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Discussion Groups / English Usage / September 2010rhotic tangle
This being the end of my week, I was relaxing by surfing music on Youtube, and I found myself revisiting my earliest days by listening to Nat King Cole. His songs were giving me STS before I was 10, although I didn't connect the name and the songs until 30 years later, when I realised that Nat King Cole was probably the best male singer I'd ever heard, in terms of how he could use and project his voice. That's by the way, anyway, because what I noticed tonight was that he was (or at least, sang) non-rhotically. When I first noticed this, I wondered whether Cole was actually affecting a "British" accent, but I don't hear anything else in his pronunciation to support this hypothesis. According to Wikipedia: "Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on Saint Patrick's Day in 1919". However, the great oracle goes on to tell us that his family moved to Chicago when he was four,and that he grew up there. Thus it seems reasonably certain that his spoken ideolect, as a young adult, would have been essentially (black) Chicago dialect. Could this be non-rhotic? Now, I haven't got a recent and accurate map of those little pockets of the southern states where the accent is still non-rhotic, but maybe Cole's preacher parents exhibited non-rhoticism, and this influenced his singing. Anyway - enough hypothesing - here's a little rhotic/non- rhotic puzzle for anyone who's interested. Cole's daughter, Natalie Cole, performed a duet with a video of her father in the 1990s (he had died in 1965). You can find several versions of it on Youtube with acceptable sound quality for this experiment. The song is "Unforgettable" - notice that 'r' before the 'g'? Would you pronounce it? Does Nat King Cole pronounce it? Does Natalie? What about other [vowel + "r" + consonant] clusters (there are lots of them in this song)? I think I'm beginning to realise that there are shades of grey here. Or maybe gray. >This being the end of my week, I was relaxing by surfing music on >Youtube, and I found myself revisiting my earliest days by listening [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] >I think I'm beginning to realise that there are shades of grey here. >Or maybe gray. I can't answer your specific question, but I'll make the general point that a person's pronunciation when singing is not necessarily the same as when speaking.  SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) > This being the end of my week, I was relaxing by surfing music on > Youtube, and I found myself revisiting my earliest days by listening [quoted text clipped - 31 lines] > I think I'm beginning to realise that there are shades of grey here. > Or maybe gray. Maybe Cole was taught to sing without pronouncing the 'r'. I'm not much of a singer, but I've done enough to have frequently heard instructions from choir directors to 'flip the r', or in some cases, to eliminate it entirely. Noticeable 'r' sounds do seem to annoy some choir directors. Cole's daughter might have had a less traditional musical education. SignatureCheryl Cheryl P. filted: >Maybe Cole was taught to sing without pronouncing the 'r'. I'm not much >of a singer, but I've done enough to have frequently heard instructions >from choir directors to 'flip the r', or in some cases, to eliminate it >entirely. Noticeable 'r' sounds do seem to annoy some choir directors. >Cole's daughter might have had a less traditional musical education. That's part of the reason this song caught me so off-guard the first time I heard it (wait for the part where she sings the title): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_MGav2b704 ....r SignatureMe? Sarcastic? Yeah, right. On 25 Sep 2010, Cheryl P. wrote >> This being the end of my week, I was relaxing by surfing music on >> Youtube, and I found myself revisiting my earliest days by listening [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >> That's by the way, anyway, because what I noticed tonight was that he >> was (or at least, sang) non-rhotically. -snip- > Maybe Cole was taught to sing without pronouncing the 'r'. I'm not much > of a singer, but I've done enough to have frequently heard instructions > from choir directors to 'flip the r', or in some cases, to eliminate it > entirely. Noticeable 'r' sounds do seem to annoy some choir directors. > Cole's daughter might have had a less traditional musical education. My guess is that it's more likely to be a factor of when they learned to sing, rather than who taught them. The conventions of pop music singing since the 1950s have pretty well settled on using rhotic AmE, even when sung (imitated/absorbed/whatever) by non-American, non-rhotic singers. It wouldn't surprise me if the same dynamic killed off any residual conventions of non-rhotic singing in the US while it was at it. A good counter-illustration of just how dominant rhotic pronunciation in mainstream songs has become is (was) Kirsty MacColl's "Don't Come the Cowboy With Me, Sunny Jim", in which she pronounces "hurt" -- "they don't know the meaning of hurt" -- entirely non-rhotically. It's sufficiently unusual to catch my ear every time I hear it. (Which is, I must admit, not infrequently. Good song.) SignatureCheers, Harvey CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed > On 25 Sep 2010, Cheryl P. wrote > [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] > Cheers, Harvey > CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed Nat King Cole was colored (that being the correct and polite term until the late 1930s) and born in the Deep South (that's non-rhotic). Colored folks' accents are always one accent band farther south than are those of white folks living in the same area (unless they're a couple bands farther sough) -- until very recently. In 1919, when his family moved to Chicago, which is in the North and rhotic, races and ethnicities lived in their own pocket neighborhoods. Nearly all their neighbors would have been colored, as would the members of the church (and many of them would have been recent immigrants to that part of the country). Their accents would have been non-rhotic, though not Southern. That's the accent Nat King Cole had the whole 10 years and more that I heard him. I'm sure his parents' accents were farther from "standard." His is actually not completely non-rhotic; there is an actual hint of an r in many places where I would say an actual r. (British, Southern, and AAVE do non-rhoticity differently.) Natalie has much less accent than her father, but on that recording, she probably softened her own pronunciations to coordinate with, if not match, his. Many African-Americans don't "talk Black" now; the prejudice against "talking white" seems to be going away. BTW, when Nat King Cole began recording vocally, he was Negro; he died before the correct term became Black. On 28 Sep 2010, Cece wrote >> On 25 Sep 2010, Cheryl P. wrote >>> Maybe Cole was taught to sing without pronouncing the 'r'. I'm not much >>> of a singer, but I've done enough to have frequently heard instructions [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >> wouldn't surprise me if the same dynamic killed off any residual >> conventions of non-rhotic singing in the US while it was at it. -snip- > Nat King Cole was colored (that being the correct and polite term > until the late 1930s) and born in the Deep South (that's non-rhotic). [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > she probably softened her own pronunciations to coordinate with, if > not match, his. That would explain a lot; thanks. Do you think Natalie Cole's rhotic singing is mostly a factor of the evolution of Black American accents? Or does her singing pronunciation also reflect the "modern-pop-is-sung-rhotically" thing that happened in the UK? > BTW, when Nat King Cole began recording vocally, he was Negro; he died > before the correct term became Black. Even though I was aware of his death when it happened (I was 12 or 13, but my parents were big fans), it always suprises me that he died that long ago. SignatureCheers, Harvey CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed > On 28 Sep 2010, Cece wrote > [quoted text clipped - 57 lines] > > - Show quoted text - I haven't heard much of her singing -- but lots of blacks have much less "black" accent than their parents did. It's been decreasing for, oh, about 40 years. There is a group, mostly young, that thinks copying the standard accent ("speaking white") is a bad thing. As far as I can tell, observing from outside, doing so decreases their claim to victimhood. When I hear a Brit sing, no matter what sort of song it is, it's almost always non-rhotic. (Can't think of any right now. Oh! "Henry the Eighth." Note: "door" and "before" sound very different when pronounced by a Brit and a Georgian or Kentuckian.) Also, every now and then, when the song was written in America, the Brit's pronunciation does away with a rhyme or two. (The only one I remember had the word "dance.") Cece filted: >When I hear a Brit sing, no matter what sort of song it is, it's >almost always non-rhotic. (Can't think of any right now. Oh! "Henry [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >pronunciation does away with a rhyme or two. (The only one I remember >had the word "dance.") Well, I went to a dance just the other night Everybody there went stag I said over and over and over again This dance is gonna be a drag (Right about here, the Brits are shouting "that's not how it goes!")...r SignatureMe? Sarcastic? Yeah, right. > Cece filted: > [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > Me? Sarcastic? > Yeah, right. The song I can't remember more than the one word of had "dance" at the end of a line, and the American who wrote it expected it to rhyme with a word a couple lines earlier, or may it was later. Americans pronounce "dance" with a short a: /&/. Brits use a broad a: /a/ (I think). And the rhyme was gone. What are the Brits complaining about in the verse you cite? >> Cece filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] >pronounce "dance" with a short a: /&/. Brits use a broad a: /a/ (I >think). And the rhyme was gone. Some Brits use a short a in "dance". Short a's are seen as typically Northern English. >What are the Brits complaining about in the verse you cite? SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) |
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