Edited by Nicholas Roy Butcher, Wednesday 7 April 2021 at 21:31
Dear Blog,
Did you know that there are estimated to be over 7,000 separate and distinct human languages spoken on Planet Earth today?
This is a phenomenal statistic, but this number is dwindling rapidly due to socio-economic and climatic pressures, which is why I feel that we (as humans) should celebrate and protect this diversity, now more than ever.
Back on home soil, I absolutely love the variety of local dialects and accents to be found within just the English language alone. Whether you live on the edges of the Australian outback, the wintry wilds of Canada, a Cornish fishing village, the Yorkshire Moors, the windy plains of Norfolk, or even the Californian Pacific coastline, you will have a distinct and recognizable pattern of speech.
My fascination with dialects and accents began at a very early age with family visits. Although I have lived south of the M25 since I was 5 years old, my family origins are in the West Midlands; Shakespeare country if you will. Most of my family can be found residing somewhere along the River Avon valley from Stratford to Pershore. Although I consider myself to have a very bland, standard south-eastern accent, there are still words I utter to this day which give away my origins, causing people to look at me sideways and smile knowingly.
My mum grew up in a town called Evesham ('Asum' to the locals) which is peculiar for having something called 'Asum Grammar', a local dialect all but indecipherable to anyone but an expert! Should you venture to study this unique regional English peculiarity, I wish you well. You would be in good company as comedian and television personality Alistair McGowan created a tv programme about it in 2013 as a so-called 'back to my roots' documentary of his birthplace.
My own point of reference is that it tends to, generally speaking, shorten vowel sounds. For example, the word 'sheep' becomes either one 'ship' or several 'shup'. From a very early age I remember my mum chastising me for being, as she put it, 'like a lost ship on a mountain'. As a 4 year old this caused me great confusion as, even then, I knew that ships belonged on the oceans, not up a mountain...
And so it was, with great relish, that I found this week's exercises on the Access to Arts and Languages course were an introduction to studying regional accents, within the context of a recorded interview, and also the context of poetry. We were introduced to a Peak District local and a Jamaican poet, which I found endlessly fascinating.
It feels good to be studying properly a subject area which I have always had an affinity for.
It feels, Blog, like I am back on home turf, having wandered the earth aimlessly for many decades...
On Home Soil
Dear Blog,
Did you know that there are estimated to be over 7,000 separate and distinct human languages spoken on Planet Earth today?
This is a phenomenal statistic, but this number is dwindling rapidly due to socio-economic and climatic pressures, which is why I feel that we (as humans) should celebrate and protect this diversity, now more than ever.
Back on home soil, I absolutely love the variety of local dialects and accents to be found within just the English language alone. Whether you live on the edges of the Australian outback, the wintry wilds of Canada, a Cornish fishing village, the Yorkshire Moors, the windy plains of Norfolk, or even the Californian Pacific coastline, you will have a distinct and recognizable pattern of speech.
My fascination with dialects and accents began at a very early age with family visits. Although I have lived south of the M25 since I was 5 years old, my family origins are in the West Midlands; Shakespeare country if you will. Most of my family can be found residing somewhere along the River Avon valley from Stratford to Pershore. Although I consider myself to have a very bland, standard south-eastern accent, there are still words I utter to this day which give away my origins, causing people to look at me sideways and smile knowingly.
My mum grew up in a town called Evesham ('Asum' to the locals) which is peculiar for having something called 'Asum Grammar', a local dialect all but indecipherable to anyone but an expert! Should you venture to study this unique regional English peculiarity, I wish you well. You would be in good company as comedian and television personality Alistair McGowan created a tv programme about it in 2013 as a so-called 'back to my roots' documentary of his birthplace.
My own point of reference is that it tends to, generally speaking, shorten vowel sounds. For example, the word 'sheep' becomes either one 'ship' or several 'shup'. From a very early age I remember my mum chastising me for being, as she put it, 'like a lost ship on a mountain'. As a 4 year old this caused me great confusion as, even then, I knew that ships belonged on the oceans, not up a mountain...
And so it was, with great relish, that I found this week's exercises on the Access to Arts and Languages course were an introduction to studying regional accents, within the context of a recorded interview, and also the context of poetry. We were introduced to a Peak District local and a Jamaican poet, which I found endlessly fascinating.
It feels good to be studying properly a subject area which I have always had an affinity for.
It feels, Blog, like I am back on home turf, having wandered the earth aimlessly for many decades...