Received Pronunciation

You see, this is why every language needs a particular accent that is accepted as the "proper" pronunciation.

Sure, it's classist, slightly racist and incredibly excluding, but it works, dammit!

I've never had an accent that anyone could actually identify. For as long as I can remember people have been asking me where I come from. Sometimes I sound a little more British, so they ask if I'm Scottish. Sometimes I sound a little more North American, so they ask if I'm Canadian. Maybe I just sound "northern", I don't know.

But, when I need to, I can deliver a clear and well annunciated "home counties", English style accent - the slightly less plummy version of Received Pronunciation that used to be referred to, in some quarters, as "Eaton Dialect". You know, the way all of the Doctors on Dr Who used to speak in the old series.

I have found this skill to be invaluable. Suddenly, I am perfectly understandable to anyone from Europe, and reasonably understandable to a large number of people from Asia.

Why? Because English, in Europe, is usually taught by English professors with that accent, or someone who studied English in a school where that accent was preferred. In Asia it is usually taught by someone with an American accent, so the Asian students I work with can sometimes struggle a bit with my vowels when I snap into my "Home Counties Accent". I suppose I should try making it a bit more "Boston" when I work with them.

It's almost automatic with me. The minute I'm in a situation where I think someone is having trouble understanding me, I switch into this accent and start sounding like an English Professor. With some people, you can see the lights switch on as they finally have a fighting chance of interpreting what I say (I even had a student from Germany thank me once).

But, then, you get people who learn a language as a group of words. They don't pay attention to how the words sound, they just pronounce it the way they'd pronounce their own words. Then they come and ask me questions and I have a hell of a time trying to work out what they want.

If, on the other hand, they had learnt a couple of accents along with the vocabulary, then we'd all stand a fighting chance of being understood.

I'm trying to be conscious of that as I'm learning Estonian and Russian - listening to the speakers and trying to pick up on their accents. I'm not sure if I'm being remotely successful as I still have this weird tendency to try to speak "clearly" - which, with my training, is the "Home Counties Accent".

I'm sure Russian with a crisp, clear English accent is just as hard to understand as English with a soft, muted Russian accent...

Favourite Sentence for the Week

There's something about web pages that are written in English, but quite obviously not by native English speakers. They have such a unique turn of phrase - it's almost like unintentional poetry.

Take this gem, for example:

"Right moving in nature has been inherent of people already from the primeval times."

It comes from the State Portal for the Estonian government, on a page about hiking.

Now, I'm working on the assumption that the sentence actually means something along the lines of "moving about in nature has been a natural drive in people since primeval times", but doesn't their version sound so much more interesting?

Live Toads

I once heard an interesting statement that has stuck with me ever since:

If you eat a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing bad can happen to you for the rest of the day.

The point of the statement being: theoretically, eating a live toad is one of the worst, most unpleasant things that could possibly happen to you in the course of your day, so everything else is a step up. Comparatively, everything else has to be good, so nothing "bad" can happen to you after that (it's better than eating a live toad, so it can't be that bad) and your day necessarily improves remarkably from that point onwards.

Normally, you don't get the chance to test theories like this because you're not likely to eat a live toad, are you? Today, however, I had the privilege of seeing that principle in action.

No, I didn't eat a live toad, but I did discover there is a very real activity that is equally unpleasant - I tried to communicate with Telstra via the telephone. For those of you who don't know, Telstra is the semi-national-semi-privitised telecommunications company that rules the roost in Australia. It inspires such feelings of warmth and kindness amongst the Australian people that we actually prefer to deal with the taxation department than Telstra, if given the choice.

I had a relatively simple problem that needed to be solved: my SIM card had been playing up and I needed to have it replaced whilst still retaining the same phone number. The girls in the shop couldn't do it at the time, so they gave me a new card and a telephone number and told me to do it over the phone.

If given the choice in the future, never EVER deal with Telstra over the phone.

It took me over an hour of being passed from computer to operator to computer to operator to operator to operator to being put on hold for over twenty minutes to computer to operator to operator before they would actually complete the rather simple task of waking up a card that I already had and connecting it to an account that already existed. And then the PUC they gave me was wrong so I had to phone them back and get another one.

Seriously, after spending an hour on the phone with Telstra (most of that time listening to the same three pieces of muzak being played over and over again), nothing worse could happen to me today.

I cut my finger making lunch - ran a serrated knife over the top of a knuckle. As I tried to make sure the blood didn't get into my sandwich, I literally found myself thinking, "Eh, that's not so bad". Comparatively speaking, spilling my own blood was actually less painful that trying to get anything out of Telstra.

I felt a strong desire to create a cottage industry based around selling T-Shirts with one slogan written on them: "Telstra hates us all". I toyed with the idea of giving them away for free to anyone who had a legitimate reason to think Telstra didn't have their best interests at heart, but then I thought I'd probably run through a few million that way, so I changed my mind.

Since then, though, it's been a pretty good day. Heck, I have a feeling it will be a pretty good week. It can only go up, after all.

Siege Works

Another entry in the "I have too many blogs" list:

Siege Works

You may have noticed from my occasional bursts of poetry that I fancy myself a bit of a writer. Well, I've decided to take advantage of the self-publishing empire that is the Internet and start putting some of my short stories, etc, out there for the world to ignore at its leisure.

I know no one reads what I write anyway (that's why I don't put counters on my personal blogs - the lack of hits on my "professional blogs" is depressing enough), but it feels good to pretend that there might be an audience somewhere.

It you build it they will come, and all that.

At the moment I'm partway through posting parts of Eglantine, one of my "Stories for Kate". It's a personal favourite of mine, so if you hate it feel free to lie to me and tell me you quite enjoyed it.

As for who "Kate" is... well that's my little secret (I've got to create some air of mystery, otherwise they'll be nothing of interest in what I do at all). All I will state categorically is that she is not my child...

Oh, and if you're wondering why I called it Siege Works, I'll explain later. It's a long and drawn out story that involves Superman, Gladiators, a flock of birds and a fondness for homonyms. I think it will take a posting of its own at some point.

The Second Tuesday Band

I woke up one morning and this song just started falling to place in my brain. The words are definitely mine, but I can't vouch for the tune (which seems strangely familiar to me, although I can't peg it down - it's a bit of a shame, really, because I think the tune is better than the words). Thus the words are all I shall present here:

The Second Tuesday Band

There is a town in North-West Tasmania
That has a cape that sits beside the bay
Behind the football club are some buildings
That you might wander to some day

There is a brass band beside the pipe band
And there's a concert band just down the way
And every second Tuesday in April
They get together and they play

And they play "God Save the Queen"
(The grandest dame you've ever seen)
And they play "Nearer God to Thee"
And then they play "Amazing Grace"
Until they're all blue in the face
And they play "Lover Come Back to Me"

They play the standards from the past
The kind of songs that always last
So long as someone holds a horn
And when the drums begin to roll
It starts a stirring in your soul
That makes you glad that you were born

And they play "Sally" (still down our alley)
And "Sally Gardens" can fill you with joy
And they play "Onward You Christian Soldiers"
And then the pipes play "Danny Boy"

It makes you feel good – It makes you feel great
'Cause it's so absolutely grand!
You'll never find a better ensemble
Than in the Second Tuesday Band

You'll never find a better ensemble
Than in the Second Tuesday Band

Childhood games

It's always interesting listening to my "elders" reminisce about their childhood. They had so much less than me, and yet they seemed to have something that my generation was starting to run out of, and of which the current crop of children has very little indeed - space to breathe.

Their parents were more stern, yet less controlling. Their lives less filled with "stuff", but probably better for it. My aunts and uncles were talking about the places where they used to play and the things they used to play with as children, and I felt a strange sorrow that few kids today would have those memories to recall when they reached their fifties.

We've lost the ability to be happy with a set of odd-shaped wooden blocks. We've lost the freedom to wander down to the nearest creek and fall into it. Our kids are kept safe and entertained, which means they don't get to know their environment and they don't know how to entertain themselves.

And its because my mother's generation decided that their own childhood wasn't suitable for their kids. Very poor of them, I think. Look where it's gotten us - sure, we have Tickle Me Elmos, but at the expense of running down to the creek with the other neighbourhood kids to catch frogs.

Of the two, I know which one I would have preferred for my children. Yes, I know, I don't have any children - and if I did I'd be just as likely to give them the doll and keep them away from the icky creek where the dangerous strangers might do horrid things to them. That's not the point.

Then again, maybe it is. The world my mother used to play in as a child no longer exists, and my kids wouldn't be able to play in it no matter how much I might want them to...

She Made It.

My grandmother turned 80 today.

There were many, many times over the past five years when we thought she wouldn't make it to the next milestone. "She probably won't be here for Christmas/her birthday/my birthday/your birthday/the next school holidays..." And yet, here we are, on her 80th birthday.

We had all of her children (and a couple of ring-ins, like myself) up for a birthday party last Saturday, and against all odds a good-time was had by all. Considering we had to celebrate her 80th in the hospital gardens with a picnic at 4:30 in the afternoon, it went down very well.

There were lots of stories and reminiscences. My grandmother even managed to get a lot of the details right (they've been shifting around a bit as she got older). We were worried that she might have been too out of it to appreciate what was going on, but she woke up enough to have a great time (we think it might have had something to do with the interaction between the wine and her medications, but that's beside the point).

The really great thing was that everyone got together for a celebration of her life while she was still here to join in. So much better than waiting for her to die and coming together for her wake.

I'd recommend it to anyone - if a loved one's continued existence is in doubt, throw them a party while they're still with you. No matter how small or low key, it will mean more to all involved than the biggest posthumous celebration you could possibly put together.

Today, her actual birthday, was pretty much like any other Tuesday, only with more flowers involved. But, she's still here, and in a way that was a present for us. She made it.