Everybody loves George

[wickedevra]

For Tara and anyone else interested....

Marian Keyes reading in Melbourne today! It was really great; she is such a lovely lady. The reading was held in a bookstore, so it was quite small. She read two chapters from her latest novel, Anybody out there? No spoilers, happily, since I haven't quite finished it. She reads very well. Of course I could

Comments

[canutius]

Yes and no. I do speak differently over here because you usually have to ennunciate well and speak slower so that people can understand you, but at home I still have the same accent as usual. Having said that, I had one for home and one for other places like my maternal grandmother's and uni. My father comes from the south or east. He was born in Alabama and grew up in Illinois and his parents were from the south. They were also not from the better classes so they have quite a distinctive "uneducated" type of speach. This is what I usually use at home, although less and less since my dad is going deaf and you have to speak up and speak clearly for him to understand. My maternal grandmother remarried an English teacher (a.k.a. snob extrordinaire) so they were always on us about our ennunciation, pronunciation and grammer. This turned out to be quite helpful at uni, as well as here (but well and truly annoying while we were children).

Also, I am starting to adopt a lot more of the English terms for things since I watch a lot of British telly.

I was once asked while I was at home why I spoke English with an English accent, but I think you need to consider the source of that question in this case. She was/is not only uneducated but as stupid as the day is long as well. I should also mention that she is Mexican, but that obviously has nothing to do with stupidity and education, just accent and slang. My dad started talking about a poultry farm one day and she said "oh, you mean the chicken farm" he said "yeah, the poultry farm" to which she replied "no, they don't have poultry there, just chickens". *headdesks* He tried to explain what poultry, or fowl, was, but she didn't get it. So, as you can see, her reference to my "English" accent can be pretty much ignored. I was just speaking standardized English as opposed to Mexican slang English.

What about you, is yours becoming "polluted"

[wickedevra]

That's interesting! I hope I'm not becoming "polluted" (I really do prefer the SA accent!); people at home seem to find I sound the same, except for replacing 'ja' with 'yeah' quite a lot. The only Aussie phrase I use quite often is "no worries", I prefer it to "no problem" probably because our grandmother always used to complain about people saying that! People here said my accent sounded particularly "clipped" (wtf does that mean?) after I got back from two months at home. The husband is a vocal chameleon though. He fits in with how people sound here, but nobody got to laugh at him in SA because he switched right back to his old way of speaking.

[canutius]

They probably said clipped because the Aussies have a drawl and the SAs don't so it may sound short to them. Oh, and being able to switch like that is great, if you do it on purpose. I've got the problem that I often take on the accent of the person I'm talking to, which can be pretty embarrassing because they think I'm making fun of them. Besides, fitting in in boring. I prefer to be different!

[wickedevra]

I like being different too! The day Aussies think I sound like them I'll be very very sad.