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desperanceSo I am sitting here checking the proofs of Pandaemonium, and my eyes and my mind are perhaps not entirely in sync, because I read the word "carriage" and am suddenly unsure how to pronounce it. And when I make myself remember, what comes to mind is "rhymes with garage". And then I think how thoroughly unhelpful that actually is, because I know that I pronounce garage three different ways, depending. I'm not usually inconsistent - turquoise always rhymes with boys, transparent does not ever rhyme with parent, envelope is not pronounced onvelope nor almond ahmond, though they are certainly ahms houses - but with garage I am utterly flexible. Depending on company or mood or random roll of internal die, garage rhymes with carriage or with barrage or with Nigel Farage (about which latter I am sorry, but that's the only rhyme I can think of for that second-syllable stress). I have no idea why this is, why I have no personal sense of how to say the word. I've never lived in a house with a garage, but that is small excuse.
And thinking about that led me on to thinking about how quickly I'm starting to pick up Americanisms in speech. Some of it is just echolalia - if we're talking about tomatoes, I'll say it the way it's said to me - and some of it is a deliberate cultivated awareness (I am in a foreign country; I should learn their foreign tongue), but it's still a surprise. And double-barrelled too, because the corollary is how fast fifty years of English is starting to slither away from me. We got out of the car t'other day and Karen said she'd pop the trunk, and I leaned on the hood for a moment and really had to work to remember that until six months ago these things were the boot and the bonnet. And even then I thought what silly words they were, boot and bonnet. Hood is not much better - the damn' thing is a lid, fundamentally - but trunk is a fine word, an English word, I used to own a trunk and take things in and out of it. Boots are for feet. Wherefore boot? Wherefore - ridiculously - bonnet?
And like that. Musing on the king my father's wreck. It's better than reading proofs.
And thinking about that led me on to thinking about how quickly I'm starting to pick up Americanisms in speech. Some of it is just echolalia - if we're talking about tomatoes, I'll say it the way it's said to me - and some of it is a deliberate cultivated awareness (I am in a foreign country; I should learn their foreign tongue), but it's still a surprise. And double-barrelled too, because the corollary is how fast fifty years of English is starting to slither away from me. We got out of the car t'other day and Karen said she'd pop the trunk, and I leaned on the hood for a moment and really had to work to remember that until six months ago these things were the boot and the bonnet. And even then I thought what silly words they were, boot and bonnet. Hood is not much better - the damn' thing is a lid, fundamentally - but trunk is a fine word, an English word, I used to own a trunk and take things in and out of it. Boots are for feet. Wherefore boot? Wherefore - ridiculously - bonnet?
And like that. Musing on the king my father's wreck. It's better than reading proofs.