once upon a time, human beings all spoke the same language, known as gobbledygook. then the tower of babel fell and humans realised it was much more fun to communicate in as many different codes to the original forms of gobbledygook as possible.

the inhabitants of the british isles, the english, went one step further and decided that speaking a code within a code of gobbledygook would be a laugh - that is, english spoken in geordie, brummie, scouse and cockney would be a ball, more so than speaking it in received pronunciation. the scots, welsh and irish decided they could do one better and made up their own language (gaelic) - the cleverclogs.

naturally, this started the misunderstanding of english on a tremendous scale which exists to this day - and it certainly did not travel well around all four corners of the globe. for example, americans living in london get confused when they are asked whether their electrician was 'northern' ("whaddya mean, i thought you were all english?"), while the french think they can get away with their accent when speaking english ("iz theez thee petrol staz-syong?"), not realising they are speakers of a whole new language - froggish. it also created some rather interesting lingo - which i must confess i cannot get my head around myself ('clarts' being one - look that up yourself).

while i don't speak in an interesting dialect of english (i know some people accuse me of speaking my own language, but really...) - my own accent has changed a lot over the years. as a child growing up in surrey i had a hideous estuary twang, which is still there on occasion (say "on-velope") but now this is supplemented by a suspicious mixture of some american rounding of the 'r' (a legacy of my education in korea) and tempered down by my own version of the received pronunciation (never say "ma-ril-lee-bone", it's "mar-lee-bone", all right?). it'll be interesting (or damning, depending on your point of view) to see how i will change the way i talk once i am in hong kong - my phraseology, i am sure, will reflect my roots as a londoner, but my vocal expression of it may beg to differ as i am inclined to be affected by the pan-pacific american accent spoken by the majority of english speakers on the island. one suspects it'll all go downhill from here...


-for m., who wanted to know what 'northern' meant-