[HPFGU-OTChatter] Profanity in Russian speech WAS Re: HP in translation

[Laura Ingalls Huntley]

Carol:
> I agree that some languages are pleasant to listen to even when you
> don't understand them (Italian, for example) and others sound harsh or
> noisy. Of course, they might not sound that way if we could understand
> them. OTOH, the same is true for accents in English (the only language
> I can talk intelligently about in that regard, never having
> encountered any ancient Romans). Some accents sound sophisticated (BBC
> English); some sound illiterate but still pleasant to hear (whatever
> accent Robbie Coltrane is using for Hagrid); to me, some just sound
> illiterate (Cockney, certain U.S. Southern accents); some are grating
> to the ear (New York City).

Laura:
Personally, I find some Southern accents quite pleasant -- one of my 
roommates last semester was from Arkansas and had the sweetest, softest 
way of speaking that I've ever come across (well, except for this one 
kid from Wales).  I hail from New England, so my exposure to Southern 
accents is limited -- I know there are some I really dislike, but I'm 
not sure what specific areas of the country they are from.

Speaking of New England, we have our fair share of grating accents here 
as well.  A strong Boston accent, in particular, really gets to me, but 
one of the worst is actually the "Downeast Maine" accent we have in my 
hometown.  Just picture every word ending in -er being pronounced as if 
it ended in -a, and every word ending in -a being pronounced as if it 
ended in -er.  It's maddening!  Some of the old-timers have a slightly 
different take on the same accent that is more mumble-y and kind of 
charming (I probably only feel this way because that's how my father 
speaks ^_~), but on everyone else it just sounds incredibly uneducated.

<rant> Oh, and if I could just get my peers (or at least my cousins and 
brother) to quit saying "friggin'" every other friggin' word, my sanity 
would be greatly improved. ^_~  I mean, what *is* that?  Why do they 
feel the need to use it so often?  How, in the name of all that is 
holy, can I make them stop? </rant>

Carol:
> Of course, those of us who live in Arizona
> have no accent at all. <smile>

Laura:
Ha!  If people ask, I generally tell them that I don't have an accent, 
but what I really mean is that I have the same accent as roughly 80% of 
people on American TV.

Carol:
> (I had barely opened my mouth to ask
> about overseas postage when I was in London when the postal clerk said
> "To America?")

That's interesting.  I was living in Scotland last semester, and one of 
the weirdest things for me was that the vast majority of British people 
I met in passing (store clerks, etc.) couldn't tell I was American from 
my accent.  It was so strange.  I definitely don't have a British 
accent, nor did I pick one up in any significant way while I was there 
(although sometimes certain words would come out funny, especially 
"basil" and "literally").  I did find an undefinable similarity in the 
accents of certain people in Northern England and my dad, but I don't 
sound anything like my dad, so I don't think that really had anything 
to do with my problem.

Anyway, it lead to some very confusing conversations, in which I would 
tell some poor, unsuspecting sandwich shop fellow that I was from 
Maine, and he would spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out 
where in Britain this "Maine" could be, and I would spend the the next 
10 minutes trying to match all of the towns he was mentioning to places 
in the US (e.g. Manchester, York) until he said something like 
"Bristol," and I realized he wasn't talking about the US at all.  I 
felt bad, because it was all a lot of work for what was meant to just 
be a simple, friendly question.

I still haven't quite figured it out.  I mean, there is a very real 
difference in the way I speak and even someone with RP speaks.  The 
best I can guess is that it has something to do with my voice, which is 
quite soft as one of my vocal cords has been paralyzed (surgery when I 
was a baby).  My roommates' Welsh grandfather told me that it 
"complimented [my] American accent" when I told him about it, but I 
don't really think too much can be read into that, as people will say 
the weirdest things when they find out about my vocal cord (I think 
they feel embarrassed that they asked at all and are struggling to find 
something nice to say to make up for it, poor dears).

Carol:
> Anyway, I'm at the point in life where everything was "better" when I
> was a kid--no cell phones or video games or black metal music or
> grammar checks and we read or rode bikes or walked in the hills and
> built forts out of pine needles to entertain ourselves and actually
> learned to spell and write without a computer and do arithmetic
> without a calculator--so forgive me if I sound like an old fogey.

Laura:
You know, I'm only 22, and I already feel this way about my childhood.  
I think it has more to do with missing the magic of being a child more 
than anything else.  I mean, as many perks as there are to being an 
adult, how can one help but look back fondly on a time when one's life 
basically boiled down to make-believe games?  I must confess, sometimes 
on the island in the summer, I still like to pretend I'm a stranded 
wild horse or a feral child who has to scavenge for berries and sea 
grass.  Only when no one else is about, of course.  ^_~

Laura