Date:  Thu, 3 Mar 1994 07:42:03 EST

From:  Wayne Glowka <wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU>

Subject: Re: attitude & prescription:CORRECTION--Sorry



PLEASE NOTE TRANSCRIPTION CORRECTION BELOW.





>>Re Tim Frazer's query about singers and the national anthem.

>>

>>Do we have American stage speech? Is it just a matter of drama coaches

>>telling actors to enunciate /t/ etc., or is there a lectal dimension that

>>has some systematic features? These may be rhetorical questions.

>>                              DMLance

>

>

>Anecdotal Observation from Wayne Glowka: I have been in a number of

>plays--all with the same director. My problems with pronunciation came not

>from the director, but from the music director. Again, I always had to

>deal with the same one, but she had a thing about reduced vowels. My /[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/

>(schwa) had to be replaced with her /E/ (open e). I kept my mouth shut

>about variation. Music directors don't negotiate.

>

>I was once a phonetics consultant for _My Fair Lady_. I brought in a

>Trudgill tape and handouts for RP and Cockney. One gentleman in the

>cast--with a very loud voice--refused to follow the pronunciations for

>Cockney. He purposely followed the pronunciation that he heard on his

>record of the show and told me that he was doing so because people wouldn't

>understand that he was speaking Cockney if he followed the suggestions of

>linguists. Thus, there may be set dialect standards that people teach.

>People around here have a hard time watching the CBS _In the Heat of the

>Night_. The accents are horrible. The accents in _Gone with the Wind_--a

>movie that all real people here forgive--make the hair on my back stand up.

> Honest local accents are heard on locally made advertisements:

>CORRECTED VERSION [bU<gzIn+yo+h[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]xs#w[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]i+gItxm+[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]xt+xt+bU<g+h[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]xs] (where [U<] is

>a fronted

>horse-U)--"Bugs in your house? We get them out at Bug House." But then

>these accents embarrass the locals. Don't even ask me about Leckie's

>Income Tax or Tommy's Retreads.



Sorry about the sloppy [kl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tiz]. I hope I have it right now--[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]=ash, x=schwa.



Another doublet of doublets: Geoffrey of Monmouth's _Vita Merlini_ I

noticed offers a twelfth-century sexist double doublet: "patriam . . .

paternam"--opposed I suppose to "patriam maternam."



Wayne Glowka

Georgia College

Milledgeville, GA 31061

wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu