Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-07-04, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1990. PAGE 5. It’s a great car - nobody would steal it Best car I ever had in my life was an ancient, footlocker-green, two-door, stick­ shift Volvo with a wonky windshield wiper and a front bumper held on with a twist of barbed wire. Fast? That jalopy couldn’t catch a wheelchair in a quarter-mile. Stylish? I’ve seen sexier manure spread­ ers. Mint condition? My Volvo had more dings and dents than a Boston Bruin defenceman. That crate was clunky, arthritic, homely and slow as a sea slug in peanut butter - and I loved it like family. Why? Because that was the whole point! My car was so utterly and demonstrably worthless that I never had to worry about it being swiped! Every year I bought the least amount of insurance I could get away with, and every time I climbed out of that car I left her doors unlocked, windows down - keys in the ignition, even. When I came back, she’d always be where I left her, and I knew it. i The International > Scene Do you have the right accent? BY RAYMOND CANON I have been reading a book on the activities of John Neville while he was the artistic director of the Stratford Shake­ spearean Festival and one of the things that caught my eye was his statement that, if he wanted to make any name for himself on the stage, he was going to have to lose his cockney accent. For this reason during the war years while he served in the Royal Navy, he spent countless hours studying speech books trying to lose his undesirable accent. As a model he used the accents of the officers under which he served. Every language seems to have its accents which are acceptable and those which are not. On this continent all someone has to do is to speak with a southern drawl and mangle a bit of grammar and he or she is immediately put down as a hillbilly, not to mention someone who is going to have to get his linguistic act together if he is to get any further than the village buffoon. Closer to home we tend to make fun of some of the accents which come out of Newfoundland; we categorize them as something akin to that of the hillbillies which were mentioned above. I was once told by an Englishman that I did not speak the King’s English. He was, I realized, referring to my accent which he put in the same category as that of the Americans and thereby not to be imitated. As I was quite young and innocent at the time, I recall consulting with one of my English friends who informed me that the closest I could come to the King’s English was to talk like an announcer on the B.B.C. They sounded like a bunch of stuffed shirts to me and so I resolved to sound anything but that way. I have since heard that the C.B.C. has an announcer whose accent is considered to be a model for others and so any poor soul on our national network who is not sure of a word has someone to consult. Now and again I hear this expert on the national news and I must admit that he sounds Even car thieves have certain standards, you know. Nowadays I drive an almost new car, and like all the good car-owning burglars around me, I’m neurotic about scratches and dents and whether or not I locked both back doors. It’s stupid, fretting over an overpriced agglomeration of chrome and plastic on wheels. I’d like to be more Zen-like, less materialistic, but there it is. If God has a sense of humour, he’ll have me snuffed in a head-on collision on my way home from having my car turtle-waxed. Well, if I am an auto-neurotic, at least I’m part of a trend. There’s a whole new industry out there, dedicated to people just like me. Consider Gregory. He comes from a firm called Sharper Image. Gregory is tall, well-built and handsome in a rugged, don’t mess-with-me kind of way. You want to do some shopping but you’re afraid to leave your car in a high-crime area? Take Gregory along. He’d be glad to sit in your car all day - and all night too, if you want. Well, he won’t actually be “glad” to do it. Truth to tell, Gregory doesn’t give much of a damn one way or the other. That’s because Gregory is a mannequin. A dummy. But an extremely realistic one. “His strong masculine image” says a Sharper Image spokesman, “makes Gre­ gory the ideal companion for single women, night nurses, the elderly or the handicapped.” Sure — but can he fix flats and will he spring for half the gas? pretty correct from a Canadian point of view. However, how do some of the other countries make out in this category. Of course the French, who tend to be rather snobbish at times about their language, consider that Parisian French is the ultimate. The Swiss, not to be outdone, claim that the accent spoke in the western part of their country is every bit as good. Neither have much in the way of kind words to say about the French Canadian accent. Since the ancesters of the latter came for the most part from Normandy and Brittany, what we hear in Canada tends to mirror the accent of that part of France. It is considered by most educated Frenchmen to sound like country bumpkins and so they make fun of it. At any rate the greatest honour a Frenchman can pay you is to say that you speak Parisian French. For Italians the height of correctness is the Tuscan dialect and modern Italian is considered to be more or less that. The reason for that is to be found in the history of that country; the first three great writers of what is now known as Italy, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaqcio, all came from the city of Florence in the province of Tuscany Letters Pornography encourages violence THE EDITOR, 1 am writing in regards to the article from “The Concerned Citizen” about pornography causing violence in last week’s paper. Also the May 2 issue by the editor on “A solution to violence.” I, too, strongly believe pornography goes hand in hand with violence against women and children. Women are continually exploited on TV commercials, TV pro­ grams, bill boards, magazines, calendars, movies, etc. We just have to listen to the news to know that violence against women and children is increasing. Statistics show men who watch porno­ graphy depicting rape scenes are desensi­ tized to women who are victims of rape, which is a violent act. Programs have been started in Toronto and surrounding area schools to show young people some of the pornographic material that is out there. Young women are horrified at the demean­ ing and degrading acts against women, but Over in England, authorities are turning downright devious in their war against car thieves. In cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, light- fingered Louies on the lookout for some free transportation are frequently coming across some very sporty autos, completely unlocked, with the keys in the ignition. Scarcely believing their luck, they jump into the car, turn the key and - BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP! Suddenly all Hades breaks loose. The engine cuts off, the windows woosh up and the door locks snap shut. And all the while a 120-decible alarm klaxon is ringing the thief s head senseless. Meanwhile, the local constabulary has been electronically alerted and cops are on their way to arrest the car-napper and escort him to an institution where he will have no need of anybody’s car keys for some time. The U.S.-Russian Cold War may be over, but the Cops ‘n Robbers Crusade wages on un-dimmed. When the good guys come up with something new it only works as long as it takes the crooks to figure out how to short-circuit it. I can see it all now. Some night soon an alarm bell will flash CAR THEFT IN PROGRESS on a British police switch­ board. The Bobbys fly out of the station, surround the car, yank open the driver’s door, grab the thief and sling him to the sidewalk and find themselves staring down at the strong, masculine, don’t-mess-with- me smirk of ... Gregory, British version, patent pend­ ing. in the central part of the country. Because of this, standard Italian is considered to be Tuscan and not the dialect spoken in Rome. This is quite different from both Spain and Portugal where the people of the respective capitals, Madrid and Lisbon, consider that their manner of speaking and only theirs, is the correct speech. All other things being equal, it probably is. x I should close by telling you a story which I know to be true. It seems that there was an American professor attending a conference in Paris, France; he chanced upon a professor from the University of Glasgow. The American professor was from the deep south and had an accent that you could cut with the proverbial knife. The • two attempted to get a conversation going but found to their dismay that they could really not understand each other very well. The situation was saved only when they discovered that they both spoke a passable “Parisian French” and the conversation had to be continued in that language. I can assure you that there are plenty of other languages where that could happen. In the meantime, let me ask you a question. What do you consider to be a proper English accent? a large majority of the boys usually snicker, laugh or joke about what they have seen. The males and females are separated when this material is shown so the women do not have to be subjected to this verbal abuse. To me, by this time, if young men react this way it is already too late. Respect not only for women but mankind has to begin Remembering Hall’s opening THE EDITOR, Enclosed is cheque for renewal. I was pleased to read Melda McElroy’s and Luella McGown’s reminiscences about the Hall, and its early days. I recall being at the opening on that hot day in June 1921. Being squashed in along with the other 1500 people I did not see Letter from the editor How the other half lives BY KEITH ROULSTON A number of my colleagues around the province have recently been seeing how others live, putting themselves in walkers or wheel chairs to see just how difficult it is for the handicapped to get around in this world made for the use of feet. Nearly everyone who takes part in this kind of exercise has their eyes opened and supports making buildings and streets more accessible to those with physical handicaps. I wish this kind of lesson could be applied to more than just a few hand-pick­ ed leaders in the community and to more causes than just that of the handicapped. One of the few aspects of Mao Tse Tung’s regime in China that I thought was good was a provision that for a few weeks every year the bureaucrats and factory workers had to take time and go work in the rice fields beside the farmers. Part of the idea was no doubt that there would be extra hands around to work at harvest time, but there was also the benefit of keeping people in touch with the real world. Now that we’re in this competitive world where everyone has to be productive every moment it would probably be impossible to do it, but I’d like to see a two-week or a month-long period every year where our entire political process shut down, from politicians to senior civil servants, and people were sent out to experience a way of life totally foreign to them. People in nice, comfortable, cost-of-living-indexed jobs, could go out and live in public housing for a couple of weeks. People who think it’s hardship if the airconditioning breaks down, could work on a farm, slugging bales of hay in the July heat. Those who make decisions about whether the Atlantic fishery should continue or not could be put to work on fishing boats and live in a Newfoundland outport. People could shuck their fancy office duds to live in a northern community where natives earn their living from hunting and trapping. People could spend their time on an Indian Reserve and know what life is like for those people who wanted reform in the constitution enough to kill Meech Lake. You can read all you want about others way of life. You can be swept through on a sightseeing tour as politicians often do on those “photo opportunity” sessions; you can be as sympathetic as you want, but unless you have actually experienced something, it’s hard to have a real understanding of it. I have a feeling nothing could change the way this country is governed as quickly as these reality immersion sessions that would put political bigwigs out in the real world. We quickly get wrapped up in our surroundings, especially in high-intensity jobs. If you watch a cabinet minister at work, rushing from this meeting to that meeting, being briefed on the essential facts necessary to answer a question in parliament or talk to an interest group that wants a meeting, making speeches you’ve just had time to read over on the plane before you arrived, it’s easy to see how he can lose track of the real world. If he was forced to change his job each year, once working in a lumber camp, the next .year in a food bank, the next on the floor of the stock exchange, like ordinary early people, it might change a leader’s entire perspec­ tive of this country and how it should be run. much, but I do remember when the drape was removed from the beautifully carved “Roll of Honour”. It is wonderful that the stately building is still there and put to such good use, but let’s not forget why it was built! LOIS TASSIE PORT ALBERNI, B.C.