Hagrid's dialect/US English

[flying_ford_anglia]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C5064
From: flying_ford_anglia
Subject: Re: Hagrid's dialect/US English
Reply To: [Yahoo! #5060] Hagrid's dialect
Date: 7/25/00 6:04 pm  (ET)

Hi Ebony aka AngieJ (which do you prefer?)

Hagrid's accent is the cause of much debate, naturally. It could be
Scottish, but quite a few think it's a West Country or perhaps Norfolk
accent. The jury is still out on that one!

I'm not a teacher either, but you could try a couple of things with your
young charges:

- translate Hagrid's words into regular English and get them to look at
how JKR has changed some words to create an accent on the page.

- it might help if you play them some passages from an audio recording of
one of the books. Let them hear how Jim Dale (who reads the US versions
of the HP series) gives the voice character.

- get them to practice reading individual words and phrases phonetically
and try to work out what they are.

 - get them to listen to each other and try to write sentences which
 reflect their own accents, using phonetic spelling. Okay, this might
 be something for the more advanced readers!

***

Re: US vs UK English. I'd agree that English literature has a lot to
offer, but there are great American writers too, and when I read their
books, I like them to be in US English with all the US references. I
remember reading Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series and
not knowing what 'Orios' were, for example, but it wasn't that hard to
find out.

I think the people to shout at here are the powers that be at Scholastic,
not the discerning US members of this club (ref: someone who was getting
a bit uppity earlier).

Neil