h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Oops. I meant to say...a worthwile pun on the name 'Jonah'. I doubt that Noah was particularly expert on things that swim.)

Oh but he was! He recxeived a second call (not a lot of people know this) and the Lord asked him to make a ten-decker, only this time to fill it all with fish. Carp to be exact.

Noah asked, why O Lord, would you want me to do a thing like that?

And the Lord replied . . .
































I just fancied a multi-storey carp ark

ooch!

I'm sure I've told this one already...

Noah was dismissing all the animals. He picked up two snakes, put them on the table and said,
"Go forth and multiply!"
But the snakes said,
"But we can't! We're adders!"
So Noah said,


















"That's OK - It's a log table."

I have a feeling I'm fortunate not to understand that.

>> ..castigate you for your scriptural solecisms.. <<

OK I'll admit it was probably Geppetto and Pinocchio and not Noah who cataloged all 60 million species by pear, divided 'em into apples and oranges and then stuffed them into the belly of the arkangel along with some crying dove meat and those four and twenty blackbirds that all like to sing when brought before the king.

Because as you say:

>> The point about evolution, of course, is that it *isn't* design. <<

Yes. In fact one can further desconstruct the fanciful notion of Evolution being some sort of "perfection seeking process" by simply recognising that each evolutionary 'solution' is really just a reaction, an accident resulting from incidence. The idea of calling simple 'change' a 'solution' assumes there was a problem. And this leads down the slippery slope to presuming there must be a problem solver.

Or as the wiley oriental might say, "Chance would be a fine thing."


~jwf~

Multi-storeyed Carp Ark... Tee hee!

It's my (Russian) husband's contention that in order to improve his accent in English he has to talk while barely opening his mouth. He also says that I sound much netter in Russian when I open my mouth more when speaking. And it's true that while I was trying to get him to say 'were' properly the other day, I noticed that he makes the sound at the front of his mouth and it makes his face go all pointy, whereas when I wasnted him to do it properly he had to have a flat face and srtreach sideways more with his mouth.

The point being that if I had to suggest what makes a Russian face particularly Russian looking I'd say it's quite pointy. And he rekons that the British have very flat faces.

I wonder if the design of our faces has determined our pronunciation. Or our pronunciation has determined our faces.

Sorry: I don't know what's going on with my typing there.

Experiments with adopted children have shown that people from widely different racial backgrounds who are brought up by white English speakers all end up talking exactly the same. This suggests that the English pronunciation is not anything to do with the shape of your head.

>>Or our pronunciation has determined our faces.

Hell's teeth! Lamarckian evolution! Giraffes straining fof high-up leaves, etc. No, it doesn't happen like that.

Of course, though, different accents and languages will involve different ways of using the speech organs. Take the letter R, for example. In English English, this is made with the tip of the tongue on the upper gum. In Scots English, the middle of the tongue is trilled against the palate, while in French it's a throaty sound involving the back of the tongue and the uvula (proper phoneticians - pardon my simplistic descriptions). So - yes, in different languages and accents, the mouth is used differently to make what we regard as the same 'sound'.

Speaking of close-mouthed accents, the most striking example I can think of in English is the 'colonial' or 'ex-pat' accent founs amongst white anglophile Africans. They seem to speak as though they are afraid of flies entering their mouths. It's possibly a vestige of the 'clipped' Received Pronunciation of yesteryear, as personified by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in 'Brief Encounter'.

A final note - a neat trick I've found to improve one's foreign language pronunciation is to 'impersonate' a stereotypical person from that country. To you it might feel like taking the p**s. To them it will sound approximately normal.

The face, as in 'look', is not inherited but acquired just as an accent is. That would explain why adopted children can look uncannily like their adoptive parents.

You can spot a Northern-Irish person speaking on TV with the sound turned down.

Old chestnut: a German woman went to a plastic surgeon to have her mouth reduced. Surgeon said that's not necessary, just acquire a new habit. How? Keep repeating the French word 'confiture'. Woman comes back three months later, says it doesn't work, my mouth is even wider and I've been saying 'marmelaaade' morning noon and night.

>>You can spot a Northern-Irish person speaking on TV with the sound turned down.

Aye. And some of them would say you can spot a Taig by their tail!

>>Experiments with adopted children have shown that people from widely different racial backgrounds who are brought up by white English speakers all end up talking exactly the same.

Less formal studies have suggested that children adopt the accent and dialect of their peers rather than their parents. In fact, my mother recorded a group of us in Lesotho (pretty much every race and culture represented) and played it to the various parents. None of them could conclusively identify their own children by voice.

Of course, many people are multi-dialectical.

An example of this which has recently become prominent is a leading UK politician who is currently travelling up and down the country. His vowels can be heard to change noticeably from hour to hour, depending on where the helicopter has touched down. A kind way to describe it would be as 'the Zelig effect.'

>>'the Zelig effect.'<<

What does that mean?

It's a pretty natural way to show solidarity, adopting speech forms from your counterpart's language. Like when I start lengthening certain consonants when I speak with my grandma.

Zelig: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086637/ (The plot outline explains it).

In the as above case, the solidarity is cynically deliberate.

And he should be careful not to cross over to stereotype.

Oh, and thanks for the link. The movie looks interesting.

At the time it was made the special effects were well ahead of the posse. Jaws dropped as people realised that film could never again be relied on as evidence (Woody Allen in the background of genuine Hitler footage).

One of Woody's best.

Regarding this, we had a Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, who was known for imitating the accent of any foreign statesman or woman he met... it became a bit of a joke!

On a more personal note, my son tells me that whenever my penfriend phones from the UK, I adopt his accent. But in my defence, he's from Liverpool, as was my father, so I am merely reverting to my childhood way of speaking...

I found myself imitating a South African woman whose office I was in last week. I don't think she noticed - whew! (Another )