Nearly weekend...

[boglin]

And this weekend shall be a glorious one. For after this weekend, the Year 12 students are on study leave, and after the next, it's half term and no more Year 13 teaching. This is how I've been able to get through April and May this year - knowing there is a deadline beyong which there's no stress. That and the liberal application of gin, anyway...

This week the GCSE coursework folders that were causing me so much hassle, have gone off to the moderator. Both last night and tonight I've given myself the luxury of not doing any work. This afternoon I even went riding. Riding is very exciting at the moment, as I've been working with Yorkie for the past few weeks. Yorkie's quite a big fellow, a beautiful bay and well-schooled. We've been working on getting him on the bit - where a horse looks like this

It can be achieved with a curb rein, or by bullying the horse with the bit, or it can be done properly. We, of course, having been working by doing it properly. It's actually very good for the horse to work like this, as it brings his quarters under him, making him more balanced, and gives him better flexion. It also makes his back slightly convex rather than concave, so strengthening the place where the rider sits.



Unfortunately I also made the mistake of checking my bank balance today. Blissful ignorance shall be the mantra from now on.

I shall be ending my accent poll at midnight - or whenever lupercal gets back from work, to put the final vote in. Thank you to everyone who took part.

The reason for the poll, was jfs comment that when he first met me, he was surprised by my Scouse accent; I thought this was rather interesting, as I think I have very little evidence of a Scouse accent at all. There's possibly the odd vowel sound that might have a Liverpudlian twang, and I can affect a Scouse accent reasonably well. Being a linguist, I thought I'd do a wee investigation.

I'm particularly intrigued by the people who have put Brummie down as my accent. Although I live in Birmingham now, I actually have very little contact with anyone who has a Brummie accent. I work in Solihull, and rarely go into Birmingham. I find it an absolutely impossible accent to immitate, so I am genuinely bewildered by the fact anyone thinks I speak Brummie. My mother can verify that my accent hasn't noticeably changed since I've been living in Birmingham. I also noticed a poll entry fromm someone who I don't believe I've ever talked to!

My accent history is quite complicated. I come from an area of Merseyside, that was Lancashire before the boundaries changed in the 70s or whenever they did; certainly when I was growing up, my village had a distinct Lancashire identity, rather than seeing itself as part of Liverpool. My father is from Everton, and my mother is from Oldham. Both come from working class families, and neither attended grammar school or took any formal qualifications at school. Neither has a particularly strong regional accent, unlike their siblings. When I was 11, my mother thought I was developing a Scouse accent, and sent me to speech and drama lessons, where I has to speak RP. (Faaaarther's caaaar is a jagyooaar and paaaa drives raaaaataaaar faaaarst) I spent my five years at secondary school, which was a couple of miles nearer to Liverpool, having the shit kicked out of me for being posh. So I was stuck between a linguistic rock and a phonological hard place. Survive at school, or piss off my mother.

I went to university in Leeds, and stayed there in total for four years. Being from quite a working class background, I found a lot of people at university quite intimidating and *ever* so middle class, and possibly veered more towards RP - the whole trying to fit in thing.

After Leeds, I moved to Nottingham, and then Birmingham. I think if anything, my accent has become more northern whilst I've been down here. Birmingham is, as far as I'm concerned, the South. And I see my identity as undeniably northern - I miss the north. Often I make a choice to veer away from RP to a good extent. And I consciously choose to use dialect terms, such as 'sommat', 'by eck' or 'mardy' rather than Standard English, even in fairly formal situations.

Some of you might have seen that veelow has entered my poll. He hasn't really, seeing as he's a cat. They're my mother's responses, whilst I was on the phone to her tonight. I found it interesting that the people who were either brought up around Liverpool, or live there now don't think I have a Scouse accent, and people from the north tended to have me as modified RP, whereas the Southern folks had me down as a northener. Nobody so far, thinks I sound like a Southerner. And for that I am extremely grateful ;)

Most of my students aren't able to tell where I'm from. This is a great wheeze when we do work on accents, as I get them all fired up talking about negative opinions, and creating stereotypical profiles of regional accent speakers, and then I embarrass them by slipping in I'm from Liverpool.

My evaluation? Well, I think my findings are interesting, but I think if I were to do it again, I'd use radio buttons rather the check boxes, so respondants could only chose the one they felt most apt. And now I will shut up, as I will waffle on for far too long about language whenever I get the chance...

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I think your accent is a bit like mine (not that oddly, as we have similar history). It's Scouse in origin, but doesn't sound anything like it.

OTOH, I think your dialect (choice of words) is more Scouse than mine.