Middle Class Handbook

[flipflop]

Fucking spot on!

ff

http://www.middleclasshandbook.co.uk/


How to be middle-class: over-pronouncing foreign-language words

Monday, February 21, 2011 at 9:43AM

Last week I was leaving my school’s half-term disco when I noticed the (just slightly tipsy, I suspect) mum in front of me was singing one of the songs that had been played to the delight of the 5-11 year olds on the dancefloor. The song was La Macarena, and while this tune doesn’t irritate me as it might some people, I did find it a bit toe-curling that she was ostentatiously singing it a very strong I-can-speak-Spanish-me accent; Hei! Macarrrenya! etc etc.

This might have been pretentious, but it shouldn’t have surprised me because this exaggerated pronunciation of non-English words is something that distinguishes the middles classes. It starts with basic, fairly accurate and inconspicuous words: when requesting ciabatta, for example, most good middle class folk make it a point of principle to say the correct “cha-batta” not “see-ya-batta” (people saying this makes them ashamed to be British), and almost everyone now says Ibeetha rather than Ibitsa, as some did 20 years ago.

But after that there is a scale, with the less showy people sometimes pronouncing words in ways they know are probably wrong, but are unlikely to make them appear show offs. How many people know chorizo is “horeetho”, but stick with “choreeso” because the former seems a bit Hyacinth Bouquet? How many students are aware that Nabokov is properly Na-BOK-ov, but feel that NA-ba-kov is a just a safer, more polite bet in Waterstones?

These are the half-steppers, though. For many of those who like their horeethos and Macarrrenyas, there is no limit to their verbal flashiness. When ordering risotto their role model could be the football commentator Jonathon Pearce doing an Italian game (Rrrroma, Gatooooso, Pirrrrlohh etc etc); when they mention Calais or Paris they sound like someone from Allo Allo, and they might order paella just so they can say “pay-elyyya”. They know you it’s Belaroosh not Belarus, Ookraine not Ukraine, and they may even drop, you know, actual foreign words (especially French: jambon, fromage, vin) into everyday speech, with just the minimum of irony.

The point of course is to show that you’re cosmopolitan and not an insular British person. The over-pronouncers privately like to think that the vast majority of their fellow Brits are backwards-looking little Englanders, regardless of whether this is true or not. The funny thing is that they think nothing of mispronouncing British place names; if you tried to engage them in a conversation about whether Salford should be Solford or Sallford, or the Newcastle/Ny’cassle issue, they would secretly suspect you of being a member of the BNP.

Sheila Speed

[Penta]

Fucking spot on!

Not really, since Ms Speed herself makes a complete hash of her Spanish pronunciation. Horeetho? WTF's that? (Actually I say choreesso, even in Spain, because I've never lost my Latin American accent.) And if you happen to know the Spanish lyrics to a Spanish song, why on earth would you anglicise them? I wouldn't be surprised if she'd prefer it sung with an assumed estuary accent (like Tony Blair's, with all his false glottal stops and ets instead of its).

As for being suspected of being a member of the BNP if you discuss pronunciation of English place names: what's that about? (Incidentally, I have no problem sorting that one out: when I'm talking to southerners, I say Newcarstle; when I'm talking to northerners, and especially Geordies, I say Newcassle, except to old friends, when I usually say Newcarstle as they like the opportunity to correct me for the millionth time.)

If you're going to write something like this piece, you might at least do your readers the decency of getting it right.

[Sri Lanky]

Now I know why limeys pronounce ass as arse...this is so enlightening.

[flipflop]

Somebody remind Penta this is the "humo(u)r" forum. Then again, this is someone who takes notes at (bourgeois) parties

Après moi le Deluge!



Cheers

[Jäeger]

Somebody remind Penta this is the "humo(u)r" forum. Then again, this is someone who takes notes at (bourgeois) parties

There is another way. It makes the reading much better here.

This post was made by Penta who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.

[friendlyskies]

Yeah, my sister always gets pissed off at Alex Trebec because he overpronounces foreign words.

Ditto Penta re: chorizo. It's whoreetho or whatever in one little country, choreezo in the rest of the world. If you pronounce it whoreetho outside the Iberian Peninsula, you're going to get a midget male hooker.

[coldharvest]

There is another way. It makes the reading much better here.

This post was made by Penta who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.

......all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

[shivers]

Now I know why limeys pronounce ass as arse...this is so enlightening.

This one is still lost on me.

[flipflop]

Just because it's you shivs ;-)

http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/08/05/arse-ass/

Cheers

[el3so]

Am I the only person that cannot endure a full episode of "hotforwords" vid with the sound on?

FWIW it's either "apres moi le deluge" or "après moi le déluge".

[flipflop]

Yeah, but I'm working class

Cheers

[Jäeger]

Yeah, but I'm working class

Fascist.

I suppose you are in the BNP too?

[el3so]

Yeah, but I'm working class

Didn't mean to offend but you foreigners all look and sound the same to me.

[flipflop]

Yeah, but I'm working class

Fascist.

I suppose you are in the BNP too?

I got kicked out, turned up with the wrong coloured laces in my Doc Martens

Heil Hitler

[Penta]

Ditto Penta re: chorizo. It's whoreetho or whatever in one little country, choreezo in the rest of the world. If you pronounce it whoreetho outside the Iberian Peninsula, you're going to get a midget male hooker.

I don't think there's any Spanish-speaking country in the world where they don't pronounce the ch in chorizo as in church in English. Certainly not Spain. Ms Speed got it completely wrong, which is why it wasn't funny. Jeremy Hardy on the language of the British upper and upper middle classes - now he is funny, because he gets it right.

Just like the good old days: flipflop and Jäeger, class warfare.