Kentucky English
An interview with an academic from Kentucky. Close your eyes and try to understand her. If you can’t, listen to and watch the video.
Stuff on linguistics and lots of other things
An interview with an academic from Kentucky. Close your eyes and try to understand her. If you can’t, listen to and watch the video.
I like Orwell but I’m especially fond of this novel, which I laughed all the way through. Ravelston, Gordon Comstock’s well meaning but rather pathetic wealthy “socialist” editor is my favourite character. It breaks your heart to read how the plight of the citizens of the Boro spoils his meals and nearly dampens his sex life -if you’ll pardon the rather unfortunate expression!
Ravelston murmured agreement, with a curious air of guilt. And now they were off upon their favourite subject-Gordon’s favourite subject, anyway; the futility, the bloodiness, the deathliness of modern life. They never met without talking for at least half an hour in this vein. But it always made Ravelston feel rather uncomfortable. In a way, of course, he knew-it was precisely this that Antichrist existed to point out-that life under a decaying capitalism is deathly and meaningless. But this knowledge was only theoretical. You can’t really feel that kind of thing when your income is eight hundred a year. Most of the time, when he wasn’t thinking of coal-miners, Chinese junk-coolies, and the unemployed in Middlesbrough, he felt that life was pretty good fun. Moreover, he had the naive belief that in a little while Socialism is going to put things right.
Ravelston, guilty and miserable, sat staring at his glass and revolving it slowly between his hands. Against his right breast he could feel, a square accusing shape, the pocket-book in which, as he knew, eight pound notes and two ten-bob notes nestled against his fat green cheque-book. How awful these details of poverty are! Not that what Gordon was describing was real poverty. It was at worst the fringe of poverty. But what of the real poor? What of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week? When there are people living like that, how dare one walk the world with pound notes and cheque-books in one’s pocket?
Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty bloody when you haven’t even the money to take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and also with desire, he thought of Hermione’s body, naked like a ripe warm fruit. With any luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. Sexual starvation is awful among the unemployed.
In the taxi she lay against him, still half asleep, her head pillowed on his breast. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough, seven in a room on twenty-five bob a week. But the girl’s body was heavy against him, and Middlesbrough was very far away.
They went to their favourite table in the corner. Hermione played with some grapes, but Ravelston was very hungry. He ordered the grilled rumpsteak he had been thinking of, and half a bottle of Beaujolais. The fat, white-haired Italian waiter, an old friend of Ravelston’s, brought the smoking steak. Ravelston cut it open. Lovely, its red-blue heart! In Middlesbrough the unemployed huddle in frowzy beds, bread and marg and milkless tea in their bellies. He settled down to his steak with all the shameful joy of a dog with a stolen leg of mutton.
It was a curious fact-rather a shameful fact from a Socialist’s point of view-that the thought of Gordon, who had brains and was of gentle birth, lurking in that vile place and that almost menial job, worried him more than the thought of ten thousand unemployed in Middlesbrough.
This one is from the magazine The Face. What, you are probably asking yourself, was I doing reading that! It is much too sophisticated and above all YOUNG for me, you are thinking. Anyway, this passage is rather disgusting, so if you are shocked by bad language and racist comment, don’t read on.
The choice views of a Chelsea supporter on folks from the Boro and others from up north. This comes just after he’s had a go at every other minority in the country.
Let’s just hear Eddie on the English: “Well, scousers aren’t fucking English are they? Do you remember the Everton vs Liverpool Cup Final? They booed the national anthem, for fuck’s sake! If we were fucking civilised we’d shoot them as fucking traitors!”
Perhaps this is the real reason why, despite bold attempts to bolster their racist/bigoted credibility, Everton’s scummier elements have never been fully included in the True Blue alliance. Geordies or anyone from the North-east also should not apply.
“Middlesbrough, Geordies -all that fucking lot. Fucking savages. Take more welfare than the fucking blacks. They’re not even part of fucking England. They should be shoved back with all the nasty sweaties.” (Sweaties as in sweaty socks ie jocks, the Scottish.)
What did I tell you? It makes you proud to be from the Boro when someone like that hates you, doesn’t it?
The Face, April 1995, Nº 79, page 109.
Up! comrades, up! The moon’s in the west,
and the hounds of old Pennock will find out our nest.
We must be gone ere the dawning of day;
the Quantrill they seek shall be far, far away.
Their toils after us shall ever be vain.
Let them scout through the brush and scour the plain
We’ll pass through their midst in the dead of the night.
We are lions in combat and eagles in flight.Rouse, my brave boys, up, up and away; press hard on the foe ere the dawning of day;
Look well to your steeds so gallant in chase.
May they never give o’er till they win in the race.
When old Pennock is weary and the chase given o’er,
we’ll pass through their midst and bathe in their gore.
We’ll come as a thunderbolt comes from the cloud;
we’ll smite the oppressor and humble the proud.
Few shall escape us and few shall be spared,
for keen is our saber, in vengeance ’tis bared;
For none are so strong, so mighty in fight,
as the the warrior who battles for our Southern right.Chorus
Though the bush is our home, the green sod our bed,
our drink from the river, and roots for our bread,
We pine not for more; we bow not the head,
for freedom is ever within the green wood.
Tyrants shan’t conquer and fetters shan’t bind,
for true are our rifles; our steeds like the wind.
We’ll sheathe not the sword; we’ll draw not the rein,
till Pennock is banished from valley and plain.
Chorus
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