[published on July 5, 2006 in "The Flatland Oracles"]
For Rumcove's amendment, click here.
1. The Estuary Beat
As I have mentioned elsewhere, Mr. Rumcove and I met over the internet in 1997. We didn't talk on the phone till after we'd been exchanging daily emails for a few months. When we did speak, I was totally unprepared for the trouble I had understanding him. "I have an estuary accent," he'd said in an email. As he is very interested in accents, he went on to explain some of the characteristics of estuary English: the glottal stops, the use of "w" in place of "r" for some words and "f" in place of "th" (e.g., "Orwite" = "All right"), and a highly arbitrary tendency to drop H's. [For details, see the delightful Gary's Estuary Homepage by another native speaker].
He DIDN'T explain, because I imagine he and other English people don't notice, that another characteristic is talking at high speed and often lowering rather than raising the voice for emphasis. Though maybe that is just Mr R.
At any rate, one of the first things I had to do when I met Mr. Rumcove is learn to understand his accent. As it turns out, my training has been very useful to me; I don't think I'd have been able to make much of quite a lot of English comedy if I hadn't spent quite a lot of hours listening to his high-speed mumbling over the telephone lines.
2. Which is better: 'Street' or 'Right'?
But I don't mean to denigrate his accent. I really like it. I'd say it's my favorite British accent. It's also an accent that seems to turn up with increasing frequency on BBC America and in British films and so forth. According to this page at the Department of Phonetics at UCL ("London's Global University"), the Rumcove accent is presently quite trendy though still considered infra dig by those from England's upper echelons.
Young English people prefer the estuary sound to the "received pronunciation" or "ruling class" accent of Oxford, the royal family, and people such as, for example, my husband Nick and his family. Young English people (including my stepdaughter Emma) would rather sound 'street' than refined (or as Nick puts it, "correct"). [He keeps quiet about her accent most of the time with the odd occasional outburst over a glottal stop. "Could you pass me that bottle (BAH-al), Dad?" she said the last time she was visiting. "BOT-TLE!" Nick shouted wildly. "BOTT-ULL!]
I'm with Emma. I do really appreciate the way Nick talks and am quite happy to be married to someone who sounds like that, since I have a milltown Carolina accent I have failed to outlive. (I grew up in a place where "All right" is pronounced "Ah ite.") It helps that Nick has a British public school accent. When people meet us together, they assume that I can't be as Republican as I sound.
But while recognizing the posh effect of a public school accent and some of the social benefits, I personally like the sound of estuary English or cockney best (which is similar but different, as explained here). Maybe it's because so many of my favorite English TV characters have that accent or reconstructed versions of it. Or maybe, given my own accent, I have built up a certain amount of resistance to the notion that there is a particular pronunciation that is more correct, better, more educated, more refined, etc. After all, if Nick's way of talking is the right way of pronouncing English, where does that leave me and mine?
Also I am just plain interested in accents. As kids growing up in South Carolina (the no account northern part called 'the up country') we used to make cruel fun of my mom's low country brogue, but I was secretly intrigued by and deeply attracted to the very different sounds produced by people from the Low Country: "air" for 'ear," "bear" for "beer," "steeyet" for "state," "winda" for "window," and "hoese" or "hoose" for house. I wanted to talk that way too, even though we used to mock it (ironic since her accent is considered the more refined).
Nick, originally from London, can do a very credible cockney accent. He has learned that when he puts on a cockney accent much younger women (who are otherwise inclined to treat him with respectful deference) suddenly become giggly and flirtatious.
When I mentioned this to Rumcove, he remarked sadly that HE hadn't noticed anything of the kind when he was visiting here, but I think he probably failed to factor in his tendency to glower at strangers, or at best to stare at them expressionlessly, including young and pretty women. That's an English thing, or maybe just an English-tourist-in-America thing.
To me, a characteristic of both estuary and cockney is, as noted above, a tendency to mumble words and to talk at top speed. There's a sort of ACK-ACK-ACK gunfire effect: words just keep coming at you. When Rumcove and I first started talking on the phone, he had to slow down to a crawl for me to understand him at all and there are still times when---as Alan Partridge said to his Geordie mate---it's just a noise.
The emphasis also turns up in funny places (at least to an American) ear. "This...is...RUMcove," my answering machine announces slowly. Then: "IjustGOTyourremailcouldyouGIVEmeacallBACKpleaseIwasWONDERINGwhetheryoudseenmumblemeumblemumble. I'lltalktoyoulaterbye."
But though I am frequently puzzled by the noises Rumcove produces, I always like listening to them.
3. Deadpan all the Time
I'd maintain that much of the appeal of estuary English is in its intonation and cadence.
quote from the Estuary English page begins]
There also appears to be a narrower pitch of intonation patterns in Estuary English than in RP. This is especially true where rises do not reach as high a pitch as they would in R[eceived] P[ronunciation], Rosewarne sees the overall effect as being interpreted as one of "deliberateness" and possibly an "apparent lack of enthusiasm." (Rosewarne 1994)
[quote from the Estuary English page ends]
I know what the person who wrote this means, but I'd characterize it a little differently. Whether or not the speaker is enthusiastic, depressed, elated, grief-stricken, bored, furious, or out of his (or her) head, an estuary accent sounds pretty much the same. It's got an in-your-face wryness. It sounds the way deadpan looks.
I once attended an event where a guy---not Rumcove---was doing a presentation concerning a certain aspect of, let's say, English literature. The guy in question had a faint cockney (RUMCOVE: They're completely DIFFERENT and you KNOW it") accent that his Oxbridge education had suppressed; but his cockney intonation was still very firmly in place. I attended the event with a guy I was dating who was a British comedy fanatic. Throughout this whole PERFECTLY DAMN SERIOUS presentation, he laughed and laughed.
"This poem elaborates on the same theme of frustration and impotence. Though generally considered greatly inferior to its predecessor, it uses a similar---though not identical---metre and rhyme scheme. The poet even employs the same overwrought imagery."
My friend: "HAHAHA"
"Though it is not generally known, the [first poem], universally considered one of the great poems of the English language, was written almost five years after [the second]. In 1895, [Prominent Critic], seemingly unaware that [second poem] had actually antedated [the first], remarked that "[second poem] is but a feeble emulation of [first poem], to which it stands in the same relation as a leaking tap to Niagara."
My friend: "HAHAHAHAHA"
"[Literary Maven] in 1901 summed up the general critical opinion of [second poem] thus: "Fevered or febrile--- yet feeble."
My friend: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Given the similarity of the two poems, we can only ask ourselves: Why? Why is one work considered to be a great poetic achievement and the other a watered-down imitation?"
My friend: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
This went on the whole time. All around us, other people---people who (as was quite possible in those days) had never heard of Monty Python---were looking puzzled and also worried. The circumstances were such that everyone wanted the presenter to feel welcomed and appreciated. They assumed that my friend was laughing because the presenter was trying to be funny. And though they didn't see the humor themselves, they evidently decided it that politeness required them to join in the laughter. As the lecture continued, more and more people began laughing along with my friend.
Naturally, the presenter was surprised and dismayed. Discomfited by the unexpected reaction, he would pause at the end of each sentence and look with consternation at the audience---who must have thought he was pausing to allow time for the expected laugh. The tittering increased; people began to feel that they were 'getting' it after all. Oh, those comical English and their deadpan delivery! There was even some sporadic applause.
I couldn't take it; I eventually got up and left. The paper was a raging success, but I am sure the presenter was scarred forever. I doubt he worked out that it was his DELIVERY that had them rolling in the aisles. I knew from having talked to him a couple of times that it was just the way he talked.
Cockney English AND estuary English lend themselves particularly well to the comic device the Brits treasure above all others (and say we Yanks don't understand): irony. The above-cited 'absence of enthusiasm' reads as the auditory equivalent of sarcastic, trenchant, wry, self-deprecating, or ironic depending on context. It's a comic effect that the English particularly prize (as well as anyone with an appreciation of English comedy), though obviously---as in the case of the unfortunate presenter--- there are drawbacks.
I imagine that the extent to which estuary English and the 'absence of enthusiasm' and "impression of deliberateness" suggested by estuary intonation lends itself to deadpan statements has something to do with its trendiness. It also has a hard edge that creates (at minimal outlay) a 'hard man' impression. Mildly funny statements come across as aggressive, in-your-face, mordant. Cf. the film "Essex Boys," starring Tom Wilkinson, Alex Kingston, and Sean Bean.
4. Accent-Related Stress Disorder.
My stepdaughter is a lovely girl but her way of talking makes her sound tough and street-wise beyond her years. I wouldn't want to go one on one with her that's for certain. And that's probably a good thing for a young girl living on her own.
I have sometimes managed that my life might be very different if I could talk with an estuary or cockney accent. [RUMCOVE: "They're COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and YOU KNOW IT."] It's not an accent that an American can easily imitate. God knows both Rumcove and Nick have tried. I might have managed to get a bit further if both didn't practice the 'teaching by ridicule' method, but I think the problem is less one of pronunciation than of things that are harder to control consciously. When Rumcove speaks, or when Nick speaks with a cockney accent, both of them move their mouths around much more than the average American and their jaws a lot less. There's also a speaking-out-of-one-side-of-the-mouth-sort-of component that I can't quite describe, even to myself. Plus there is a nasal aspect....
A few Americans can do and---much more difficult---sustain credible English accents (Renee Zellweger and Gwynneth Paltrow come to mind) but I've never heard an American do credible cockney or estuary. An ordinary English accent really just requires heightened attention to diction, awareness of when and when not to use the broad A, and projection of the voice forward instead of upward. An estuary or cockney accent requires a reconfiguration of your entire speaking/vocalization apparatus and a completely different conception of the relationship between consonants and vowels. I had to take aspirin after my attempts and then cry myself to sleep afterwards, confirmed in the knowledge that that I don't have what it takes to talk like Guy Ritchie, Madonna.
Rumcove doesn't write with an estuary accent, but something of that deadpan character infuses his work. I suppose that talking like that makes it easier to be funny if you want to be. On the other hand, it makes it harder NOT to be funny when you don't want to be. I am thinking in particular a certain expression Rumcove uses that we don't have here: "I'm not being funny!"---meaning something like "saying this for the purpose of getting at you." It's a disclaimer I'd never have to issue. I usually am not funny even when I'm trying my best to be.
For those reasons, I imagine the estuary mystique might be hard to maintain. I've noticed that with all the weight and value that the British assign to humor, and the claim of the English that they don't take themselves too seriously, many INDIVIDUAL Brits tend to take themselves very seriously indeed and to be (relative to Americans) thin-skinned, emotional (though inexpressive), and rather easily embarrassed. To be dry, deadpan, ironic, trenchant, mordant, and hard-edged would take it out of you. I think of my favorite performer in life, Ian Dury. A true poet, I think, but not for a great deal of his life a happy man.
I said as much to Rumcove, who is often morose and prone to suffer from the effects of Sunlight Affective Disorder. Despite his actual personality, he is frequently mistaken for a hard guy. Twice when he was visiting the US, the immigration officer asked him if he was a cop. He was never a cop, but he does give off a sort of hard guy vibe. How does it feel to be to be taken for a hard guy when you're just tired and hung-over?
"Living up to an estuary accent takes a strong constitution," he wrote. "Sometimes it is hard to cope with all the pressure. But those of us who live in Essex know that Essex is God's country and that when God said, "Let there be light," he said it with an estuary accent. So there you are. The answer is: we manage."
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