Cheltenham Spar
Jonathan Jordan
pronounced several times with a clear rhotic [r] on the end. This wasn't
a case of non-rhotic intrusive "r" - his accent was clearly rhotic when
saying "Derby", "Birmingham" and "Bristol Parkway", and anyway "Spa" was
followed by a consonant, the /g/ of "Gloucester".
Jonathan
Jacqui
You'll hear it at Bath Spa too. I occasionally do it when not being
careful. I think it's just part of a general "rural"/West Country burr.
Jac
Harvey Van Sickle
I seem to recall that Paul McCartney did the same in the Beatles
recording of _'Til There was You_: "There were birds in the sky, but I
never sawr them winging".
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 20 years.
(for e-mail, harvey becomes whhvs)
Sam Nelson
Philip Eden
"Jonathan Jordan" <jonatha...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:b698i0$2u1ge$1...@ID-162222.news.dfncis.de...
trains always "call at" intervening stations, but they "arrive into
Nottingham or Leicester.
When I once foolishly asked why, I was met with a blank stare.
Philip Eden
Edward
I'm sitting in Cheltenham Spa(r) as I write this ... ah, Cheltenham,
once home to an exclusive "Ladies" college and ex-Indian Army colonels
and their memsahibs. Now it's wall-to-wall Shrek-like twoccers and
their pram-faced, sub-juvenile baby factories. What price progress?
Wrt the pronunciation of "Spa(r)", listen to the egregious Susan
Carrrrter on The Archers (BBC R4 soap drivel) for a truly disgusting
accent. But don't get me started on accents in The Archers - I mean,
when is Dayvid going to terminate with extreme prejudice that
cavilling, grasping, counter-jumping Halloween Horror Ruth?
Edward
Edward
AWILLIS957
>From: "Jonathan Jordan"
Well, a person's pronunciation isn't always consistent. I sometimes pronounce
my "ahs" in the West Country way and I sometimes don't. I'm not sure why that
is.
One clue might be that "Spa" comes at the end of the name. I know I am more
likely to sound like a member of the Wurzels when the "ah" sound ends an
utterance. It acts as a sort of stress, I fear.
Peasemarch.
david56
> I'm sitting in Cheltenham Spa(r) as I write this ... ah, Cheltenham,
> once home to an exclusive "Ladies" college and ex-Indian Army colonels
> and their memsahibs. Now it's wall-to-wall Shrek-like twoccers and
> their pram-faced, sub-juvenile baby factories. What price progress?
Mum's a lady, and she went to college in Cheltenham, but not that
College. Teacher training college it was, from about 1948.
Shrek looks nothing like a twoccer. He'd hardly fit into a car in any case.
--
David
I say what it occurs to me to say.
=====
The address is valid today, but I will change it to keep ahead of the
spammers.
Jonathan Jordan
Speaking for myself, I'd pronounce "spa" [spa:] and "spar" [spA:r]. I
remember you saying that you sometimes put an [r] into "path", so I
thought you might do the same with "spa".
The accent did sound vaguely south-western, but I couldn't place it more
precisely than that. He only did the announcements until we got to
Birmingham, so I've no reason to think that he was from near Cheltenham
or Bristol.
Jonathan
Jacqui
> Jacqui wrote
>>
>> > Heard from a Virgin Trains Train Manager on Friday -
>> > "Cheltenham Spa" pronounced several times with a clear rhotic
>> > [r] on the end. This wasn't a case of non-rhotic intrusive "r"
>> > - his accent was clearly rhotic when saying "Derby",
>> > "Birmingham" and "Bristol Parkway", and anyway "Spa" was
>> > followed by a consonant, the /g/ of "Gloucester".
>>
>> You'll hear it at Bath Spa too. I occasionally do it when not
>> being careful. I think it's just part of a general "rural"/West
>> Country burr.
>>
> It just seems odd with a word like "spa", with no <r> in the
> spelling. Speaking for myself, I'd pronounce "spa" [spa:] and
> "spar" [spA:r]. I remember you saying that you sometimes put an
> [r] into "path", so I thought you might do the same with "spa".
Yes, you might well catch me saying "barth spar". More so when I lived
and drank there. :-) It *is* odd, and I can't excuse it any way other
than "it's just what some of us do". I don't do it much, in my
defence. <g>
Jac
Jonathan Jordan
"Philip Eden" <phi...@weather.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3e883c15$0$25653$fa0f...@lovejoy.zen.co.uk...
wasn't on Midland Mainline as well. I did notice that Virgin seem to
have stopped saying "station stop" all the time.
Another thing I noticed was that at Newport station, the computerised
announcements are now done in Welsh before the English version. I don't
know whether the Welsh-speaking computers are as deeply sorry for the
delay to your service as the English-speaking ones.
Jonathan
R F
> Yes, you might well catch me saying "barth spar". More so when I lived
> and drank there. :-) It *is* odd, and I can't excuse it any way other
> than "it's just what some of us do". I don't do it much, in my
> defence. <g>
Do you say "warsh" for "wash", like many speakers of the US Midland
dialect?
Edward
> Edward wrote:
>
> > I'm sitting in Cheltenham Spa(r) as I write this ... ah, Cheltenham,
> > once home to an exclusive "Ladies" college and ex-Indian Army colonels
> > and their memsahibs. Now it's wall-to-wall Shrek-like twoccers and
> > their pram-faced, sub-juvenile baby factories. What price progress?
>
> Mum's a lady, and she went to college in Cheltenham, but not that
> College. Teacher training college it was, from about 1948.
Still there. Now the University of Gloucestershire. I used to work
there.
> Shrek looks nothing like a twoccer. He'd hardly fit into a car in any case.
Ok, point taken. But lots of twoccers look superfically like a
sawed-off version of Shrek - i.e. bald pates and ugly as fuck. They
lack Shrek's social graces, of course, but then the simile not meant
to be deep.
Steve Hayes
Maybe he was thinking of a grocery shop.
--
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
Jacqui
No, the a sound would be all wrong. It would be more like waahhhsh for
me. No r and a broader a than "war" implies.
Jac
Jonathan Jordan
"R F" <rf...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.44.030331...@sparky.cs.nyu.edu...
people who do this, do they rhyme "wash" with "harsh", or do they use the
"war" vowel? The "warsh" spelling is ambiguous, unless we're talking
about one of those dialects with a card/cord merger.
Jonathan
Donna Richoux
I remembered asking about this years ago, and found my 1997 post by
using Google:
> ...did you pronounce "warsh" to
> rhyme with "harsh" or more like "porch"?
>
> ...One e-mailer from the Midwest had only heard the sound in "harsh."
> One e-mailer had heard the sound in "harsh" in the D.C.-Baltimore area,
> and the sound in "porch" in the Pittsburg area.
> Hal Dunn (location not given) posted that both sounds were possible.
>
> Conclusion: Merely saying someone says "warsh" does not provide enough
> information to convey the intended sound.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Mike Lyle
Sounds Goofy to me.
Mike.
John Hall
http://www.gemhut.com/calcite.htm
--
John W Hall <wweexxss...@telusplanet.net>
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
"Helping People Prosper in the Information Age"
R F
I hear it as [wOrS], not [wArS] -- not rhyming with "harsh", but using
the "war" vowel. But I might be misperceiving the vowel.
Charles Riggs
made history, by writing:
>tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote in message news:<1fsqohy.1n82kuv11md8suN%tr...@euronet.nl>...
>> > Conclusion: Merely saying someone says "warsh" does not provide enough
>> > information to convey the intended sound.
>
>Sounds Goofy to me.
Goofy, but true. Many Baltimoreans pronounce it as warsh, sounding
something like harsh, but further back in the throat. Even down in
Washington, you sometimes hear it. I doubt if it knows any class
distinctions: it is simply a regional thing.
--
Charles Riggs
For email, take the air out of aircom and
replace it with eir
Charles Riggs
history, by writing:
>I hear it as [wOrS], not [wArS] -- not rhyming with "harsh", but using
>the "war" vowel. But I might be misperceiving the vowel.
I'd say you have it. The war vowel.
Mike Lyle
> On 1 Apr 2003 05:32:12 -0800, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
> made history, by writing:
>
> >tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote in message news:<1fsqohy.1n82kuv11md8suN%tr...@euronet.nl>...
>
> >> > Conclusion: Merely saying someone says "warsh" does not provide enough
> >> > information to convey the intended sound.
> >
> >Sounds Goofy to me.
>
> Goofy, but true. Many Baltimoreans pronounce it as warsh, sounding
> something like harsh, but further back in the throat. Even down in
> Washington, you sometimes hear it. I doubt if it knows any class
> distinctions: it is simply a regional thing.
He Disnae get the joke.
Mike.
Brian Wickham
wrote:
>On 1 Apr 2003 05:32:12 -0800, mike_l...@yahoo.co.uk (Mike Lyle)
>made history, by writing:
>
>>tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote in message news:<1fsqohy.1n82kuv11md8suN%tr...@euronet.nl>...
>
>>> > Conclusion: Merely saying someone says "warsh" does not provide enough
>>> > information to convey the intended sound.
>>
>>Sounds Goofy to me.
>
>Goofy, but true. Many Baltimoreans pronounce it as warsh, sounding
>something like harsh, but further back in the throat. Even down in
>Washington, you sometimes hear it. I doubt if it knows any class
>distinctions: it is simply a regional thing.
Americans from different areas hear things differently. A fellow I
knew from Ohio just broke into gales of laughter any time I pronounced
"water". I'm from NYC and usually say "waughtah" (as in Evelyn
"Waugh") if I'm not careful. This guy insisted that there was, "No
'R' in warter (his humorous impression of my pronunciation)", which he
said was pronounced "wahter" (as in wah-wah). He heard an "R" and I
still don't.
In my experience no one ever accused a NYer of adding "Rs" to his
speech but this guy and a few of his buddies had a grand time
listening to me. They also accused me of saying "warsh" when I was
pronouncing it "waughsh".
Brian Wickham
R F
> In my experience no one ever accused a NYer of adding "Rs" to his
> speech
I think it's commonly done by post-Draft-Riots pre-Sputnik speakers,
but it wasn't something I noticed until fairly recently, for whatever
reason. I'll note, though, that I pronounced "drawing" as "droring"
[dZrOrIN] when I were a kid, IIRC, and I used to think "polo shirt" was
"polar shirt" (based on my mother's pronunciation, but that might have
been a residual Boston thing).
> but this guy and a few of his buddies had a grand time
> listening to me. They also accused me of saying "warsh" when I was
> pronouncing it "waughsh".
Oy! That proves they're dead wrong, because no New York city native
says (rhotic) "warsh". What's interesting about that, though, is that
clearly you say something like [wOS]. And R J Valentine, a
native of Valentine Farms, Greater Jamaica, Queens, has, I believe,
said he uses the "caught" vowel in "wash". I use the "father" vowel,
/wAS/. I'm dead sure my LIC/Astoria-native father used the "cot" vowel
in "wash" too, which makes you wonder, since as I understand it you,
though, like Mr. Valentine, considerably younger, grew up in a nearby
region. Jamaica is far enough from western Queens that you can
understand there being a dialect difference, and let's not forget that
Mr. Valentine lived many formative years on the Island (in the modern
sense). Could be, too, that Mr. Valentine picked up /wOS/ from his
days of driving truck in the Army, which has its own accent.
(Consider Barry McCaffrey. Where'd he get that Jimmy Stewart
accent from?)
BTW, interesting thing about the city I've moved to: the really hip
neighborhoods look just like Astoria.
Ben Zimmer
>
> On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Brian Wickham wrote:
>
> > In my experience no one ever accused a NYer of adding "Rs" to his
> > speech
>
> I think it's commonly done by post-Draft-Riots pre-Sputnik speakers,
> but it wasn't something I noticed until fairly recently, for whatever
> reason. I'll note, though, that I pronounced "drawing" as "droring"
> [dZrOrIN] when I were a kid, IIRC, and I used to think "polo shirt" was
> "polar shirt" (based on my mother's pronunciation, but that might have
> been a residual Boston thing).
>
> > but this guy and a few of his buddies had a grand time
> > listening to me. They also accused me of saying "warsh" when I was
> > pronouncing it "waughsh".
>
> Oy! That proves they're dead wrong, because no New York city native
> says (rhotic) "warsh". What's interesting about that, though, is that
> clearly you say something like [wOS].
I'd want to know what part of Ohio Brian W.'s acquaintance came from.
My impression is that Ohio is split between the North Midland and South
Midland dialects, and some of the South Midland speakers actually do
pronounce "warsh" as [wOrS]. (This is thought to be a hypercorrection
resulting from the non-rhotic Southern pattern's loss of prestige. When
the rhotic pattern became prestigious in the region, "war" changed from
[wO:] to [wOr], and some speakers added r's to other forms like "wash".)
Perhaps this Ohioan says "wash" something like [wA.S], but hearing a New
Yorker say [wOS] reminds him of stigmatized South Midland [WOrS].
This is somewhat reminiscent of the discussion a while back (see
<http://tinyurl.com/8pk3>) about speakers from northern England accusing
southerners of having an "intrusive r" in their pronunciation of "bath"
(really just [bA:T]).
R J Valentine
...
} Oy! That proves they're dead wrong, because no New York city native
} says (rhotic) "warsh". What's interesting about that, though, is that
} clearly you say something like [wOS]. And R J Valentine, a
} native of Valentine Farms, Greater Jamaica, Queens, has, I believe,
} said he uses the "caught" vowel in "wash".
Let's keep it accurate. The farm was long gone when I lived there.
There was a barn out back and a couple of other outbuildings, plus some
stores across the street. My grandmother did raise flowers for sale
during the Great Depression, but I think it was in the front yard that she
did it. After my Uncle Fred sold the place in the fifties, I think they
moved the house across the street and down the block and built a
supermarket on the site. It's probably checkable; it's on Linden
Boulevard across from where 194th Street dead-ends into it (so to say).
It was in the "town" of Jamaica (which survives as the postal territory
served by the Jamaica post office), as distinct from the "village" of
Jamaica, where my father went to high school and I went to college.
Valentine Valley Orchards in Harlingen, Texas, on the other hand, _that_
was my father's.
Oddly enough, though, my great grandmother Valentine, who bought the farm,
so to say, in Jamaica, as it were, *her* parents supposedly owned the farm
where the Astoria end of the Triborough Bridge now is. That's what I
hear, anyhow.
} I use the "father" vowel,
} /wAS/. I'm dead sure my LIC/Astoria-native father used the "cot" vowel
} in "wash" too, which makes you wonder, since as I understand it you,
} though, like Mr. Valentine, considerably younger, grew up in a nearby
} region. Jamaica is far enough from western Queens that you can
} understand there being a dialect difference, and let's not forget that
} Mr. Valentine lived many formative years on the Island (in the modern
} sense). Could be, too, that Mr. Valentine picked up /wOS/ from his
} days of driving truck in the Army, which has its own accent.
I think my "wash" survives unaffected by the Army. I think my Upstate
relatives may use my "cot" vowel there, but it may be their "caught"
vowel.
} (Consider Barry McCaffrey. Where'd he get that Jimmy Stewart
} accent from?)
Wasn't Jimmy Stewart a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve?
} BTW, interesting thing about the city I've moved to: the really hip
} neighborhoods look just like Astoria.
Pittsburgh has a subway? I did not know that. Are you going to be on
_The Guardian_?
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
Jonathan Jordan
"Ben Zimmer" <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:3E8B8ED9...@midway.uchicago.edu...
I think it's a bit different, because I think those northern speakers are
usually also non-rhotic (though I'm not) - their "hearth", for example,
is [ha:T] or [hA:T]. Presumably in this rhotic Ohio dialect the vowel
[O] only occurs before /r/, so that its speakers tend to hear an /r/
after [O] spoken by speakers of other dialects. In a similar way I might
suggest that in some AmE "man" [m&:n] sounds like "mairn" (which suggests
[m&:rn] to me) even though I know full well that it doesn't have an [r]
in it.
But it appears that some southerners really do have an [r] in "bath" -
see Jacqui's postings in that thread, and I wouldn't be surprised if the
"Cheltenham Spar" speaker, who put a very noticeable [r] into "Spa", put
an [r] in "bath" as well. The train wasn't going to Bath, so I don't
know. (I thought he might have put one in "staff" but I wasn't as sure
as for "Spa".)
In BrE "wash" usually has the "cot" vowel, [A.], but it wouldn't entirely
surprise me if some of these rural southern accents treated it
differently (and their "cot" probably has [A]).
Jonathan
Phil Carmody
For what offence?
Phil
Wood Avens
Almost anything other than murder (and that too, if you count
pheasants).
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove number to reply
Mike Lyle
Mike.