Accents past and future

I came across an interesting article on the BBC News website today about the predominant use of British accents for characters in fantasy worlds, such as the Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Game of Thrones is apparently aimed at American audiences, adapted from books by George RR Martin, an American author, but almost all the characters speak with British accents. Also for historical dramas in English the default and expected accents are generally British. The article suggests that British accents add a “splash of otherness” to such productions, at least for American audiences.

On the other hand for fantasy films and TV series set in the future, on other planets and/or in space, American accents are probably more common than British accents. Although there are exceptions, such as Red Dwarf and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and some characters in Star Trek.

In plays, particularly those by Shakespeare, the default accent is RP (posh), although quite a few of the puns and jokes don’t work in that accent. Some productions in original pronunciation (OP) have also been staged, and were well received. In other English-speaking countries do Shakepearean actors speak in the normal accents, or do they use RP?

Are different regional or national accents associated with particular time periods in films in other languages?

Mysterious language and music

Here’s a recording sent in by Dave Murrary of Haji Maji, a blog about old 78 records from Asia.

Part of the recording with the spoken words:

The whole recording:

This comes from a record which has a picture of two Buddhist monks and the phrase “sixth Buddhist convention” on the label. According to a native Burmese speaker Dave asked, the language isn’t Burmese.

Do you have any idea what language is spoken at the beginning (it’s only a few words) and do you the recognise the style of music?

Emshir braew

Menai Strait (Afon Menai) on a sunny Sunday in March 2012

Va’n emshir braew yn jerrey shiaghtin shoh. Va grian ayn, v’eh çheh, va’n speyr gorrym as cha row geay erbee ayn. Va’n keayn lane rea as v’eh casley rish scaaney. Fastyr jiu hie mee heose dys Roman Camp as ren mee cleasaght.

A view from Roman Camp, Bangor on a sunny Sunday in March 2012

The weather’s been lovely this weekend – sunny and warm with blue sky and not a breath of wind, and the sea was beautifully calm and mirror-like. This afternoon I went up to Roman Camp to do a bit of juggling.

Out in the sticks

One of the expressions we discussed this week at the French conversation group was out in the sticks, which is en pleine cambrousse (‘in full countryside’) or au milieu de la cambrousse (‘in the middle of the countryside’).

La cambrousse comes from the Provençal cambrousso (hovel, storeroom), from cambra (bedroom). The sense of ‘province / countryside’ perhaps comes from the slang of travelling entertainers (saltimbanques) [source].

The expression ‘in the sticks’ was apparently coined in the USA and was first used in the Florence Times Daily in November 1897

… he gathered from 1 1/2 acres this year 21 barrels of corn. If any man “away in the sticks” can beat this, in the language of “Philander Doesticks,” we exclaim, “let him stand forward to de rear.”

At first it was associated mainly with baseball and ‘the sticks’ referred to exhibition games played in county locations. Later it came to refer to any out-of-the-way location.

Other ways to express this in English include ‘in the middle of nowhere’, ‘the back of beyond’ – are there others you know in English or other languages?

Subtitles

The other day I discovered how to add subtitles and speech bubbles to my videos on YouTube. I’ve added them to my latest video in Spanish:

So you can now have the speech bubbles with the dialogue in Spanish, the subtitles in English, or both, or neither. It was quite a fiddly and laborious process to add the speech bubbles, but relatively straightforward to add the subtitles as I used the timing from the speech bubbles (annotations).

Today I saw a post on Fluent in 3 months about this very topic with suggestions on how to do it more easily. This got me thinking and I realised that another way to add the subtitles is to record the sound of a video using Audacity, and to get the timing of each bit of speech from there. You have to have a transcript of the dialogue first, of course, though that wasn’t a problem as I always prepare such transcripts when I make the videos.

I used this method to add subtitles to my video about eel-infested Austrian hovercrafts, and it worked well. I’ve also started adding speech bubbles, but haven’t quite finished that yet.

Half the dialogue is in English and half in German, and the subtitles are in English for the German bits and in German for the English bits. I thought it would be a useful exercise for me to try to translate the English bits into German. If you spot any mistakes, please let me know.

This is what the file for the subtitles (captions) looks like:

0:00:00.0,0:00:00.4
Hello

0:00:00.8,0:00:01.3
Hallo

0:00:01.6,0:00:02.7
How are you?

0:00:03.1,0:00:05.1
Es tut mir leid ich verstehe nicht.

0:00:05.5,0:00:07.0
Spechen Sie über ein Gatter?

0:00:07.4,0:00:10.8
Sprechen. Sie. Englisch?

0:00:11.2,0:00:15.2
Yes, of course. Do. You. Speak. German?

0:00:15.6,0:00:20.1
Äh, meinen Sie damit, daß Sie Englisch sprechen,
und fragen Sie mich, wenn ich Deutsch spreche?

0:00:20.6,0:00:23.4
Yes. You can understand a little German?

0:00:23.7,0:00:28.5
Ja, ich habe in der Schule Deutsch gelernt und
kann ein wenig verstehen, aber ich kann nicht sprechen.

0:00:28.8,0:00:31.8
Seit sehr viele Jahre habe ich es nicht benutzt
und ich bin etwas aus der Übung,

0:00:31.9,0:00:33.8
aber jetzt fängt es zurückzukommen.

0:00:34.1,0:00:35.9
I understand. What’s your name?

0:00:36.3,0:00:39.5
Mein Name? Ich heise Jane. Wie heißen Sie?

0:00:39.9,0:00:42.1
My name is Klaus. Where are you from?

0:00:42.5,0:00:44.9
Ich komme aus Birmingham. Und Sie?

0:00:45.3,0:00:48.0
I’m from Vienna. What do you do?

0:00:48.3,0:00:50.0
Ich bin Bibliothekarin, und Sie?

0:00:50.4,0:00:53.2
I’m a Danube hovercraft company captain.

0:00:53.5,0:00:55.6
Mann, das ist ein ziemlicher Zungenbrecher!

0:00:56.0,0:00:59.5
Genießen Sie arbeit als
Donauluftkissenfahrzeuggesellschaftskapitän
zu tun?

0:00:59.8,0:01:01.4
Yes. I enjoy it very much.

0:01:01.8,0:01:04.1
But the hovercrafts are often full of eels.

0:01:04.7,0:01:08.4
Ja, ich weiß. Diese verteufelten Aale kommen überall hin.

0:01:08.8,0:01:11.4
Yes. It was nice talking to you.

0:01:11.7,0:01:15.0
I must get back to the hovercrafts. Goodbye.

0:01:15.2,0:01:17.7
Ja, es war schön mit Ihr zu reden.

0:01:18.1,0:01:20.7
Viel Glück mit dieser Aal-verseuchten luftkissenfahrzeugen.

0:01:21.2,0:01:21.7
Auf Wiedersehen.

The Elephant in the Room

Photo of the elephant that lives on the mantel piece in my living room

Here’s a silly little song I wrote recently – the first song I’ve ever written in fact – which I sang in public for the first time this morning. It was at the Joy of Singing class I go to on Monday mornings, and was well-received.

The Elephant Song

There’s a matter we must discuss
But I don’t want to make a fuss
It’s an issue we must address
But I don’t want to cause any stress.

There’s an elephant in the room
You’ve noticed, I assume
She’s rather large and grey
And getting in the way.

Oh why you can’t see
It’s so obvious to me
We need to sort this out
And there’s no need to pout!

Now the elephant’s in the hall
Painting pictures on the wall
Of dragons and ships and trees
And great big bumblebees.

We must find a way
We can’t let her stay
I’ll go and call the zoo
To see what they can do

Now the elephant’s on the stairs
Playing scrabble with the bears
Who live under chairs
And like to wear blue flares.

The zoo say they can give her
A nice place to stay
And we can go and see her
And we never have to pay.

Now the elephant’s in the zoo
Making friends with the kangaroos
And delighting all the kids
By juggling dustbin lids.

Here’s a recording of the song:

There’s plenty of scope for adding verses and playing with the words – feel free to have fun with it.

It was inspired by contemplation of the phrase “the elephant in the room”, which also inspired this video:

This video, and other videos I’ve made, are also available on my YouTube channel.

Haunted by the blank page

Here are a few interesting French expressions I discovered this week:

le tapis roulant à bagages = luggage/baggage carousel, or literally a “rolling carpet for baggage” – shame it isn’t a tapis volant (flying carpet)!

What do you call the conveyer belt thing that where you (hope to) retrieve your bags after a flight?

le/la bagagiste = baggage handler – sounds like someone who really doesn’t like baggage. Maybe the reason why the French bagagistes seem to be on strike so frequently is that they can only bring themselves to handle baggage for limited periods.

la hantise de la page blanche = writer’s block, or literally “obsessive fear of the white/blank page” – a good way to describe the condition. L’hantise comes from hanter (to haunt), from the Old Norse heimta (to bring home). The haunted meaning possibly came from English during the 19th century period of Anglomania. or from the Norman words hanté (visited by ghosts, haunted) and hant (ghost) [source].

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block / fear of the blank page? If you do, how do you overcome it?