allow you to read or write in it, because there are formal distinctions between the way words sound when spoken, and the way in which they are represented when written. This is despite the fact that Malayalam is basically a phonetic language. In passing, most Indian languages are phonetic (or at least, much more so than English), but most, like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and others, do not suffer from this problem. Malayalam, and maybe her parent tongue Tamil, might be unique amongst the major Indian languages in this regard.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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I agree that answering machines can prove to be a great strain upon my powers of spoken English. That's when I most find myself leaving great pauses between sentences, and even mid-sentence, in a desparate attempt to make good grammatical sense. Alot of the time, these delays are due to a desire to be concise (searching for the mot juste?), which, paradoxically, actually makes the message last longer!
Of course, another aspect of my initial post, which was implicit there but hasn't been remarked upon, is that of the social status often accorded to people who 'speak in sentences'. This is similar to the respect (or yawns?) given those who use 'long words', and those (at least in the UK) who use RP. Since I am guilty of all three crimes, I usually find people are polite to me on the phone, refrain from asking me questions once they've got to know me, and often comment on my accent. The comments are usually complimentary, but I rarely comment on others' accents, and wonder if such comment might be considered impolite.
Any thoughts?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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too verbose in my emailsMarty, good for you!!! I agree completely!! What the heck is this medium for, if not communication??? I adore reading long emails (granted, I am not at a workplace with 95 other ones waiting). I can't really say whether my emails are considered "long", but I'd say three paragraphs is about my average. My correspondents must be nicer than yours--I've not been told, outright at least, how my emails "ought" to be, though I think it was a hint when someone told me they like to be concise. Shanks, consider yourself hugged, just for being back! Your posts are as wonderful as ever! If I hear an accent I don't recognize, I usually ask the person where they're from, but with a slight questioning in my mind as to the propriety of it. I don't know what RP is--I gather from your post that people who have that don't use long words? Socially, it seems to me that when I use long words, people listen respectfully. This is a great way to have them thinking that I actually know what I'm talking about! 
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Well, Shanks, at this rate you will graduate very quickly - at least you are doing it honestly, unlike certain members who shall remain nameless (that's to spare your blushes,  Bridget and maverick) I totally agree about the effect of accent, RP, long words and complete sentences on those who hear them. I use all four when necessary to get my own way, and to cut through petty officialdom. Similarly, the only time I use my academic title (other than at official Uni functions) is when it will help me to do something that p.o'dom ( that well known Irishman) is trying to stop me from doing. I see no wrong in either. How does the poem go? Man, vain man, dressed in a little brief authority
Performs such tricks before high heaven
As would make the angels weep."My mother used to quote this, and I'm dammned if I know where it is from. Any ideas, out there?
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I don't know what RP is
Received Pronunciation is a UK term that largely replaced the term The Queen's English, and was originated I think at the BBC as a codified form of common communication.
Doesn't this get close to the common threads examined here - that there is no such thing as the right and wrong way of speaking or of expressing yourself in various written media? That rather, there is the appropriate and inappropriate.
Just as in modes of dress, most of us find little trouble in changing mode to suit the occasion. This rarely poses a comfort problem, until two separate worlds collide (and the family member hears the email laughter!).
Business communication demands brevity. Sharing a complex of thoughts, feelings and impressions with a friend suggests more languid and exploratory style (often involving discursive byways), and which may employ patterns of speech that rely on shared references, ambiguities, and half-formed thoughts about fishes...
And if everyone spoke in full sentences all the time, I would have been denied many a chuckle through the unconsious humour of elipsis (see Directions thread examples). I would regret that as much as I would regret the absence of the finely-turned and fully-formed sentences found in the prose of, say, Sebastian Faulkes.
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there is no such thing as the right and wrong way of speaking or of expressing yourself in various written media? That rather, there is the appropriate and inappropriate.You are entirely correct, maverick. Our ability to select the appropriate mode for the occasion is part of the joy of using language. This is never more apparent than when talking to someone who hasn't chosen the right mode. Business communication demands brevity. Not necessarily - again, it depends on the occasion. I have, upon occasion, to produce long and closely detailed reports - briefs which are anything but. The ablity to know what is appropriate, once again, is a valuable skill. And as Spooner himself said, "We all know what it is to have a half warmed fish within us."
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Any ideas, out there?
Avon calling! I think it's around the early part of Act II of Measure for Measure, when Isabella is (despite her initial intentions) pleading with the stern Angelo for the life of her condemmned brother. The whole speech is too long for memory, but I think the key part this refers to goes something like:
".............. Man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who with our spleens
Would all themselves laugh mortal"
I always loved that section of the play, because it shows Shakespeare's mind at work in all its dancing complexity - even down to the fact that punning use of language was, to him, not mere embellishment but a mainspring of his creative process. Early on after Isabella comes on in this scene, she 'thinks aloud' about the quandary she's in over pleading for mercy on behalf of her brother despite a crime she abhors, saying:
"..... the blow of justice
For which I would not plead, but that I must;
For which I must not plead, but that I am
At war twixt will and will not"
The antitheses of these lines shows the wriggling, driving, balancing act of someone's mind at work, trying to resolve a problem 'on the fly' - and the concluding play on his own name is typical of his sheer joy in language for its' own sake!
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Jackie In reply to:
Shanks, consider yourself hugged, just for being back!
Many hugs to you too. And warmth and goodwill to all who live in this house!
In reply to:
If I hear an accent I don't recognize, I usually ask the person where they're from, but with a slight questioning in my mind as to the propriety of it. I don't know what RP is--I gather from your post that people who have that don't use long words?
RP, as I think Maverick noted, stands for Received Pronunciation. In technical terms (amongst students of the language in the UK), it refers to what used to be called the Queen's English. In fact there's a touch of irony there. Read on…
Today, most scholars divide RP into two types: marked RP, and unmarked RP. Marked RP is what might be called the Queen's English, since it has the exaggerated inflections that 'mark' out the ultra-posh accents. House, for instance, sounds something like hice, and damn sounds like dem. If you want to hear the 'original' version, which sounds a lot like Queen Bessie's clipped nasalities, watch Brief Encounter. It isn't just a classic repressed-Brit-emotion film, but the accents of the children as mummy puts them to bed are genuine archaeological finds. Most modern English-people would be astounded at the change undergone by the 'posh' accent over the last 50 or 60 years.
Unmarked RP, the accent which the BBC encouraged (or used to, before the politically correct makeover), is 'standard posh' English. It is approximately the one that Gwyneth Paltrow uses in Sliding Doors and [Shakespeare in Love. Research shows that, in the UK, most people associate this accent with prestige and authority, so are comfortable receiving their news in this accent. Educated Edinburgh Scottish, for what it's worth, is a close second. The interesting fact about this research is that while it shows RP as being authoritative, it also shows RP as being one of the least friendly of the UK accents. This has resulted, for instance, in Call Centre managers in this country happily setting up their centres in regions where the accents, whilst less 'standard' or 'posh', are seen as friendlier, and perhaps therefore more conducive towards the maintenance of good customer relations.
I wish I could cite the research, but, since they form my main reading, it is likely to be from either The Grauniad (www.guardian.co.uk), or New Scientist (www.newscientist.co.uk).
In reply to:
Socially, it seems to me that when I use long words, people listen respectfully. This is a great way to have them thinking that I actually know what I'm talking about!
You probably do!
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority
Many thanks for that, mav, my friend. M for M is one of several that I have neither read or seen. I should have known - my mother's quotes were nearly always from WS or the Bible - when they weren't from Alice
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Shakespeare, the Bible, and Lewis Carroll: now there's a trinity
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>Alot of the time, these delays are due to a desire to be concise
shanks, since we're returning to the subject of pet peeves (see elsewhere), this spelling of "a lot" is frequently mentioned as a pet peeve. it rarely appears in print, but is often found in the U.S. in informal writing and on Usenet. there does not seem to be a corresponding "alittle". HTH. :-)
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If I hear an accent I don't recognize, I usually ask the person where they're from, but with a slight questioning in my mind as to the propriety of it.Shanks, may I ask what you mean by "the propriety" of an accent? In my rather simplistic grasp of the word, it suggests that could be an "improper" accent - an idea which is anathema to me. Here in NZ, RP was taught for years as the pinnacle of achievement in spoken English, the "proper" way to speak. This meant that many NZers were embarassed by their distinctive accent, and presumably left people like my father, with his Anglo-Indian accent, completely out in the cold. While I consider myself old-fashioned in matters of usage, I refuse to accept the old orthodoxy that there is a "right" accent, and "wrong" ones. I think accents are a wonderful source of variety, to be embraced and cherished, not marked as "proper" and "improper." Here in the Antipodes, the difference between accents is a source of much debate between Australians and NZers - they say (to NZ ears) "Seeedneee", "sex"(6), and "feesh and cheeps", while we say (to Aussie ears) "Sudnee", "sux", and "fush and chups". NZ actors in Australia are told that they must lose their Kiwi accent to get work, as it is "improper". I hope that regional and national accents, however grating they seem to me, are able to survive and flourish, lest we all end up in hellish homogeneity. Salaam p.s. May I say that, in checking the spelling of my "diversity is good" rant, I was simultaneously amused and horrified to see that Enigma suggested replacing "Kiwi" with "Klan"!
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If I hear an accent I don't recognize, I usually ask the person where they're from, but with a slight questioning in my mind as to the propriety of it.
Max,
I think you'll find that was Jackie replying to shanks. And I know Jackie is perfectly capable of replying for herself - as she has proved some 768 times (sorry Jackie!) - but I interpreted her expression to mean that she was questioning the propriety of her own question. In other words, is it politically correct to interrogate people about their origins because they sound different? Now, I am really intrigued to hear what Jackie had in mind.
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>but with a slight questioning in my mind as to the propriety of it
I read this comment differently. I think the propriety was in whether one should ask a personal question, some people prefer their privacy.
I often ask the question myself because I find it fascinating how someone can have lived in a different country or region for many years and still have held on to the accent they developed as a child. I have a chameleon accent, having moved around a lot at an early age and although I "could" get by in RP, as previously discussed, having lived in many areas of the country, it would feel completely wrong to say a word like Graaas or baaath in the style of the south of England.
I meet English people in Scotland who have lived here since they were very young and still sound English and others who made the trip in reverse and still sound Scottish. I can usually spot a Lancastrian or someone from Yorkshire to within a short distance of where they grew up.
I am surprised by how "Australian" the people who left the UK in adulthood sound - perhaps to real Australians they still sound very British. I wonder whether it is because the rhythm of Australian accents are quite "catchy". I think there is a similar phoenomenon in New Zealand.
When British pop and media stars try (as they used to) to sound American it always comes out as mid Atlantic and false. This could because their adopted accent is too unsubtle, instead of going for Boston or the deep South they go for "radio presenter from the mid West trying to sound like they come from New England", it is doomed to fail!
(Looks like I took so long to write this that Marty pipped me to the post!)
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[gren]I read this comment differently. I think the propriety was in whether one should ask a personal question, some people prefer their privacy. Tsuwm was kind enough to point out to me that I had probably misread shanks'(s?) comment. When I posted my rant, I had been up some 15 minutes, after a broken sleep that was far too short. I hope that shanks does not take my rant as a personal attack, which was never my intention. Mea culpa. 
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I am surprised by how "Australian" the people who left the UK in adulthood sound - perhaps to real Australians they still sound very British. I wonder whether it is because the rhythm of Australian accents are quite "catchy". I think there is a similar phoenomenon in New Zealand.
I am sure that you are right. I did not even notice my Dad's distinctive accent until I was in my late teens, by which time he had been away from his Raj-era boarding school for nearly forty years. I also knew a couple of octogenarians from Belfast whose speech, particularly when rapid, was still almost unintelligible to most NZers, even though I'm sure their familes back home would consider their accents greatly altered. It is apropos of nothing at all, really, but the sort of aural wilderness in which these migrated accents exist reminds me of my grnadparents' description of the late pre-teen years - too old for Mother Goose, too young for Lolita. I should probably add, that they said that twenty years ago! It just seemed to capture the "neither one thing nor t'other" quality of displaced accents.
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D'Oh! Thanks, Marty, I never even picked that up! I guess that one should learn to read before one attempts to participate in a forum such as this one. Definitely time for Max to make his quietus, before his ineptitude hits even more appalling depths. To Shanks, I extend my sincere apologies again, and to all, for now, tschau.
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Hi shanks. The folks around here seem to be quite happy about your return. I look forward to future posts.
To answer your initial question. I find a also talk in complete sentences most of the time. An exception to this is Sunday dinners at my parents' house, where 15 of us are sitting around the dinner table talking of this and that. In those circumstances you can be carrying on a conversation with a couple of people at the same time - putting your two-cents in, here and there. My sentences do not often meander but two consecutive sentences can be about two completely different subjects.
The only circumstance in which I dumb down my vocabulary and speak in 'duck speak' (à la 1984) is when talking to our v.p. at work. She gets very upset if I talk create full sentences and take up her valuable time (picture disgusted roll of the eyes here).
As to accents...a little <in> from me to all the gentlemen from across the pond...the ladies on our end can't tell one Englishman/Australian from an other based on their accents but they find them all sexy.
Hmmm, it's funny how an accent can seem so exotic when it comes from a different country yet so plain when it comes from your own.
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Well, this'll teach me to dare to go any place (she said,
slangily). From the horse's (dang-near left the s out!
Whew!) mouth: I meant that I questioned the propriety of
asking someone where they are from. I have a very intense
curiosity (must be on life # 6 or 7, at least), and often have unintentionally crossed the line from friendly interest to being invasive. Some people are extremely sensitive, and what I see as an innocent question may send someone off into an offended tirade/sulk/whatever.
This is a borderline area of propriety. It would take a very unusual set of circumstances for me to ask an obviously handicapped person how they got that way, but the
'where are you from' thing can be a bit dodgy (hey! I can use British slang, too!). For an example, when Iran held
Americans hostage ('81?) for so long, a dark-haired, dark-complected Jewish friend of ours had a T-shirt made that said "I am not an Iranian". You never know where people are coming from, literally or attitudinally.
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People here in Indonesia often comment when I get back after a trip back to the UK how different my accent (when I'm speaking English -- I have such a thick English accent when speaking Indonesian that the differences are probably undetectable) sounds from the way it sounded before I went away. I think people's accents tend to "drift" towards that of the people around them but exposure to their "home" accent quickly sends them back to their starting point.
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme on language and was interested to hear about the ranges of accents across a country. The theory was that America was settled without the benefit(?) of mass communication, so the people in the deep South lived in isolation from those in the North and so dialects developed independently. Radio arrived much later and only then did most ordinary people to hear other accents. In Australia and New Zealand there was a much shorter gap between the different cities becoming more populated and the arrival of mass communication.
What I was wondering is - what are the distinctive differences between
Perth and Melbourne
and also
the North and the South Island of New Zealand?
What about Cananda - what are the differences between, say Vancouver and Toronto?
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the North and the South Island of New Zealand?
The most easily identifiable regional accent in NZ is that found in the province of Southland, located, surprisingly, at the very bottom of the South Island. The influence of Scottish settlers left a verrry distinctive marrrk on the mannerrr in which worrrds arre pronounced down therrre. Nowhere else in NZ is the r vocalised as prominently. Indeed a friend in Alabama remarked that our "cah" (wot u drive in) sounds rather like it does when said by some New Englanders.
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Well, (sigh) if I am to be scolded for one lapse from the honest path, I had better post my responses to some multiple points in one fell swoop.
1. I don't necessarily speak in sentences. Or post in sentences or write in sentences. The letters I (used to, before email!) write to friends had more dashes than a year of athletic meets. I speak / write in units of thought. Unfortunately, my units of thought are not always crystal clear to those around me....
2. >I am surprised by how "Australian" the people who left the UK in adulthood sound - perhaps to real Australians they still sound very British. I wonder whether it is because the rhythm of Australian accents are quite "catchy". I think there is a similar phenomenon in New Zealand.<
I think this is because an accent has at least two distinct constituents - the pronunciation of individual words and the intonation of sentences or stretches of speech. I have frequently been told I sound Australian because of a rising tone at the end of many of my phrases. I have frequently been told I sound English because of my pronunciation of specific words.
I have also been told (by Mormon missionaries in Japan) that I sounded 'Austrian, no German, no Dutch, no Danish, er maybe Australian?' Given that I am a native English speaker who at that time had never been near Australia, I don't know whether to be amused or enraged! So I settle, most of the time, for bewildered.
3. As for long emails, fine in social circles. In business, if it's going to be long, nine times out of ten it would be better as an attachment. Attachments get less mangled in formatting by electronic transmission - they don't lose bolding, italics, tabs etc, or gain line breaks and little >>> which can make things extremely tedious to read. Only today I got a reply to an email with 'my comments added in bold' - except that all the text had defaulted to plain courier. Had to print it out and read every line to get the three comments that had been added...
Grrrr...
PS see what I mean about incomplete sentences? But I'd NEVER put them in formal business writing!
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...Oh yes, one other thing. Speaking is about communication and that communication should be pitched to the audience. (I know, I know, I'm a cynical marketer, but what's the point of language if your message is not getting across?) I started swearing in a business context when I was one of about three people with a university degree in a 200-strong transportation company. I had a classic English RRP accent too. Swearing was the easiest and quickest bridge to build, and I needed bridges to get anything done! Years later, I am still trying to control the habit... If your audience are confused or put off by long words, change the long words, or change the audience. All the above is just a long-winded way of agreeing that the key issues is appropriacy of language rather than its correctness.
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tsuwm
">Alot of the time, these delays are due to a desire to be concise"
Atypo. Apologies for lack of proof-checking...
cheer
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< Brief Encounter>
Thanks, Shanks, for this reminder of one of my favourite films. And don't forget 'Kind hearts and coronets' which, according to its director (Robert Hamer), was specifically written to display the beauties of the English language.
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What I was wondering is - what are the distinctive differences between Perth and Melbourne
Jo,
I'd be hard-pressed to pick any difference in accent between people from any Australian cities. People from "the bush" tend to use more slang and adopt a more laid-back approach to enunciation (" 'Ow yer goin', mate?"), but that's a rash generalization that will probably get me into a lot of trouble. Anecdotally, the further north you go, the more slowly people speak, the inhabitants of FNQ (Far North Queensland) being reputedly the slowest speakers, but I can't say I've had much experience of them or it.
There are a few local variations in vocabulary across the country. The only one that springs to mind instantly is that people in South Australia refer to an electric power pole as a "Stobie" pole (after the inventer I guess?).
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Well, in Canada there is not much difference in the way people from Vancouver or Toronto sound. Both have a majority of English speaking inhabitants, both are business hubs. You will find a great deal of difference if comparing accents from anyone in the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland) and the rest of English speaking Canada. It is a little hard to describe...they seem to speak from the front of the mouth towards the nose. They also have more of a sing-song lilt in their voices, and, I think, like most maritime communities, tend to use words that do not show up in other areas of the country (maybe I should ask a Newfoundlander what a group of fish on bikes are called .) Québec is a different story altogether. The greatest number of people are Francophones with Anglophones coming in a distant second and Allophones way back there. The accents, vocal intonation, and vocabulary, from one French community to another will vary greatly depending upon the distance from one city to the next (eg. there is a remarkable variation in the voices of people from Montréal city compared to cities 3 to 4 hours drive away.) To someone from Québec it is quite easy to know where a person is from by his accent, pronunciation and choice of words. I would say 98% of Anglophones and allophones live in the Montréal area. Montreal Anglophones sound like balance of English provinces (save for Maritimes). Allophones encompass too many different languages to really compare to anyone. Of course, you will always have variations in choice of words used to describe an object based on where you are from. National Geographic had a great www link to a site that discussed this very thing. Let me get on home and I'll add it in. It is kinda fun to look through.
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Ah, voila! Here is the interesting site on American (the authors really mean "only the United States") colloquialisms.
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html sorry guys/gals I just can't seem to make this into a link. I have tried everything and it is not working out. I'm http'd out. I will now go sit on the bright red coo-coo couch and hang my head in shame.
ooooo, in my previous post (longwinded though it was) I forgot to mention Acadians. The Acadian language is a mishmash of English and French, with Maritime colloquialisms thrown in for good measure. The language follows its own rules of grammar, often using verb tenses in entirely different ways than English grammar dictates. It is a dying language in eastern Canada; the Acadians having been deported out of Nova Scotia in the mid 1700's. Only a few families remained speaking the Acadian language. They finally settled in southern U.S.A. and are known today as Cajuns.
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bM, you are oh so close -- you figured out how to do red, now just use <url> and </url> in the same fashion (with square brackets, of course). http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
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Good grief. I've finally figured it out. I have to type <url> in square brackets before and </url> in square brackets after. Here it is: http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.htmlThanks tsuwm and Jo!!
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Here it is...Thanks to you, bM - an interesting addition to my procrastinatory migrations
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>>Unfortunately, my units of thought are not always crystal clear to those
around me....
You are lucky. MY units of thought are not always clear even to myself...
Emanuela
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(Warning: the following is a half-YART post) Thanks for bringing up DARE, belMarduk. Seems it's taken nearly as long as the first edition of the OED to compile!! I worked on the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (affiliated with the DARE project) as a college student back during its beginnings in the 1970s. The criteria for "interviewees" were tough: age, gender (ahem) and race were no problem, but it was hard to find folks who had been in their respective areas for three generations or more. The easiest places to find respondents were at local churches and, believe it or not, fire stations (those guys get REAL bored polishing their engines between fires). http://hyde.park.uga.edu/
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DARE has moved to the top of my 'most wanted' reference list. I've wondered how the project is getting along without its chief editor and guiding light, Fred Cassidy.
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Wow Anna, what a tremendous piece of work. It is a shame they do not transfer those tapes to wavs/mp3s. A) you could avoid tape deterioration and b) we could all get to hear them. Since you worked on the project you should give them nudge in that direction. What a terrific piece of history. As brought up in a previous thread, we are experiencing a dilution of typical <accents> because of the ease in migration, not just from one country to the next but from one city/state to the next. Though we are not all speaking with one voice now I imagine things will become much more homogenized in the future.
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missing words and convoluted sentences
When I was in college and taking German and French conversation courses, there was always the problem of running up against something you didn't know the German or French word for. We were instructed not to hem and haw, or ask what the word was, but to talk around it. The results of taking this advice were often hilarious. Talk about convoluted sentences!! Now that I'm ancient and the little grey cells are becoming exhausted, I find these lapses which you described (which I never used to have) more and more frequent, so I have to resort to the old technique of "talking around it", with what results you can imagine.
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spoken vs. written language
I am fairly familiar with a half dozen languages and every one of them has a spoken language which is different from the written language. For the most part, it's a difference in the level of formality; the spoken language tends to take great liberties in the matter of grammar and also in vocabulary. I suspect that this is true of virtually all languages; a language would have to be already simplified not to have a simpler form for informal communication between people who know each other.
My theory is that this is due to the fact that until quite recently on the scale of history, only a very small percentage of any given language population was able to read and write. Literacy was the preserve of a small elite who were familiar with the classical forms of languages, not only their own, but those others which had some prestige or some scholarly value, like Latin and Greek to Europeans, or classical Arabic to other Muslim scholars, or Chinese to the early Japanese and other oriental peoples. Hence a level of formality develops in a language which is written and intended to be read for informational purposes.
Further, the literate scholars tended to be part of a state apparatus or bureaucracy, like the clergy in medieval Europe, or the bureaucracy in the Chinese empire, or the mullahs with their semi-judicial status in Muslim society. This being the case, much of their writing was expected to be taken as judicial pronouncement. In later times, some of the output of scholars was intended for oratorical purposes.
Lastly, at least so far as regards the situation in English and European languages, the scholars were familiar with the classical languages in which texts and works had been subjected to all the classical rhetorical treatment which they then carried over into their own vernacular, so that the written form of English (as well as certain works intended for oratorical use) exhibited all the flourishes and techniques of Demosthenes and Cicero. The verbal form of this, which we call the oratorical style, is now almost dead, having gone out of fashion. The last great practitioner in the U.S. was probably F.D.R. and in English in general, Winston Churchill.
What do the rest of you think?
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Quite a few years ago some Guru-or-other posited that there are two main types of conversations (spoken word only here) ... .
The Guru said Type One are people who finish each other's sentences and Type Two are those who speak in sentences and hate being interrupted.
No problem when type speaks to type BUT if you get a mix then the Type One people think the other is slow and the Type Two people thing the other is rude.
It was quite interesting.
I, and most of my chums, are constantly finishing each others' sentences. My brother once commented that, heard from a slight distance, the interchange sounded like the buzz of a beehive!
Since becoming aware of this I have noticed that when I meet someone who likes to finish a thought ... and I catch the meaning mid-sentence and interrupt they physically pull back!
NOW that I have learned the "trick" I change my conversational style to suit the occasion.
Strange, I just realized 90 percent of my close chums are back-and-forth speakers .... Like to like ?
As to accents : when I hear one from a stranger, if situation allows, I say something like : "Do I detect a slight accent? Do you speak another language?"
That usually covers it without giving offense.
wow
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Bob I am not very familiar with my nominal mother tongue - Malayalam - but from what little I know of it, it demonstrates greater diglossia (is that the word?) than any other language I know of. My mother is the only one in our family who is literate in it, and when she reads out a letter written to us (from say a relative back in the home state), it sounds like a different language. She reads it phonetically, as one is supposed to do with most Indian languages, and I cannot recognise most of the words she says until she 'converts' them into the spoken versions. As far as oratory is concerned, I suspect we have lost the old rhetorical flourishes for good. But it is possible that the new, sound-bite generation may eventually create something of lasting worth? As for your citation of FDR and Churchill, you are probably right as far as classical forms go, but I have to confess a fondness for the rhythmic flourishes in the speech of one Martin Luther King. You may have heard of him - he had a dream? cheer the sunshine warrior
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But it is possible that the new, sound-bite generation may eventually create something of lasting worth?
Do you mean lasting worth, or long remembered?
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But it is possible that the new, sound-bite generation may eventually create something of lasting worth?Do you mean lasting worth, or long remembered?I mean, I suspect (though I never know what I mean until I say it ), that they might actually create a new idiom of rhetoric and oration. It may not be what we are accustomed to, or accustomed to consider as good, but it may spawn its own culture, art forms, conventions and values that, to its users (particularly if it becomes endemic), is the golden standard against which speech is measured. cheer the sunshine warrior
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Ohhhhh, I'd love to know what I know now and "come back" in, say, May 2003 and see how this board has evolved.
(Huge West-of-Ireland sigh.)
wow
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Dr. King's oratory
Certainly Dr. King was a great orator, as is shown by his masterpiece, "I have a Dream", and other speeches equally effective but not as well known. However, his oratory falls into a special category, that of the sermon. Indeed, most of his speeches could have been called sermons. He was, of course, a clergyman and had mastered the art of preaching, specifically the preaching style known as the "black preacher" style. This is far from a derogatory term, as this style is much practiced and admired by white preachers as well as black. Since it was originally developed for the benefit of an intellectually unsophisticated and mostly uneducated audience/congregation, it is marked by the following characteristics: a) the content is strictly limited to one, or only a few, basic points, although a sermon in this style may last an hour or more; b) ideas, expressed by sentences or phrases, are repeated over and over with or without variations, e.g., "I have a dream that ..., I have a dream that ..., I have a dream that ..."; c) the call-and-response technique is often used, which is the preacher deliberately but tacitly inviting a response from the auditory, usually supplied by ejaculations such as, "Amen!", "Yes, Lord!", "Tell it, Brother!", etc; d) a dramatic oratorical delivery, with carefully arranged crescendos rising at times to the top of the preacher's voice, at others falling to an almost inaudible whisper, accompanied by dramatic gestures, hand-waving, Bible-thumping, leaning out of the pulpit, etc., all as carefully scripted and carried out as an opera. To read one of Dr. King's speeches (or one by another preacher in this style) gives you about as much idea of what it was really like as reading the text ofThe Magic Flute or some other operatic masterpiece without hearing or seeing it.
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The effectiveness of the best black sermons is illustrated in the instructions of an old preacher to a young one:
"I tells 'em what I'm going to tell 'em, I tells 'em, and then I tells 'em what I told 'em."
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"I tells 'em what I'm going to tell 'em, I tells 'em, and then I tells 'em what I told 'em." is good advice for any oral presentaion-- i use it all the time!
Crossing thread, now, i realise i speak in sentences-- and i don't! (Now isn't that a typical Irish answer!)
Just as i know, but rarely use formal Standard Written English-(SWE) but rather instead use a less formal, written dialect-- i also speak several dialects--
Since i have to give a number of presentation-- i have a "Formal Speaking voice" and style-- that I can "turn On" when needed. I can also "turn on" a very low class style of speaking--(and use a vocabulary that would shock sailers, and send dear Dr. Bill to early grave!--he would have difficulting living with the knowledge i could speak so crudely)--when needed.
All this has been covered before-- i think of GBS scene in My Fair Lady-- where he has Dr. Higgins point out that a "shop girl" in a fancy shop need to speak a different dialect -- a more formal one, than even a princess! and GBS said it all better than i can!
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