Today whilst out on my 2-hour break (wandering through an English common – read ‘park’ if you’re South African) I was slightly ahead of two rather posh teenagers (lets call them Tilly and Rufus) out walking a King Charles spaniel. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation:
Tilly: [With artfully dishevelled expensively highlighted blonde locks, dressed in leggings, oversized check shirt, Ray bans & vintage Chanel chain link handbag] Oh, so tell me have you heard from Yaa-spar? [Jasper to those of us you don’t speak the language of the Chelsea ‘Yar’]
Rufus: [With artfully side-swept fringe, Jack Wills Blazer, brogues (for a walk in the mud?) and Ray ban wayfarers] Yar, he’s looking good. He’s lost a lot of weight since he’s come back from Africa.
Tilly: Oh, really how delightful. Was he in community outreach Africa or Holiday Africa?
Rufus: Oh, no he was on a family holiday in Botswana. A walking Safari I believe. Yaa-spar, claims he nearly died twice – once at the hands of a lion and the other due to a hippopotamus.
Tilly: Oh, gosh how frightfully exciting…
Amazing! I had never heard of my homeland referred to in terms of a social welfare enterprise or a vacation before, but what I was more awed by was the way in which these plumy mouthed youths spoke and it got my thinking about accents. You see I’ve been accused of losing my South African accent and going all posh. It doesn’t really help in Britain where people seem to base their knowledge of South African accents on Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn in Blood Diamond “My blud is in the soyl.” So I’m not too offended that Brits now ask me which part of England I’m from. But I recently bumped into a South African that I hadn’t seen since primary school, aged 11:
[Me breezing out of a Department store in South West London, sent on a geriatric chore so not watching the crowd. Find path blocked by skinny blonde in gigantic sunglasses. Blonde stares intently at me:]
Blondie: [Brow wrinkled in concentration] Jenny?
Me: [Suddenly recognising blonde from pre-pubescent school days] No its…Hello, Robyn, how are you?
Robyn: Ja, well…blah, blah, been in London for 7 years, blah…and you…
Me: Blah…blah…husband, Scotland, in the U.K for 5 years…carer…blah, blah…
Robyn: Shoo-hey, but you’ve blended in well. Hey, you’ve relly lost your aksent?
Me: Yes, I think it’s my line of work annunciating loudly in the elderly ear. If I say yo-gurt instead of yog-hurt, they don’t know what I’m talking about. And if I give directions to turn left at the next robot instead of saying traffic light then it’s all over. And heaven forbid I ask for a plastic bag instead of shopping bag. Have you noticed it’s plaaa-stic, not plas-tic?
Robyn: Ja, No? I suppose so, but it’s still a pity hey?
Is it a pity? Now that I’ve become anglicized my Family and South African friends take great delight in mocking me about my new hot-potato voice. Don’t get me wrong I can still roll my ‘R’s’ and get guttural on my ‘G’s’ with the rest of my countrymen, but maybe having a non-defined universal accent isn’t so bad. The Husband, despite originating from a small group of islands of the North coast of Scotland called the Orkneys, has a regionally neutral accent. But put in him in the company of Orkadian fisherman and the most amazing transformation occurs:
Orkadian fisherman: Wat-like-today-buey? [Translation: how are you today, boy?]
The Husband: Cannae complayn, off-in-twae-dae-on-the-bot. [Can’t complain off in two days on the boat]
Orkadian fisherman: That’ll-keep-ye-awae-fra-the-hoose? [That’ll keep you away from the house?]
The Husband: Aye-fishin-fer-spoots-n-scallops [Aye, fishing for razor clams and scallops (giant clams to the South Africans out there)]
It sounds like complete gibberish to the untrained ear. Everyone seems to talk at 5 times the usual rate in a rather singsong manner. I spent the first 3 months living in Orkney [we lived on an island of 600 people for awhile – a story for later] with my head cocked at a 45-degree angle while I stared intently at their feverishly moving mouths trying to decipher the code.
So all things considered I’m rather glad my husband doesn’t speak Orkadian ‘roond the hoose’ and he still gets a laugh when I tell him to go because the robot is green. We’re probably better off with our ‘of the world’ accents, until I drag him kicking and screaming to South Africa and force him to convert: Now Husband repeat after me, “My blud is in the soyl.” Either that or he has to speak like Sean Connery at all times, because that’s how I thought all Scotsmen spoke, until I got to Scotland and realised that this is ‘not neshasharily’ true. Ja well no fine.
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