The Great British Baking Show Will No Longer Have National Theme Weeks

[frejasface]

'The Great British Baking Show' is choosing not to have any national themes this year on the showhttps://t.co/mv0MN7Q7Qx
- JustJared.com (@JustJared) September 4, 2023
The upcoming season of The Great British Baking Show will not have an international theme week. Many viewers reacted negatively to previous national themes. For instance, for Mexican

Comments

[sashwizzled]

...If you have no interest in accent rambling, please ignore this...

tl;dr: Yeah, I think the taco thing is just a general pronunciation difference that comes down to Paul Hollywood having a nasally accent and it probably sounds weird as hell to people not from the UK.

I remember reading at some point that American English has one 'ah' sound it uses in loanwords (the one in the front of the mouth like 'father'), which isn't exactly right for a lot of the languages they come from but helps consistency since, y'know, melting pot. Everyone's used to using the same sound with the same rules.

English English switches around between two different 'ah' sounds even in loanwords because... Well, partly because Britain doesn't give a damn about consistency or accuracy to the other language. That's not unique to British English, but uh... Yeah, it is literally considered middle class and pretentious to use the original language's pronunciation of a loanword. I speak German and Japanese and it's embarrasing to admit it, but back in working class surroundings in the UK, I go back to saying those loanwords in ways I know are wrong because I just don't want to be made fun of. But I mean, when I'm speaking Japanese I say English loanwords in a Japanese accent, too.

I don't remember how Paul Hollywood said it exactly, but Liverpool accents are pretty nasally at times - and I'm even guessing that to a lot of English ears the more nasal 'tack' sounds closer to the Spanish word than the American pronunciation that would sound more like 'tock' to us. Vowel sounds are way harder to get right in different accents and languages - they're even harder to hear than consonants, ime.

I guess it could have been worse - the c sound in taco is sometimes pronounced like the ch in loch in Liverpool. He could have said tacho! :D

fuck me why have I spent an hour at midnight writing an essay about the letter A, what is my LIFE

[bloopbloop01]

This was fascinating lmao, thank you!!