Worst ever literary anachronism - 'Lurve' on the Western Front?
halcombe
A pet loathing of mine is the way that, in TV dramatisations of
classic serials (Austen, Dickens and the like) immense - almost
fetishistic - care is taken to get the physical aspects of the
production right: great efforts put in to avoid showing mauve in 1850
or a 'safety bicycle' in 1870. Whereas the text and its pronunciations
are crammed with most grotesque anachronisms conceivable.
Much the same with historical literature written today, it seems. For
instance, I happened on a copy of the Great War novel 'The Ghost Road'
by the much-fated author Pat Barker (it won the Booker Prize,
according to the blurb), which more or less fell open at the following
passage (page 109 of my Penguin edition):
'Birtwhistle. He's a don at at Cambridge, very clever, apparently.
Curiously, he actually prides himself on having a broader grasp of
British society than the average person, ie he pokes working-class
boys's bottoms. Might even be true, I suppose, though the heterosexual
equivalent doesn't pride itself on broadening its social experience
whenever it nips off for a knee-wobbler in Bethnal Green. Ah, but
these are *relationships*, Birtwhistle would say. Did say. Lurve, no
less....'
From what I can gather (I've not read the book), this is suppose to
have been written by the character - an educated, middle-class man,
I'm surmising - in 1918.
My sense is that it is utterly unlikely that an educated, middle-class
man would have written thus in that period. Use (in the particular
context) of 'actually'; 'grasp'; 'heterosexual'; 'nips off' (even as
'slumming').
But it's 'lurve' that leaps off the page. Bearing in mind that this
was well before either talking pictures or electric recording, the
quantity of American accent reaching even the affluent British ear in
1918 was paltry compared to even 15 years later.
However, I reckon that, even in AmE, 'lurve', as a commonly heard
pronunciation, came much later. Let alone its representation in print
in this way.
Think of the old standards - 'Love is A Many Splendoured Thing', 'What
Is This Thing Called Love?', and the like - none of them were, so far
as I know, given the 'lurve' treatment.
I suspect that use of the pronunciation in recordings dates from no
earlier than around 1960, in the soul genre, perhaps (I'm no expert,
as is apparent!)
It must have taken quite a time after that for the written form to
gain currency to express a particular meaning, as exemplified by the
'Walrus of Lurve', Barry White, that I leave to others to define!
Suffice it to say, for present purposes, that the use of the word by a
man in 1918 is as inconceivable as him pulling a cellphone from his
jacket pocket.
Why does the author do it? Why does no one make a fuss? (Heaven knows,
literary types create furores over relative trifles!)
It's not as if there's no genuine comparable prose of the period
available - the Imperial War Museum is stuffed with war diaries,
letters, and the like! Not to mention the millions of pages of printed
works of all genres and registers.
I believe that the antique trade in England uses the word 'right' to
indicate that a particular piece of furniture or whatever appears to
be genuine. Some items make have extensive provenances and a
voluminous literature. But, mostly, it's gut instinct.
Even without the use of concordances and corpuses - corpora? - and the
like, one can tell the prose in 'The Ghost Road' is clearly about as
far from 'right' as it could be.
Jitze Couperus
wrote:
>
>Much the same with historical literature written today, it seems. For
>instance, I happened on a copy of the Great War novel 'The Ghost Road'
>by the much-fated author Pat Barker...
Lots of fate to go around for all. It is my fete to stumble on these
things.
Jitze
Michael J Hardy
> My sense is that it is utterly unlikely that an educated, middle-class
> man would have written thus in that period. Use (in the particular
> context) of 'actually'; 'grasp'; 'heterosexual'; 'nips off' (even as
> 'slumming').
Also, wouldn't an Englishman in 1918 have written "i.e."
rather than "ie"? Writing "Mr Smith" instead of "Mr. Smith"
was not yet the usage in England in 1940, according to a poster
in this forum who said he learned to write "Mr. Smith" when he
was in school in England in 1940.
> However, I reckon that, even in AmE, 'lurve', as a commonly
> heard pronunciation, came much later.
I'm an American and I've never heard any American, nor
anyone else, pronounce "love" in a way that had the sound of
an "r" as in "ring", so I have to guess that you intend it to
be a sort of vowel-modifier, as is sometimes done by the
British. Just which vowel you intend "ur" to represent is
what I'm not sure about. I don't recall having heard more
than one American pronunciation of "love". I may have heard
someone from England pronounce it with the vowel I'm accustomed
to hearing in "book", but I cannot say I've heard an American
pronounce it that way. What pronunciation do you have in mind
as what you would expect of an American in 1918? -- Mike Hardy
PS: Had the word "heterosexual" become commonly known in 1918?
R H Draney
news:3e3c4f80$0$3935$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu:
> I'm an American and I've never heard any American, nor
> anyone else, pronounce "love" in a way that had the sound of
> an "r" as in "ring",
Woody Allen, in "Annie Hall", the scene set on the airplane where he
opines that the word "love" in its normal form isn't strong enough to
describe how he feels...the same conversation, I think, contains the
better-known "dead shark" reference....r
Ben Zimmer
Michael J Hardy wrote:
>
> halcombe (halc...@subdimension.com) wrote:
>
> > However, I reckon that, even in AmE, 'lurve', as a commonly
> > heard pronunciation, came much later.
>
> I'm an American and I've never heard any American, nor
> anyone else, pronounce "love" in a way that had the sound of
> an "r" as in "ring", so I have to guess that you intend it to
> be a sort of vowel-modifier, as is sometimes done by the
> British. Just which vowel you intend "ur" to represent is
> what I'm not sure about. I don't recall having heard more
> than one American pronunciation of "love". I may have heard
> someone from England pronounce it with the vowel I'm accustomed
> to hearing in "book", but I cannot say I've heard an American
> pronounce it that way. What pronunciation do you have in mind
> as what you would expect of an American in 1918?
I believe what we have here is yet another example of a non-rhotic
"pronunciation spelling" wherein <er> or <ur> is used to represent /@/
(or a lengthened /@:/ in a stressed syllable). Compare the hesitation
particle "er...", "Winnie ther Pooh", Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker", and
the variant spellings "proberbly" and "princerple". OED indeed gives
the UK pronunciation of "lurve" as /l@:v/ and provides this note:
"Representing an emphatic, humorous, or arch pronunciation of LOVE n.1.
Sometimes specifically parodying the slow, smooth, crooning
pronunciation of love in romantic popular songs."
OED also notes the US pronunciation of "lurve" as /l@rv/, but I'd say
this is a rhotic reanalysis of the non-rhotic pronunciation spelling
(compare the rhotic pronunciation of "er..." as /@r/).
By the way, the first citation given by OED is from 1937, with the
spelling "lerve" (Dorothy Sayers' _Busman's Honeymoon_: "Yesterday she
looked like a Renaissance portrait stepped out of its frame. I put it
down first of all to the effect of gold lamé, but, on consideration, I
think it was probably due to ‘lerve’."). The first cite with the
"lurve" spelling is from 1945 ("But probably the reiteration of your
phrase--dreamgirl--will make you feel faintly sick, so i will leave you
to stew in your mess of lurve."). So perhaps not quite as anachronistic
as originally suspected.
--Ben
John Holmes
>> heard pronunciation, came much later.
>
>
> I'm an American and I've never heard any American, nor
> anyone else, pronounce "love" in a way that had the sound of
> an "r" as in "ring", so I have to guess that you intend it to
> be a sort of vowel-modifier, as is sometimes done by the
> British. Just which vowel you intend "ur" to represent is
> what I'm not sure about.
What he means is something like a French pronunciation of 'leuve'.
For some explanations relevant to this, see Peter Moylan's comments in
the "Feng Shui" thread yesterday.
--
Regards
John
Ben Zimmer
Hmm, as I posted elsethread, OED gives [l@:v] as the UK pronunciation of
"lurve", but based on Peter M.'s remarks I suppose [lV"v] (low-mid
central unrounded vowel, reversed epsilon in IPA) might be more
accurate. But wouldn't French "leuve" be pronounced more like [l&.v]
(low-mid front rounded vowel, o-e ligature in IPA)?
(Apologies if this is double-posted.)
--Ben
John Holmes
You are probably right that that would be closer, but I did only say
"something like". I really had to dig deep to find some way of conveying
the sound in eye-dialect spelling meaningful to a rhotic speaker. Can
you suggest any better spelling I might have used?
BTW, I have often seen people say that [@] is a symbol for an unstressed
vowel only, but many people also seem to use it in stressed syllables.
Who's right?
--
Regards
John
Charles Riggs
We'd better keep things moving swiftly along, then.
--
Charles Riggs
chriggs |at| eircom |dot| com
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>BTW, I have often seen people say that [@] is a symbol for an unstressed
>vowel only, but many people also seem to use it in stressed syllables.
>Who's right?
Real important question, that, while people are starving in India and
war is about to break out in Iraq. Even on a quiet day of reflection,
I'd give that question the exact amount of time it deserves.
Steve Hayes
> I'm an American and I've never heard any American, nor
>anyone else, pronounce "love" in a way that had the sound of
>an "r" as in "ring", so I have to guess that you intend it to
>be a sort of vowel-modifier, as is sometimes done by the
>British. Just which vowel you intend "ur" to represent is
>what I'm not sure about. I don't recall having heard more
>than one American pronunciation of "love". I may have heard
>someone from England pronounce it with the vowel I'm accustomed
>to hearing in "book", but I cannot say I've heard an American
>pronounce it that way. What pronunciation do you have in mind
>as what you would expect of an American in 1918? -- Mike Hardy
I don't know whether it was American, but the pronounciation was quite common
in pop songs of the 1960s "How I lurve you, Oh yes i do".
It was not pronounced with the r in ring, but with the "ur" in "lurk".
>
>PS: Had the word "heterosexual" become commonly known in 1918?
>
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
John Holmes
Thanks for that piece of your valuable time, Charles.
What progress are you making on the other problems you mention? You
might care to post your reply separately to some groups where such
things are more on-topic.
--
Regards
John
Jonathan Jordan
"Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:3E3CFBDD...@midway.uchicago.edu...
vowel. But BrE speakers often seem to hear [W] and [@] as the same,
and indeed I'm fairly sure that my vowel where RP has /@:/ is rounded
and rather fronted, at least some of the time (so "lurve" suggests
[lWrv] to me).
OED3 uses /@:/ where older transcriptions of RP used /V":/. I don't
know whether this reflects a perceived change in the quality of the
vowel. They also use /a/, /E/, /E:/, /VI/ instead of /&/, /e/, /e@/,
/aI/.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
"John Holmes" <hol...@smart.net.au> wrote in message
news:b1j4sa$co2$1...@perki.connect.com.au...
<snip>
> BTW, I have often seen people say that [@] is a symbol for an
unstressed
> vowel only, but many people also seem to use it in stressed
syllables.
> Who's right?
>
I don't think there's anything on the IPA chart that says that the
symbol [@] can't be used in a stressed syllable. What people may have
said is that it doesn't occur in stressed syllables in certain
varieties of English. I'm sure that, for example, it can be used in
stressed syllables in Welsh, where it is spelt <y>.
When I use the word "but" at the beginning of a sentence (any
prescriptivists reading this?), it's often quite strongly stressed,
but I think I normally still say [b@t] rather than use the (rounded,
in my dialect, but _not_ [U]) vowel of "butt".
Jonathan
John Holmes
> "Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
> news:3E3CFBDD...@midway.uchicago.edu...
>>
>> pronunciation of "lurve", but based on Peter M.'s remarks I suppose
>> [lV"v] (low-mid central unrounded vowel, reversed epsilon in IPA)
>> might be more accurate. But wouldn't French "leuve" be pronounced
>> more like [l&.v] (low-mid front rounded vowel, o-e ligature in IPA)?
Afterthought: would German 'loewe', dropping the final vowel, have been
a closer analog?
>>
>> (Apologies if this is double-posted.)
>>
> I think the ASCII IPA is [W], and that that would indeed be the French
> vowel. But BrE speakers often seem to hear [W] and [@] as the same,
> and indeed I'm fairly sure that my vowel where RP has /@:/ is rounded
> and rather fronted, at least some of the time (so "lurve" suggests
> [lWrv] to me).
The 'lurve' spelling was probably never meant to be quite as specific as
all that. There's been a big enough range of accents in pop songs that
probably all those vowels have been heard in the word.
--
Regards
John
Michael J Hardy
> It was not pronounced with the r in ring, but with the "ur" in "lurk".
This comment leaves me even more puzzled. Are you trying to
say it _is_ supposed to be a rhotic pronunciation? Are there in
fact sounds that the southern British are not capable of representing
in written form without writing "ar", "er", "ir", "or", or "ur",
but that have no "r" sound in them? Someone said on a.u.e. that
"Iraq" is pronounced "Irark", when she appeared to mean a pronunciation
that I might have spelled "Irahk". Is "Irahk" completely unacceptable
to some aueans as a way of representing that pronunciation in writing?
It seems to lack the ambiguity of "Irark".
What pronunciation is intended I still don't know. I've certainly
never heard anyone pronounce "love" with the vowel sequence that occurs
in any pronunciation of "lurk" that I can imagine. -- Mike Hardy
Steve Hayes
I'm saying that the r in ring is a consonant. In "lurk" the r serves to modify
the sound of the preceding u, so to say that the r in "lurve" is the same as
the r in ring is misleading.
Lurve rhymes with curve, and it is the way "love" was pronounced by some
singers of pop sings in the 1950s and 1960s. The originator of the thread was
making the point that it was not found in 1918 or thereabouts. I don't know
whether that is true or not. I do have a vinyl record in which one line of a
song sounds like "How I lurve you, oh yes I do", but vinyl records were not
made in 1918.
Jonathan Jordan
"Michael J Hardy" <mjh...@mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3e3ea85a$0$3944$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
> Steve Hayes (haye...@yahoo.com) wrote:
>
> > It was not pronounced with the r in ring, but with the "ur" in
"lurk".
>
>
> This comment leaves me even more puzzled. Are you trying to
> say it _is_ supposed to be a rhotic pronunciation?
No, I'm sure that he isn't.
> Are there in
> fact sounds that the southern British are not capable of
representing
> in written form without writing "ar", "er", "ir", "or", or "ur",
> but that have no "r" sound in them?
Yes. Of the 20 RP phonemes (OED3 transcription), four, /E:/, /@:/,
/I@/ and /U@/ (as in "square", "nurse", "near" and "cure") are, I
think, almost always spelled with vowel plus <r>, while one more,
/A:/, as in "start" and "palm", is only unambiguously written <ar> (I
don't consider <ah> to be an English spelling convention). The vowel
in question ("lurve") is the "nurse" vowel.
There's also /O:/, often written <or>, but there are no excuses there,
as <aw> will do fine.
Jonathan
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>Charles Riggs wrote:
>> On Mon, 3 Feb 2003 00:05:32 +1100, "John Holmes" <hol...@smart.net.au>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> BTW, I have often seen people say that [@] is a symbol for an
>>> unstressed vowel only, but many people also seem to use it in
>>> stressed syllables. Who's right?
>>
>> Real important question, that, while people are starving in India and
>> war is about to break out in Iraq. Even on a quiet day of reflection,
>> I'd give that question the exact amount of time it deserves.
>
>Thanks for that piece of your valuable time, Charles.
Not at all. My time is free.
>What progress are you making on the other problems you mention? You
>might care to post your reply separately to some groups where such
>things are more on-topic.
I love the English language and have the interest to discuss things of
any importance to the subject, but what some silly symbol means is a
waste of anyone's time, in my opinion. You want to learn and know
about people's accents? There is only one way: get out and listen to
them talking. Discussing their accents, when no amount of explanation
can describe them, is a total waste of energy. Buy a tape recorder; it
won't lie.
As for the questions of starvation and the war, I contribute money
where I can, if that is of concern to you, and write letters to prick
the attention of those whose ideas bother me, vis-à-vis the upcoming
war.
Jacqui
> Someone said
> on a.u.e. that "Iraq" is pronounced "Irark", when she appeared to
> mean a pronunciation that I might have spelled "Irahk". Is
> "Irahk" completely unacceptable to some aueans as a way of
> representing that pronunciation in writing? It seems to lack the
> ambiguity of "Irark".
That was me and I have an r in the word. Irrark would be far more
accurate than Irahk, for my purposes - the "hk" is *not* the sound you
would hear if I were to say it, trust me. So yes, for me, Irahk would
be potentially unacceptable (I'd accept it, because I am aware that
other people have different accents. Some people say "irrorrk", for
starters).
Incidentally, there's no ambiguity in "park", is there?
Jac
Jonathan Jordan
"Jacqui" <sirlawren...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns931890507EE...@163.1.2.7...
Are there any words where you have an "ah" sound (such as in RP "park"
or "path") without this following "r"? How do you say "calm" or
"father", for example?
Jonathan
Jacqui
> Jacqui wrote
>>
>> > Someone said
>> > on a.u.e. that "Iraq" is pronounced "Irark", when she appeared
>> > to mean a pronunciation that I might have spelled "Irahk". Is
>> > "Irahk" completely unacceptable to some aueans as a way of
>> > representing that pronunciation in writing? It seems to lack
>> > the ambiguity of "Irark".
>>
>> That was me and I have an r in the word. Irrark would be far more
>> accurate than Irahk, for my purposes - the "hk" is *not* the
>> sound
> you
>> would hear if I were to say it, trust me. So yes, for me, Irahk
> would
>> be potentially unacceptable (I'd accept it, because I am aware
>> that other people have different accents. Some people say
>> "irrorrk", for starters).
>
> Are there any words where you have an "ah" sound (such as in RP
> "park" or "path") without this following "r"? How do you say
> "calm" or "father", for example?
Thinking about it... no. Not when using my own accent. (In RP, of
course I drop the r and you will then hear more of an "ah". But that is
very much secondary, and requires a conscious shift of voice.) Calm has
a hint of an L about it, and father has the r. There is no essential
difference between father and farther for me.
Jac
Michael J Hardy
> Incidentally, there's no ambiguity in "park", is there?
Well, I think _some_ English-speaking people, including
RP speakers, would write "park" when they intend a pronunciation
that lacks the sound of "r" as in "ring", whereas most would
use that spelling only if they intended that sound between the
vowel and the "k" to be audibly pronounced. Whereas "pahk", on
the other hand, would never have that sound. (I don't think of
"ah" as an English spelling convention either, but I know of
no other unambiguous way to represent that sound in writing;
"ar" doesn't do it. -- Mike Hardy
sa...@non.com
<sirlawren...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Thinking about it... no. Not when using my own accent. (In RP, of
>course I drop the r and you will then hear more of an "ah". But that is
>very much secondary, and requires a conscious shift of voice.) Calm has
>a hint of an L about it, and father has the r. There is no essential
>difference between father and farther for me.
Ahh!
There it is.. the 'ah' sound he was talking about, as in "Irahk".
Larry
sa...@non.com
Erm, "um" is similar.
Larry
Jacqui
> Jacqui wrote:
> Ahh!
>
> There it is.. the 'ah' sound he was talking about, as in "Irahk".
Round 'ere, we say "arrrrrrr". Occasionally prefaced with "oo".
Jac
Steve Hayes
<jonatha...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:
>Are there any words where you have an "ah" sound (such as in RP "park"
>or "path") without this following "r"? How do you say "calm" or
>"father", for example?
There's a patent medicine that is sometimes advertised on the radio here. The
trade name is "Calmettes", but whenever I hear it advertised I think the
reader is saying "Karl Metz", because they pronounce the l.
Raymond S. Wise
news:3e408057...@news.saix.net...
> On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 15:24:36 -0000, "Jonathan Jordan"
> <jonatha...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> >Are there any words where you have an "ah" sound (such as in RP "park"
> >or "path") without this following "r"? How do you say "calm" or
> >"father", for example?
>
> There's a patent medicine that is sometimes advertised on the radio here.
The
> trade name is "Calmettes", but whenever I hear it advertised I think the
> reader is saying "Karl Metz", because they pronounce the l.
>
>
> --
> Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
The word "calmative" has, among standard pronunciations, one in which the
"a" is pronounced as in "hat" and the "l" is pronounced. In fact, *The
Century Dictionary* has no other pronunciation for the word. The Century
also has "calmant," "A quieting medicine or other therapeutic agent."
"Calmative" looks like it might be a very old word, but Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate dates it 1870. So a word based upon the English word
"calm"--"calmant," on the other hand, is from French--was, twenty-five years
later, given a pronunciation by a prescriptive dictionary in which the "l"
was pronounced. Interesting.
As for the short 'a': The Century does not have "calm" with that vowel, but
the dictionary at Infoplease.com includes the pronunciation "cam," /k&m/ in
ASCII IPA, but marks it "older." (It also has a pronunciation with the "l"
pronounced, which it labels "spelling pron.")
See
http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0359656.html
Now, Calmettes, it turns out, being an extract of the root *Valeriana
officinalis,* is a calmative, that is, a sedative.
Given all this, it seem to me that pronouncing the "l" in Calmettes is not
particularly odd. One more data point (or a couple): I was able to find
"calmative" in neither the *Cambridge International Dictionary of English*
nor the Australian *Macquarie Concise Dictionary.*
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Steve Hayes
<illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote:
>"Steve Hayes" <haye...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:3e408057...@news.saix.net...
>> On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 15:24:36 -0000, "Jonathan Jordan"
>> <jonatha...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >Are there any words where you have an "ah" sound (such as in RP "park"
>> >or "path") without this following "r"? How do you say "calm" or
>> >"father", for example?
>>
>> There's a patent medicine that is sometimes advertised on the radio here.
>The
>> trade name is "Calmettes", but whenever I hear it advertised I think the
>> reader is saying "Karl Metz", because they pronounce the l.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
>
>
>The word "calmative" has, among standard pronunciations, one in which the
>"a" is pronounced as in "hat" and the "l" is pronounced. In fact, *The
>Century Dictionary* has no other pronunciation for the word. The Century
>also has "calmant," "A quieting medicine or other therapeutic agent."
My dictionary gives that pronounciation too.
>Now, Calmettes, it turns out, being an extract of the root *Valeriana
>officinalis,* is a calmative, that is, a sedative.
>
>Given all this, it seem to me that pronouncing the "l" in Calmettes is not
>particularly odd. One more data point (or a couple): I was able to find
>"calmative" in neither the *Cambridge International Dictionary of English*
>nor the Australian *Macquarie Concise Dictionary.*
No, probably not very odd. I was just reporting the effect that hearing the
word had on me.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
John Holmes
> Given all this, it seem to me that pronouncing the "l" in Calmettes
> is not particularly odd. One more data point (or a couple): I was
> able to find "calmative" in neither the *Cambridge International
> Dictionary of English* nor the Australian *Macquarie Concise
> Dictionary.*
The Australian Oxford has it, with the pronunciations /ka:m-/ and
/k&lm-/ in that order.
--
Regards
John