You Say Potato: The Story of English Accents

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/review/R36I0N3NUOXHN8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_permThis is a charming and fun book by a father – son writing team. The father is David Crystal and the son is Ben Crystal. David is a professional linguist who has made part of his specialization the study of accents. His son Ben is a professional actor, who has done voice-over work, Shakespearian theater and other projects. David is particularly well-known for reconstructing the Shakespearian accent of Shakespeare's time, an accent called “Original Pronunciation” (OP). You may have been lucky enough to have seen a video of them demonstrating OP where Ben shares a passage of Shakespeare in OP.David provides the intellectual heft of the book, while Ben provides amusing accounts of the importance of accents in his world of acting. I listened to this as an audiobook and the give and take between them, sometimes within chapters, and sometimes as they had of chapters, made for an entertaining production.The book is studded with eye-opening factoids. The first one is when David realized that the world had changed when Ben pronounced “schedule” as the American “sKeGule” rather than the British “sCHeJuAl.” The explanation for the change was American sitcoms, which have been influencing British English since the 1980s.I've always wondered at the British manage to communicate with each other despite what I imagine is the confusing swirl of thick, incomprehensible accents they must deal with.Ben does a nice job of inventorying the many accents in Great Britain and Ireland and shares the social attitudes that are a mystery to Americans. I had perceived that there was something untoward about the “Brummies” – people from Birmingham – but it seems that Brummies are considered dead last for honesty and intelligence simply because of their accent. The Crystals offer some explanations for this, including that Birmingham's industrialization made visitors associate it with squalor and dirt.However, more important than that bit of social history may have been a character in a popular radio program who made use of an exaggerated Brummie accent to play a thick and dense character. This character seems to have cemented the stereotype in the minds of Britons thereafter, and serves as a warning about how easy it is for a bit of satire to wreck reputations and cement social prejudices. Ben suggests that what the good people of Birmingham need is a charismatic character or music group with a Brummie accent. Although Peaky Blinders might have had such an impact, it appears that this opportunity was botched with an unrealistic accent.The Crystals offer insights to accents past, current and future. For example, since 2000, there has been a reversal of the preference for the posh, “cut-glass” accent of “Received Pronunciation” (RP) in favor of the local accents, which are viewed as more authentic, honest and customer friendly. Likewise, because of increased mobility a kind of “Estuary English” which mixes East End Cockney with RP has developed.I recommend this as an audiobook. I think I got more out of actually hearing the Crystals drop in and out of accents, including the flat American accent with its exaggerated “Rs”, than I could have gotten out of it as a written text.Comment Comment Permalink