General Chat

Of course I have met people of all colours with British accents but this little girls accent was broad. She had a Vicky Pollard accent which really did come as a surprise.

There were,of course, a number of other people of varying hues, expressing their thoughts and I really could not tell you what accent any of them had, apart from the little girl in the headdress talking like the Wurzels.

Island, I intentionally learnt a few words of Bengali - much to the displeasure of a young lad at school
He was 10, had been born and brought up in Winchester, but started getting 'bolshie', and would occasionally mutter a few words of Bengali.
I listened very hard to these words, then, on the offchance asked my dad, who spoke Arabic and bits of a few other languages, if he knew what they meant.
Well, he was shocked - so shocked he burst out laughing! He had a plan!
We went to his friends house, who happened to be Bengali.
He taught me to say 'School isn't the place for such language, and if I hear one more swear word from you, in any language, I'll tell your dad'.

It was near Christmas. The children were asked to draw the stable and manger. He objected on the grounds that depictions of the human form are forbidden in Islam (though his older siblings had no objection)
I pointed out that he could just draw the stable and manger, with some trees, THAT isn't against Sharia law

Miffed that he'd been 'caught out', he uttered his Bengali words,
The look on his face was priceless, when I told him, in Bengali, what I'd been taught.
It was priceless, because he knew it was Bengali, but he wasn't much good at it , and didn't understand it! :-D :-D :-D
I said it again in English and explained that just knowing a few swear words in Bengali wasn't going to get him far.

,After that, he didn't know just how much Bengali I knew so stopped his bolshiness around me. :-D

This is probably racist too but, when I was working in market research, I always preferred to interview Asian rather than West Indians.

This was because the Asian languages are so different from English that they invariably speak carefully to make themselves understood whereas the West Indian patois are a distorted form of English which they speak naturally and at a fairly high speed and which I never could keep up with.

Probably very late 50’s we trekked ( by train) from London to Scotland on holiday. My little brother and I were swinging on a gate when we’re asked for directions. We just waved our arms up the road. We didn’t understand a word and thought they were Russians.

It is not as though we had never come across foreigners as our parents often entertained people from all over the world because of Dad’s work.

And it's back.......

Good.

University challenge was interesting last night. The Asian chairman for Kings obviously went to a very good public school - he was a beautiful speaker.
On the other team was someone called, Darius. I could not understand a word he said. I have no idea where he came from or what he studied. I think he answered at least one question - shame I’ll never find out what the answer was.

I would like to say two things ......

One, I'm glad to see the OP back.

2. What so struck me about the young lady I wrote about was not her accent vs her colour, but her accent vs her extreme beauty.

I had thought she was a model or an actress, and that was the strangeness!


Though again, I shouldn't have been surprised ...........there was an excellent repertory theatre in my home town that we went to regularly. There was a young beautiful actress who had a really good voice .............. on stage.

I met her outside the theatre, and she had a strong Lancashire accent.

She happened to be Thora Hird's daughter, if any of you remember that name ;-)

I remember Sylvia. Janette or Jeanette something, wasn’t she.

I thought she was pretty too.

Janette Scott?

Janette Scott. She used to live in a neighbouring village, as did her mother.

That’s her. She married Mel someone and lives in the USA I think but not heard anything about her for years.

Was it Mal Tormay or something

Yes … thanks Ann. Mel Torme - brain’s going into overdrive - he was a singer?

Gawd, I’ve just goggled her - still alive and 82. She divorced MT and remarried. Lovely pic of her online.

She was just starting out when we saw her almost every week on stage in a new play at the Rep ............ it would have been around 1956-59.

I think she was born in the mid-1930s wasn't she? I seem to remember her being in her early 20s.

Like all Reps in those days, they worked in series of 3 weeks but overlapping.............. there was a new play for the audience every week but at the same they were rehearsing the play for the next week and reading for the play the week after!

She was often an announcer on Children's TV in the early fifties.

Sylvia...... Just to clarify, are you talking about two different young ladies?

Island ..........

I thought it was pretty clear

There was one young lady with a Brummie accent in Europe within the last 20 years who surprised me because she was so beautiful that I thought she was a model or actress

and I then compared her with the young actress who had a "BBC" accent on stage but a broad LANCASIRE accent off-stage in the 1950s in my home town. That had also surprised me.

Is that clear enough

Sylvia...

No, it was not 'pretty clear' to me - why did you think I asked. So you could be rude????

Oh btw.... you do know actors need to use different accents?
Is that clear enough?

Thank you for clearing that up Sylvia. I have to admit I had also got confused but admit to not having gone back to re read the posts.