inverness

[Stitchwiz]

Language is wonderful! I loved to read as a child and was always looking for more - even encyclopedias were fair game for me. Figuring out the symbols for how to say things was a challenge at a very young age, though. Thank goodness for Dad being so picky about 'the Queen's English', and he always welcomed my questions. My biggest problem was that I did most of my reading when I was supposed to be sleeping - it was hard to remember my questions the next morning.

Enunciation is always fun. When singing, we need to focus on the consonants so that listeners can hear the words properly. If we don't enunciate clearly, then the words just disappear into a beautiful stew of vowels.

Richard, you took me back years with your very accurate discussion. When I was tutoring, I had to figure out how to make the sounds so that I could help my students. I would sit them beside me in front of a mirror so we could practice together. As a very little girl, my daughter had a problem with the word 'yellow'. She would say 'lellow'. I figured out that the easiest way to help her was to break it down by the sounds. So we practiced 'ee-ll-oh', stretching it out slowly until she had all the various parts of her mouth moving the way that they needed to move. Then she just started saying it a little faster until it flowed. It took about a week and she was fine. For that short time, she loved sitting in front of the mirror to practice. But it didn't last long. She had 3 brothers to whip into shape, so she never spent much time in front of a mirror after that.

If you look at a map of Ontario, you would think that someone had taken the names of towns from the UK, stirred them in a pot and dumped it out and just spread them around the province. It is a very real reflection of the heritage of the people who settled in this area. And, of course, we have every mixed up pronunciation imaginable because everyone was trying to figure out how to pronounce those 'foreign' sounding place names.

For example - Alvanley. Some people with exposure to Latin will follow the rules and say AL-van-lee. While most of the locals say Al-VAN-lee. This type of issue has always been up for discussion around our dinner table. Of course, someone always plays the advocate and enjoys taking a contrasting opinion, just because they can...

Love these discussions...