My grandmother's English has always amazed me. She would say something like, "It tis a nice day to be out and about, isn't it?' I'd look at my brother and go, "Man, she says every single consonant, dun'nshe?" He'd go, "Yup."
But her non-rhotic absent Rs combined with arbitrary intrusive Rs, stuck in places where they do not belong, created altogether confusing R-displacement situations so that I couldn't discern what she was talking about in spite of her insane consonant precision. Honestly, I never knew if she was talking about the Democratic potty or the Imperial gods, or what. Every single place name without exception that ends with an A, and they are legion, in her mouth ends with an R. So you'll have Americer, Canader, Australier, Africer, Indier, and so forth. She mangles the word for Korea so magnificently that it sounds like career. What is the deal with those Rs anyway? I've concluded that along with all of the silent letters one encounters in the French language they are accounted for by laziness on a national scale.
Blueberries are blue breeze.
Strawberries are straw breeze.
My mother is the opposite. My brother's name is Barry and that is how mum pronounces these things. Blue Barrys and Straw Barrys.
Imagine the confusion sorting this language as a tot when the adults around me kept messing with my tender impressionable mind. Oh, berries! Now I get it. Wow. What an epiphany. Shouldn't they be called redberries, or seeds-on-the-outsideberries? What in the world do they have to do with straw? These puzzling questions confounded me tremendously, and the adults were little to no help or worse. Apparently they found it just so adorable for tots to exist in an alternate universe of massive bewilderment for as long as possible. Most everything I managed about languages comes from other helpful children.
[I brought my kindergarden minder a handful of pussy willows that I somehow snagged without the benefit of a knife. "Here's some pussy willows wot I found. "
"Say that word again."
"Found."
"The other word. The word for these sticks."
"Puthy Willoth"
"Say it again."
"Puthy Willoth"
"Say it again."
"Puthy Willoth"
"Ha ha ha ha ha." Bitch.
Five years later I found myself in speech therapy class with a guy who couldn't speak properly, of all things, his Rs. Sent there by my French national teacher in a school in Tokyo for American Air Force brats. Now, why oh why didn't somebody point that out before it got that far? ]
ARTS !
Not shown, one teaspoon refined sugar. The volatile hydroxyl compound added to the cream needn't be vanilla. I considered some of the banana liqueur I recently picked up from the bottle shop next door, but pretty much anything will do as well as vanilla extract if not better.
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