Т.В. Артеменко, Е.В. Кривощекова, Е.В. Кравченко, Н.Е. Николаева - Reader in Language and Culture (1098538), страница 4
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If you say"will you have the goodness, sir, to direct me to the railway terminus atCharring Cross," pronouncing all the vowels and consonants beautifully, hewill not understand you and will suspect you of being a beggar or aconfidence trickster. But if you shout "please! Charring Cross! Which way!"you will have no difficulty.
Half a dozen people will immediately overwhelmyou with directions.Even in private intercourse with cultivated people you must not speaktoo well. Apply this to your attempts to learn foreign languages, and never tryto speak them too well. And do not be afraid to travel. You will be surprisedto find how little you need to know or how badly you may pronounce. Evenamong English people to speak too well is a pedantic affectation. In aforeigner it is something worse than affectation; it is an insult to the nativewho cannot understand his own language when it is too well spoken.
That is319all I can tell you...Comprehension questions:1. Do you think G. B. Shaw’s lecture is just one of his wittyparadoxes or is there any common wisdom in it?2. What is your experience in communicating in a foreign country?“JEET JET?”HOW WE THINK WE TALK AND HOW WE REALLY TALKThose words in the quotes are not something any of us would ever write.1You'd write "Did you eat yet?", but do you always say them that way? Ofcourse if you read from a prepared text to an audience, you pronouncecarefully, more or less what you see. But most of us are 'off guard' most of thetime.
In that context, if we pronounced everything exactly as we write it we'drisk sounding pompous and maybe even machine-like.In the comic strips you see things like gimme, gotcha, didja, ol' man, this2'n' that. Would you ever say them that way? You're already protesting "oh no,I'm careful with my English, I would never say anything sloppy like that." Butwouldn't you? You know that the words give me, got you, did you, old man, thisand that are 'there', but have you ever really heard yourself saying them? Fewof us ever have heard what we really sound like when we had no reason to beon our linguistic good behavior (such as speaking into a tape recorder), andmost of us would be surprised to hear how we talk in our daily one-on-oneconversations.Let's review a few things that are part of everybody's relaxed colloquial320English.
The common pronouns that begin with h- or th- regularly lose thisconsonant in rapid speech. We normally say must 'e?, tell 'im, give 'er, see 'em,took 'is time, took 'er time. (Sometimes a rhyme won't even work without this:Along came a spider /And sat down beside 'er)This is what is called assimilation, and it's one of the most common4processes going on in all languages all the time. It simply means that soundsnext to each other have a strong tendency to become more like each other.Look at a little of the variety of sounds in clusters that merge with each other,making some vanish as we talk:give me sounds like gimmedon't know sounds like don' no, dunnoact stupid sounds like ac' stupidask me sounds like as' me(and have you tried pronouncing sixths recently?)Another common assimilation, which we all do without being conscious5of it, is when the y- of you turns into ch- or j- when it follows a -t or a -d wewrite but we saydon't youdid youwould youdon'chadijawooja(and are you going to claim you have never said You betcha?)All this has been about consonants, but many vowels disappear too as6we're talking.
Often they're at the beginnings of words, but not always.is that a fact?this and that'zat a fact?this 'n' thatThis process of assimilation has always been going on in English, whichis why in some words, this rapid pronunciation has become the standard one,721with the spelling showing how it once was.cupboard is no longer cup + board but cubberdcomfortablecomfort + ablecomfterblehandkerchiefhand + kerchief hankerchiffNearly all of these are things you do all the time, whether you prefer to8think so or not. Most of us, though, would not go so far as that title, but wewould say something like Didja eat yet? Incidentally, all these naturalcolloquial 'shortcuts' we don't even realize we're doing are one of the reasonswhy computer voice recognition has such difficulty with words not pronouncedclearly and in isolation.One final thought.
In all these examples of natural colloquial speech,we're not saying they're mistakes we should not be making. No matter how9much we try to speak carefully, we can never talk exactly like we write withoutsounding mechanical. If you think it's somehow a sorry state that we don't talkas we write, actually it's the other way around: it's up to our spelling system toadjust to the realities of what we say.
On the other hand, it would be anoversimplification to say that we should simply spell all these colloquial'shortcuts'. We can't do that because we always want to have the option ofchoosing to say give her, kind of, don't know, did you...Comprehension questions:1.What is “assimilation”?2.Is it an indicator of careless speech? Should we try to avoid it in ournative language?3.Should spelling be adjusted accordingly?4.Do you think foreign speakers risk sounding pompous or machine-like?Do they pronounce everything exactly as they write it?5.Why do most foreigners usually sound unnatural even if they speakperfectly correctly?22THE SEVEN DEADLY SINSThere are seven words that the English uppers and upper-middles regard1as unacceptable. Utter any one of these 'seven deadly sins' in the presence ofthese higher classes, and their on-board class-radar devices will start bleepingand flashing: you will immediately be demoted to middle-middle classes, atbest, probably lower — and in some cases automatically classified as workingclass.Pardon.
This word is the most notorious pet hate of the upper and2upper-middle classes. To them using such an unmistakably lower-class term isworse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as'Pardonia'. Here is a good class-test you can try: when talking to an Englishperson, deliberately say something too quietly for them to hear you properly.
Alower-middle or middle-middle person will say 'Pardon?'; an upper-middle willsay 'Sorry?’ (or perhaps 'Sorry - what?' or ‘What - sorry?'); but an upper-classand a working-class person will both just say 'What?' The working-class personmay drop the ‘t’ - 'Wha'?' - but this will be the only difference. Some upperworking-class people with middle-class aspirations might say 'pardon', in amisguided attempt to sound 'posh'.Toilet is another word that makes the higher classes flinch — orexchange knowing looks, if it is uttered by a would-be social climber.
Thecorrect upper-middle/upper term is 'loo' or 'lavatory' (pronounced lavuhtry, withthe accent on the first syllable). 'Bog' is occasionally acceptable, but only if it issaid in an obviously ironic-jocular manner, as though in quotes. The workingclasses all say 'toilet', as do most lower-middles and middle-middles, the onlydifference being the working-class omission of the final ‘t’.
(The workingclasses may also sometimes say 'bog', but without the ironic quotation marks.)Those lower- and middle-middles with pretensions or aspirations, however, may323eschew 'toilet' in favour of suburban-genteel euphemisms such as 'gents','ladies', 'bathroom', 'powder room', 'facilities' and 'convenience'; or jokeyeuphemisms such as 'latrines', 'heads' and 'privy' (females tend to use the former,males the latter).A 'serviette' is what the inhabitants of Pardonia call a napkin.
This is4another example of a 'genteelism', in this case a misguided attempt to enhanceone's status by using a fancy French word rather than a plain old English one. Ithas been suggested that 'serviette' was taken up by squeamish lower-middleswho found 'napkin' a bit too close to 'nappy', and wanted something thatsounded a bit more refined.
Whatever its origins, 'serviette' is now regarded asirredeemably lower class. Upper-middle and upper-class mothers get very upsetwhen their children learn to say 'serviette' from well-meaning lower-classnannies, and have to be painstakingly retrained to say 'napkin'.There is nothing wrong with the word 'dinner' in itself: it is only aworking-class hallmark if you use it to refer to the midday meal, which should5be called 'lunch'. Calling your evening meal 'tea' is also a working-classindicator: the higher echelons call this meal 'dinner' or 'supper'. (Technically, adinner is a somewhat grander meal than a supper: if you are invited to 'supper',this is likely to be an informal family meal, eaten in the kitchen - sometimesthis is made explicit, as in 'family supper' or 'kitchen supper'. The uppers andupper-middles use the term 'supper' more than the middle- and lower-middles).'Tea', for the higher classes, is taken at around four o'clock, and consists of teaand cakes or scones (which they pronounce with a short 'o'), and perhaps littlesandwiches (pronounced 'sanwidges', not 'sand-witches').
The lower classescall this 'afternoon tea'. All this can pose a few problems for foreign visitors: ifyou are invited to 'dinner', should you turn up at midday or in the evening?Does 'come for tea' mean four o'clock or seven o'clock? To be safe, you willhave to ask what time you are expected. The answer will help you to placeyour hosts on the social scale.Settee. Or you could ask your hosts what they call their furniture. If an624upholstered seat for two or more people is called a settee or a couch, they are nohigher than middle-middle.
If it is a sofa, they are upper-middle or above. Thereare occasional exceptions to this rule, which is not quite as accurate a classindicator as 'pardon'. Some younger upper-middles, influenced by Americanfilms and television programmes, might say 'couch' - although they are unlikelyto say 'settee', except as a joke or to annoy their class-anxious parents.Lounge. And what do they call the room in which the settee/sofa is to befound? Settees are found in 'lounges' or 'living rooms', sofas in 'sitting rooms' or7'drawing rooms'. 'Drawing room' (short for 'withdrawing room') used to be theonly 'correct' term, but many upper-middles and uppers feel it is bit silly andpretentious to call, say, a small room in an ordinary terraced house the 'drawingroom', so 'sitting room' has become acceptable. You may occasionally hear anupper-middle-class person say 'living room', although this is frowned upon, butonly middle-middles and below say 'lounge'.
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