Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The Queen's English
Though this might seem a bit funny from someone rather lagging in their college career, and well versed in the generic response of "Anthropology" when asked about a major, I've been thinking a lot about what exactly I want to do. It's one of those things that you don't think about when making an important and vague choice. Saying at fifteen years old that you want to make movies seems perfectly clear until you are twenty and find out that you can be a director or set designer or scriptwriter or lighting coordinator but there is no way that someone can give you a bunch of cameras and fifteen lackeys and let you make a film. It just won't happen, because someone has to tell the actors which underwear to put on (or off) and someone has to pay them to do it. Anyhow I'm getting over-analogous.
I was watching Love Actually just now on the computer so naturally I was feeling rather Brittish in the end and decided to look up Brittish regional accents. Looking through them I was recognising certain distinctions that I already knew. The addition of the "r" at the end of certain words to sound educated and metropolitan (idea-r, saw-r) or the old-fashioned "proper" speech that you hear from the old ladies in English movies. Of course they all had putridly bland names like "recieved pronunciation" and "estuary english", but nonetheless they were categorized much like I had expected. It made me think about how interesting all the different dialects were, and also that learning a particular accent should probably be secondary to my Russian. Or French. Or Greek. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is I have been thinking a lot about what aspect of Anthropology I would want to study, because one can't do everything. Mostly I've been veering towards religion, because it's an endless pile of awfully fascinating dirty laundry. But now I'm starting to think about linguistics. It's easy to get bogged down on the nuances of a mourning ritual, but there's only so far you can examine the pronounciation of the letter "A". That way maybe I'll be able to keep moving.
Here's to being poor and having lots of books; any Anthropologist's reluctant destiny- unless they write a very good book, a rich uncle dies, or they are a lady and can marry rich. I love that we always have that option. Cheers. -- G 'Bye, Sonya -- . ( 16.8.05 ) .
Though this might seem a bit funny from someone rather lagging in their college career, and well versed in the generic response of "Anthropology" when asked about a major, I've been thinking a lot about what exactly I want to do. It's one of those things that you don't think about when making an important and vague choice. Saying at fifteen years old that you want to make movies seems perfectly clear until you are twenty and find out that you can be a director or set designer or scriptwriter or lighting coordinator but there is no way that someone can give you a bunch of cameras and fifteen lackeys and let you make a film. It just won't happen, because someone has to tell the actors which underwear to put on (or off) and someone has to pay them to do it. Anyhow I'm getting over-analogous.
I was watching Love Actually just now on the computer so naturally I was feeling rather Brittish in the end and decided to look up Brittish regional accents. Looking through them I was recognising certain distinctions that I already knew. The addition of the "r" at the end of certain words to sound educated and metropolitan (idea-r, saw-r) or the old-fashioned "proper" speech that you hear from the old ladies in English movies. Of course they all had putridly bland names like "recieved pronunciation" and "estuary english", but nonetheless they were categorized much like I had expected. It made me think about how interesting all the different dialects were, and also that learning a particular accent should probably be secondary to my Russian. Or French. Or Greek. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is I have been thinking a lot about what aspect of Anthropology I would want to study, because one can't do everything. Mostly I've been veering towards religion, because it's an endless pile of awfully fascinating dirty laundry. But now I'm starting to think about linguistics. It's easy to get bogged down on the nuances of a mourning ritual, but there's only so far you can examine the pronounciation of the letter "A". That way maybe I'll be able to keep moving.
Here's to being poor and having lots of books; any Anthropologist's reluctant destiny- unless they write a very good book, a rich uncle dies, or they are a lady and can marry rich. I love that we always have that option. Cheers. -- G 'Bye, Sonya -- . ( 16.8.05 ) .