The Rain in Spain; or How not to talk like an asshole

I’m Canadian. Please don’t judge me on that unfortunate birth defect.

When I was little, I developed an ear for accents. I realized that the people I grew up around talked funny – saying things like “eh, aboot, Tranna (Toronto)”… I hated it. Mostly though, I lived in fear of talking that way myself.

With a bit of determination, I taught myself to talk like a normal person – and I did it through the most valuable RosettaStone program imaginable: Audrey Hepburn movies.

English wasn’t Hepburn’s first language – she was Dutch. And being a) from Canada, and b) from Montreal, it was safe to say that English wasn’t exactly mother tongue to me either.

With the waif on my side, I elocuted my way through Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Paris When it Sizzles and more. Ironically, I never watched My Fair Lady, preferring Leslie Howard as Higgins in Pygmalion.

My dedication paid off. By the time I reached my late teens I was doing voice-over work, and eventually launched a hugely successful podcast.

I never say aboot. I never say “eh”, except ironically. My only “tell” is my pronunciation of the word sorry, which I pronounce sore-ee. Other than that, you’d think I was from Pennsylvania, not Canada.

Which is why I found this article on All Freelance Writing amusing.

It’s a joke on too many shows these days that the alien or the foreigner learns English by watching MTV or the equivalent. It might have been marginally funny the first time, but it’s way past time for that joke to be over, and the underlying message is actually rather dangerous for those who are trying to sound like professionals. It’s hard to learn real English from people who make money with catch phrases they probably didn’t even come up with themselves. “That’s hot….” Right.

Fair enough. Rebecca goes on to suggest novels as a better way of grasping the intricacies of English. While I tend to agree, I must say that at the tender age of four, I wasn’t able to slog through The Great Gatsby. Sabrina, on the other hand, never failed to delight.

I had these older friends – much older – who came to Canada to escape the Nazis. They spoke only German and a little Hungarian. Like me, they taught themselves English at the movies. Bogart was their professor of choice. While MTV may not be quite the patois one would want to acquire, I stand by Ms Hepburn (along with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Tyrone Power) as a linguist worthy of a PhD.