I’ve been observing language very closely whilst writing dialogue in my book and come to the conclusion that the problem is the English they teach in Polish schools is clearly old English, the “Queen’s English” and not even the English speak the Queen’s English! In fact not even the Queen speaks the Queen’s English anymore and it’s not necessarily a problem with grammar it is more pronunciation and I think I know why…..the English don’t pronounce words as they are written down – so how can you learn? Here’s some simple things to remember but not necessarily use.
First of all to all those people who always apologise to me about their poor ‘Engleesh’ and then complain when I don’t correct you with grammar please take note – your grammar is often fine it’s pronunciation that’s the problem (the Dutch on the other hand often get grammar wrong e.g. sent always becomes send!!).
Before I start I have to say my wife’s English pronunciation is faultless, almost without accent but peppered with colloquialism’s learnt whilst working alongside British Expats in Paris. For example she will often say ‘easy peasy lemon squezy’ when something is simple or call someone an ‘infected sperm bubble’ under her breath if they are less than polite or ‘fucakadoodle doo’ when she’s surprised at something and then of course the inevitable ‘jog on’ when she’s telling someone to get lost, most often reserved for me! My Mother-in-Law’s English accent on the other hand is clearly distinguishable as Eastern European with a few pidgin English expressions thrown in from when she lived in Africa. Because becomes ‘becaws’, ‘that’ is always pronounced ‘dat’, ‘then they go’ is ‘den dey go’, them is ‘dem’, him and her are always mixed up often a him is a her and a her is a him, so I never know who’s who if you know what I mean, and every other sentence seems to start with ‘My dear’!
Dialects are of course a problem no matter which country you live in, but in Newcastle where I come from, it gets worse, much worse (and heaven help our friend Joanna from Warsaw who has the most impeccable English accent but has recently relocated to Bradford).Dialects aside all over England the language is changing and it’s no surprise that people trying to learn English have a problem. As I said it’s often because the English don’t pronounce all the words. How often do you here someone from England pronounce the ‘H’ at the front of these words? (h)erb, (h)onest, (h)ospital, (h)our, (h)edge(h)og and (h)umour – they rarely do……
……and how often do you hear someone say ‘barf’ instead of bath or bruvver instead of brother. What’s more the English often drop the ‘t’ in words like butter, bottle and rotten. So these words become bu’er, bo’lle and ro’en. Another problem is the letter ‘d’ is sometimes used to replace the dropped ‘t’ so that ‘get out of here’ becomes ‘geddoud out of ear’, and it gets worse, Lot of is often pronounced ‘Lotta’It is also very common to find the ‘g’ missing from ‘ing’ at the end of a word, for example ‘eatin and drinkin’.
In the movie ‘Queen’ with Helen Mirram, Tony Blair is told to say Maam with the pronunciation ‘Marm’ which brings me to another idiosyncrasy of English pronunciation – that of the ‘upper classes’ – they pronounce gone as ‘gorn’, off as ‘orf’ and cough as ‘corf’. When people mix up upper and lower class – God help us becomes ‘Gawdelpus’.Then there is the problem with double oo and ew. Stew becomes ’stoo’, nude becomes ‘nood’ and news become ‘noos’.When it comes to slang in London you might (h)ear someone say nice ‘whistle and flute’ for ‘nice suit’ or nice Bristols, for nice breasts (this comes from Bristol City = titty, figure it out yourself). Wife is ‘trouble and strife’. Gloves are ‘turtles’ from turtle doves (gloves). Kyhber means ‘backside or bottom’ from the Kyhber Pass.
Other languages also crop up regularly when English people speak, for example friends will often say to me ‘long time no parlez’ from the French ‘Parlez-vous’ and ‘Let’s have a shufti’ from the Arabic for ‘let’s have a look’.So I sympathise with anyone trying to learn English.
My advice – don’t be lazy, pronounce every letter – that way people will understand you. And remember, like many things in life, it requires you approach it with a sense of youmour.
