[lit-ideas] Bassey & Sillitoe (Is: Invisibility, Unhearability, ...
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:59:03 EDT
J. Evans replies to R. Paul:
>[whoa? Get trained in an American accent]
>and lose my comparative advantage* in the US market?
Also regarding American English:
>I've [...] read that US English is closer
>to Shakespeare than UK English (I suppose it could be true: centuries
>of isolation, and all that)
Right. But now _your_ part of the world is very interesting. I am thinking
of Shirley Bassey. I met her once in Buenos Aires. What a charmer. Anyway, her
background, linguistically speaking, is pretty interesting. Born in Wales, I
believe her mother was English and his father a West Indian sailor. Yet, she
sang with a "James Bond" accent all the time -- slightly American to gain
some advantage in the USA.
Talking of West Indians (and their invisibility in the UK -- and hence their
lack of impact on the mainstream speech) is Alan Sillitoe's epoch-making
film, "Saturday night, Sunday morning" with that charmer from Salford, Albert
Finney. I got the book (and actually met Alan Sillitoe at the Buenos Aires book
fair when he was visiting with his American-Jewish wife) and _in the novel_
there is this LOONG episode of the West Indian having an affair with the
tenant of the room. As Sillitoe explained on more than one occasion -- the
presence of a West Indian on a British 'flick' was thought too revolutionary
at the
time. It was okay in a novel, because you can 'pretend' you "do" the accent
-- but it would have been too much to contrast the son of the soil, Finney,
with the argot of a mere immigrant from a far-off colony.
What a cosmopolitan, fascinating metropolitan area Cardiff must be -- just
like Buenos Aires. None of the purity of Memphis (TN, not Egypt) and stuff.
Cheers,
JL
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