When an American friend of mine visited England in 2010, he was bemused at the variety of accents and variations of the spoken language he encountered. He took in Newcastle, the Lake District, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, the Cotswolds, Cambridge, Dorset and Norfolk and was well fuddled by the end of it. "There are so many variations of spoken English in England!" he finally told me. "For a tiny country like yours, it's amazing! And I've never known why your toffs and royalty insert inappropriate r's into words. 'Orff'. That's stupid"
Speaking as somebody without any inappropriate r's whatsoever, but a man who calls a pudding a "pudden" and, furthermore, a man well acquainted with "Dickie's medder", I couldn't help him.
When
Coronation Street was launched in 1960, it must have been puzzling for people in other parts of the country to hear that wonderful Northern version of the language which I personally hold very dear (my dad hailed from "up North"). So, in 1961, the
TV Times appointed Mrs Elsie Tanner of No 11 Coronation Street (who, as a native, spoke the lingo fluently) to enlighten the rest of us poor saps. Here's what she had to say, with specially posed photographs of Pat Phoenix as Elsie and, in one of them, Philip Lowrie, her unfortunate son Dennis....
Been feeling a bit mithered meself lately...
So there are you are. Cheers, Elsie! And if anybody can fill us in on the origins of 'flamin' Nora' and 'flamin' Emma', our cup of happiness would runneth over...
No comments:
Post a Comment