Errata (Dialects)

BlueJ just pointed out that there is a pocket of the Newfoundland population which retain a pronounced Waterford twang, albeit with other influences. And, of course, I spent last Easter with a group of Australian nuns living in the Chianti whose accents were certainly closer to the Australian accent of the period (1960) when they left Australia than to anything else.

Sorry

When Rudd won I told my American boyfriend that the new Government would apologise to Indigenous Australians. Said boyfriend isn't especially racist, but he couldn't see the value: you either compensate people or you shut up, there's no point saying sorry.

I was standing in the changing rooms in my gym in Dublin today when it was reported on the radio that Rudd's first act in the new parliament would be the apology. I can't speak about what it means to the first Australians, but the sense of relief that I feel is beyond words. I was alone, which is just as well because I burst into tears.

For all that Howard was PM for 11 years, the thing, maybe the only thing that will be remembered about him is that he is the man who wouldn't say sorry. We actually do need the word. There was an annual Sorry Day instituted while Howard was in power and the organizers would have skywriters write the word. People would sign petitions saying that they wanted to apologise personally, if the nation wouldn't do it. Clarke and Dawe's The Games made an episode around the apology, the text of which they offered to 'any other John Howard' who might want to use it: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thegames/howard.htm

The opposition to the apology has always argued that no living Australian is personally responsible for the Stolen Generation. This is utterly untrue because people were still being taken as late as the middle 20th century. It actually doesn't matter whether it's true. Howard said that it wasn't the role of Government to apologise. But that's just it, it is the role of Government. When a Government apologises, the collective, not the individual acts.

Howard always said it played into 'the Black Arm Band' view of history - something that never bothered the ex-PM when he was mourning soldiers fallen in WWI. Paul Keating said in the famous Redfern speech 'However intractable the problems seem, we cannot resign ourselves to failure - any more than we can hide behind the contemporary version of Social Darwinism which says that to reach back for the poor and dispossessed is to risk being dragged down.' He went on to say, in a Don Watson phrase (one of many) which won him my undying love, and pissed off nearly everyone else 'That seems to me not only morally indefensible, but bad history.'

Everything about the Western World's self-narrative at the moment is to do with bottom-lines and what Australians call 'Economic Rationalism'. But actually, everyone is most profoundly concerned with culture politics and ideology. Howard was an ideological politician. Kennett was about balancing books, but Howard wanted the hearts and minds. Bush is the same. Which si why there has been such a kick in the opposite direction. When Australia voted for Rudd, people started to adopt Whitlam's election motto and talk about the First Hundred Days, just as people are trying to make a Bobby Kennedy out of Obama. The War in Iraq is about ideology as much as the Crusades were. (I am the historical consultant for a production of Macbeth at the moment and when I mentioned the Crusades continuing on into the 17th century, one of the actors said 'They're not over yet.')

Dr Nelson stills thinks we shouldn't apologise - he got the leadership of the conservatives at least in part because Turnbull said he would support an apology. But seriously! Even Ted Bailleu thinks we should 'do the decent thing.'

So, we are finally going to get the word itself. This is a section from Keating's Redfern speech:
We non- Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us.
Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia?
Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkable harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the fist Australians - the people to whom the most injustice has been done.
And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.
It begins, I think, with that act of recognition Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.
We fail to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?
As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.

Rudd wants to 'get it right'. I really hope he asks Watson to write it.

PR

In the last couple of weeks, I've found myself arguing against Obama a lot. Not because I think it would be a disaster if he won, but because I am profoundly suspicious of the reasons that people like him. I am dismayed by the fact that the whole world seems to want to vote for Change, when no one I've meet knows what that would be. Very few people seem to know much about him at all except that he is in favour of Change and Hope. As am I, by the way. But it all sounds suspiciously like the War on Terror. I'm against Terror, but I am not at all in favour of the War on Terror, a war which has caused so much Terror. Words, words, they're all we have to go on, and they're leading us astray.

Now the Kennedys have endorsed Obama. Caroline Kennedy wrote an article published in The Age today which actually stated this position frankly. Kennedy writes:

'We have that kind of opportunity with Obama. It isn't that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960. Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates' goals are similar.'

The article presents Obama as a special politician and - without missing a beat - says that, actually, on issues of policy, he isn't especially distinguished.

Also, what could she possible mean by 'a change of leadership'? Bush's term expires; America is getting a change of leadership no matter what.

No, I know what she means, of course I do.

But I'm really concerned that language is being used in such a sloppy way. When democracies are as big as America, everything is PR, everything is words. So if people use them imprecisely they are devalued to the point where no one can be held to account. Also, it effects people's ability to think clearly. When every word has an entirely amorphous value, its much easier to make mental slips - and if you're a good spin doctor, then it's easier to make people make mental slips.

I have a healthy terror of what politicians as charismatic as Obama can do, what, historically, they have done. But I'm more worried that no one - until now - seemed to have noticed that no one is focusing on policies. I don't know whether I'm more or less worried now that someone has but just doesn't care. A democracy really depends on people being more thoughtful and more insightful than this.

Picture from Cuthbie's Girl

Love this! Thank you Cuthbie's Girl.

South Carolina

I've noticed that I refer to female politicians either by their first name, or their full name if I subconsciously think of them as being feminine (Hilary or Hilary Clinton, Maxine or Maxine McKew) and by their surnames only if I don't (Thatcher, Gillard).

A friend said to me yesterday 'There's no doubt that Hilary's the better candidate, its just a really unfortunate thing that she's so personally unlikeable. I feel it too, even though I've seen how hard she worked for us in New York.'
I couldn't count the number of times I've heard that particular 'special case' argument in relation to female politicians.
My friend also said 'America is so ready for a female president and because Obama's black, its not even an issue; no one's even talking about the fact she's a woman.'

I'm hearing that a lot too.

And I don't think its true. I don't think the fact that it's not being talked about means that people are any more comfortable with women in politics. My friend says last time there was a female presidential candidate, all the debate was about whether foreign governments would take her seriously. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that gender is the least of the prejudices the world holds against American leaders.) There is also a slip there; he was talking about America 'being ready' but said the debate (the sign that America wasn't ready) had been around whether the rest of the world would take a female president seriously. That slip demonstrates how good we've got at justifying, rationalizing and hiding prejudices. The unintentional implication of what he said was that foreign perception was being used as a way of disguising American sexism and that subconsciously, at least, he knew it.

What we want from a politician is so utterly at odds with what we want women to be that I think it is entirely possible not to be sexist, to be a person who is in favour of women succeeding in any number of previously male-dominated areas and still find it difficult to like a female leader. Clinton is unlikeable because she's a potential presidential politician. Gradually, we are coming to a view of minor female politicians which is positive. In those roles, women are able to be either more maternal or more ball-breaking, and there isn't such a problem. But for a president, for a leader, we want her to be tough enough to do the job and comforting because women who aren't are bitches. Simultaneously, we want her to be maternal, but also not, because you've got to be tough to fight wars and protect us all from the big bad world. And because we are happy (enough) with women in other public offices, it always feels like we don't like whoever it is personally, rather than because of her gender.

Maxine McKew, the woman who took John Howard's seat (and therefore, although not vying for a leadership role nevertheless occupies that space because she defeated the Prime Minister) was almost entirely able to escape these contradictions. Her public profile was developed over years as a journalist and people still relate to her that way although she is now a politician. Having said that, it was shocking to hear her speak on election day (and no one was barracking for her more than me) because she wasn't tough like politicians are, she wasn't aggressive, and it was only the remembrance of her intellect and dedication as a journalist that stopped me from wondering if she was up to this. And all because she speaks softly.

In the presidential debates, when all the candidates walked onto the stage together, Clinton's height (a foot shorter than everyone else) and her hips made her a completely recognizable silhouette. Obama didn't stand out for being black; Clinton was the odd man out.

Australia Day, pt 2

I got absolutely shellaqued by a friend of mine for saying that the cultural cringe still exists. But today's edition of The Age has an article on the Australian accent. I don't think other people worry about this the way Australians do: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/bcultureb-strine-feels-strain-as-austrayan-twang-on-the-wane/2008/01/26/1201157739206.html?page=2
The article isn't stridently anti-immigration, but it does say that our broad accent is under threat from 'wogspeak'. No, seriously. Just try to imagine what the article would have been like if it had been anti-immigration and used the 'word' 'wogspeak'? Also interesting is that fact that parodying second generation versions of the Australian accent - as long as they are European - isn't really seen as being problematic, where as if it were Chinese or Taiwanese it would be (to steal another Get This term) a bit me-no-rikie.

The whole article surprised me because TV has played a much bigger role in altering the accent than immigration has. In Australia, it did what the railways did to accent in America. Accents always change, they change everywhere and all the time, so I don't even really know what we're talking about anymore. Even the good people in Lost, without any outside contact, would change their accent over time. (I'm just guessing that last sentence makes some sense; I've never actually seen Lost and I don't know anything about the plot. For all I know they might be stuck on an island with a major international airport.) Actually, contact stabilizes and neutralizes accent rather than the other way about.

While I think we should be more concerned about the loss of Indigenous languages (the only people studying Aboriginal languages at my alma mater were visiting Americans) I don't know how much of a good idea I think it is to put it in an article about accents. Indigenous languages aren't an accented variation of English.

Just easing up on the moral indignation for a moment, I was interested to note that pronouncing 'eh' as 'ah' (as in Malbourne for Melbourne) is a Victorian thing. I thought it was a me thing and something that had only started to happened after I moved to America. Also, why isn't the article asking why Australians famously pronounce more diphthongs than any other group aside from Texans, and yet, equally famously, tend to elide actual diphthongs? So many unanswered questions.... Speaking of which, I see that 'strayan' is now being pronounced as 'strine'. I thought we had cut down 'australian' to its shortest possible length while still saying the word, but I was wrong. This is what happens when I leave the country.

The article includes a list of expressions not found in other Englishes, some of which caught me out badly. 'Light globe', 'icy pole', 'silver beet', 'bora' and 'doona' spring to mind, but it was 'short black' and 'flat white' that nearly got me killed in America. Actually, that wasn't the worst of it. One of the most common snakes in Victoria is the Yellow-Bellied Black snake, a charming creature which, according to the guy who came to get one out of our house, is most commonly grey with a red belly. Australians always drop the end off words and expressions, so we tend to call it the Yellow-Bellied Black. That was the expression which caused the greatest tension in a room full of middle-class, educated white Americans, even ahead of 'spit the dummy' which many people, with better imaginations than me, thought sounded like a lot of fun. I swear, it had never occured to me that it could mean anything else.

Also is enterprise bargaining and scruntchie (pronounced 'Crunchie' by my German skating coach) really just us?

Australia Day

This is such a difficult day for Australians, though it's been pointed out to me that I find really quite a lot of things difficult.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/blarissa-dubeckib-why-its-australian-to-be-unaustralian/2008/01/25/1201157665918.html

Heathcliff

This is exactly the kind of thing that doesn't happen in Ireland.

http://media.theage.com.au/?category=BreakingNews&rid=34892