by
Frank Hatton

Our dear lady editor of Scottish Radiance has of late been moving the goalposts, and although it is now early March, at her request, I find that I have already written the articles for April and May of this year. Now I have a further request to submit the June article before the end of this (March) month. The big problem with this of course means that the current items of news on which I write are old and stale by the time you cast your eyes upon it. It therefore seems sensible to me to find some aspect of this fair country which will be of some interest, and will not be reliant on the time it was written. Let us therefore contemplate the possibility of the film making industry of India, making a movie about the American Wild West, with an Indian actor playing the role of Wyatt Earpe, and the women of the period running around in Sari’s. All of them speaking with the traditional Indian accented English, and offering Balti chicken, or Tandori lamb to each other at meal times. Likewise, we could also think of an Australian film on the story of Al Capone in his heyday, with Australian actors performing the St. Valentines day massacre, and saying to each other, “Good on yer cobber, that was a bloody fine job you did”, and maybe throwing the odd boomerang at one another. As always, there is a reason for my asking you good folk to think along these lines,..... and that is the difficulty I am having in explaining the current weekly TV movie we are viewing called ‘The New Adventures of Robin Hood’, to my six year old grandson. Now, bearing in mind that this story is based upon a legend of a character called Robert of Loxley, who was purported to be an outlaw in the area of Sherwood Forest at around the year 1150, so we are talking of 850 years back. You can imagine the kind of clothes which were worn, and the general demeanour and language of the folk of that time. Here I would add that I grew up with the Hollywood interpretation of the story, with Errol Flynn dashing around in his Lincoln greenery, shooting his arrows at all and sundry, but, at least there was a passable attempt at depicting the period in which the story was based. Now, with this ‘New Adventures of Robin Hood’, we have most of the ladies in the cast trotting around in stiletto heeled shoes, plus skimpy little mini skirts with quite modern type brassieres, and hair styles that any modern teenager would give a fortune to possess. The other factor which leaps out at the viewing audience is the dialogue, now this is really something,...... “Let me take a rain check on that one” said our stalwart Robin to someone,..... and to another he said, “Been there, done that”, then to the fair Maid Marion,... “Can you run that past me again?” and the episodes are littered with ‘OK’s’, and lots of other modern expressions. At any time, I am expecting them to glance at a wrist watch, or suggest going down to the local McDonalds for a hamburger. As for my little grandson, he is leaping around our furniture, lashing out with his toy sword, shouting to some imaginary foe, “This is where you get yours buddy” It makes my problem with the American expression, “Stick ya hands up ya bum”, pale into insignificance by comparison,.... those of you who know what the word bum translates to in our peculiar version of the English language will know what I mean. Change of subject, but still on language. The daughter of our neighbour has lived in Canada for over twenty years, and has recently come over for a visit, and it struck me how strange her accent was, she speaks with a mixture of Canadian and British pronunciation. I was in a local pub having a pint with a friend of mine, when I happened to mention this to him, and he put forward a reason for this, which I thought was very interesting. First of all, have you ever noticed how anybody with a similar dialect to your own, who has lived for a long time in among folk with a different accent, invariably adopts the local pronunciation of certain words. Conversely, if you know of someone with say a Scottish, Irish, or English accent living in your area, they always sound as though they are speaking with their original dialect. Personally, I have noticed this when an English actor or actress has been living in the USA for a long time, they tend to put an American accent on certain words, but not on others. My friend’s theory is, that this intonation is automatically put on words which they have found folk have had difficulty in understanding, and the longer they live in such an environment, the more this tends to occur. It is a sub-conscious adjustment to avoid having to repeat certain words or phrases, but the words which are easily understood and do not need such adjustment do not change in pronunciation. Hence, a person of Scottish origins, who has lived for a long time in England, will be accused of having an English accent when they go back to Scotland, but, to the English folk they have been living with, they have been and will always sound Scottish. The exact opposite happens when an English person lives for a long time in Scotland. Maybe you have the same thing happen in your country when people return from living abroad in say, England, Australia, Scotland, or even when they have lived in another part of the USA where the dialect is different to your local one. The longer they have been subjected to a different way of speaking, the more noticeable it becomes. Conversely, we have a friend, and her mother originally hails from Italy. This mother is now at the tender age of 92 years old, and has lived in England since she was in her early twenties, yet she still eesa talking lika she hasa justa comaa over froma the olda country. Now, if we could look upon the more positive aspect of writing these articles so far in advance. It does mean that I will not have to meet any deadlines until July 2000, so it will give me lots and lots of time to put more thought and effort into the next three months, and hopefully, the next one will be more up to date, and contain more items of interest. 'til next time, Frank Hatton

I would love to hear from you so email me.

You can find more articles in the archive under From Over the Pond