Family Values .....Chapter 4

[StewL]

Anne

Fantastic, keep going if you can.

You have a wonderful talent there

[DavidWW]

Thanks Jean

Re your comment about my language. That is as much inability as anything and a fear of not getting an authentic 'voice'. ....much snipped......Anne

This raises the fascinating question of just what was the accent of our ancestors 200 or more years ago, as we can't, surely, assume that their accents were the same as our present day accents?, or can we ??

Accents have always fascinated me, and I'm still waiting for someone to provide me with a reason that I can accept for the close similarities between present day South African (non-Boer! - that's very distinctive, but occasionally impossible to distinguish from a Dutch national's accent in English), Rhodesian, Australian and New Zealand accents .............

Yes, I can accept that the Cockney accent may have been a seminal influence in the Oz accent, as has been suggested by some, but NZ, plus SA plus Rhodesia as well ??!! ..........

As for Mary Queen of Scots, - did she perhaps have a "Maurice Chevalier" accent ??

Davie

[AnneM]

Davie

Sank Eeven, we will never know! There is a difference between an Ozzie accent an NZ one and most certainly a Southern African one. I can even usually spot a Zimbabwean as opposed to a South African. The accent of an Afrikaans speaking person is as you say very different too but it does not sound Dutch to me. Mind you I am married to an English speaker of SA origin.

It is possible that many English people in the early 1800s had vowel sounds not unlike the South African ones now, as that is when the first settlers went out from Britain, narrow vowels. There must be an expert somewhere who knows all this.

Anne