Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: "Off-ten": dove lo dicono?

Salve a tutti,
vorrei farvi una domanda un po' bizzarra.
Tempo fa ho sentito un inglese che pronunciava in modo insolito la parola
"often". Infatti costui diceva "off-ten" al posto del comune "offen".
Sapreste dirmi di quale zona dell'Inghilterra è diffusa questa pronuncia?
Grazie.
Tschüss,
Enrico il Pentolaio
-- 
visita il mio sito: (
http://members.xoom.it/srw
)
_____________________________________
"La prima meta' della vita viene rovinata dai genitori, la seconda dai
figli." (Clarence Seward Darrow)

Each part of the UK has its own little accent. Even the English
can't keep track of them all.

 Sapreste dirmi di quale zona dell'Inghilterra è diffusa questa pronuncia?
I don't think it's a matter of accent. The only example in the cinema that
I recall is in "Mickey Blue Eyes": "Do it more often", James Fox [1] (who
has a very good accent) at the auction, after Mickey has sold uncle
Vinnie's painting. It's muck like [@'gen] vs [@'gein]: it's not a matter of
accent.
[1] Also in "The Remains of the Day" as Lord Darlington.
Bye, FB
-- 
Conversation like television set on honeymoon: unnecessary.
(Murder by Death)

One thing to consider is how English came about, namely
it developed after centuries of occupation by the Norman
French, of a population that was a mixture of Angles, Saxons,
Jutes, Norwegians, and descendants of Celts and Romans.
Each locality would have had a slightly different ethnic mixture,
leading at first to local variations in language and dialects,
but after the occupation and the emergence of "middle"
English, probably there was a general desire for linguistic
conformity, but with accents.
At any rate, the dictionary says often is just a variation
of "oft", so the origin of the ending isn't so important.

 can't keep track of them all.
Ho capito, in pratica non lo sa nessuno.
:-))


> in pratica non lo sa nessuno.
Sorry, I have to correct your Italian: non lo sanno nessuno.
;)
Ciao-

 ;)
What??
-- 
Mary

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:45:46 +0200, Mary Cassidy wrote on
it.cultura.linguistica.inglese :

Mary, Mary... le vere lady dicono "I beg your pardon?" 
;)
-- 
Enrico C

 :-))
Forse può interessarti questo vecchio thread
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/it.cultura.linguistica.inglese/browse_frm/thread/59e68b09303adbc5/68246a1e046e12c9?q=often+gfcarrera+fabio&rnum=1&hl=en#68246a1e046e12c9
-- 
Enrico C

 accent.
On the contrary, my dear FB, it is. One is Oxford English, the other is
Cambridge English, but I never can remember which is which.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org
 says that often is UK English, ofn US
English. This would seem to indicate that often is Cambridge English.
http://www.oup.com/elt/oald/
 gives ofn as the first choice, which seems to
indicate that it is Oxford English.
Lets hear from those who graduated from either Cambridge or Oxford.
-- 
Xakero

 wrote in message 
news:1hepfn07fbks0$.dlg@news.lillathedog.net...

Not the 'vere' ladies - this is distinctly non-U !
Reminds me of this passage from Stephen Fry's autobiography : Mr. Burchall 
is a prep-school English master , Mrs Amos the Matron intent on teaching the 
boys manners ; at breakfast one morning young Fry (sitting at Burchall's 
table) deliberately belches as Mrs Amos passes the table :
'Say "pardon me" , Fry.'
'You dare to use that disgusting phrase , Fry , and I'll thrash you to 
within an inch of your life ,' said Burchall , not even looking up from his 
'Telegraph'...
'I *beg* your pardon , Mr. Burchall ?'
'You can beg what you like , woman.'
'I am trying to instil,' said Mrs. Amos ...'some manners into these boys . 
Manners maketh man , you know.'
Burchall ...put down his 'Telegraph' , glared at Mrs Amos and then addressed 
the room in a booming voice .'If any boy here is ever told to say "Pardon 
me" , "I beg your pardon" , or , heaven *forfend*, "I beg pardon" , they are 
to say to the idiot who told them to say it , "I refuse to lower myself to 
such depths , madam." Is that understood ?'
We nodded vigorously . Matron flounced out with a 'Well, *reelly*(sic)!" and 
Burchall resumed his study of the racing column.
(For Italian readers who aren't familiar with the name , Fry is a 
47-year-old English novelist , actor , comedian and television performer .)
Mike 

 Sapreste dirmi di quale zona dell'Inghilterra è diffusa questa pronuncia?
Wales ?
Actually , 'offen' doesn't seem that 'comune' to me ; the 't' is usually 
present (UK) , if not very distinctly (that is , the tongue touches the 
teeth ridge after the 'f', though it may not be removed before the 'n'). 
The more positive pronunciation of the second syllable does sound Welsh to 
me , but I'm no expert on accents , apart from my native Yorkshire .
Mike 

 teeth ridge after the 'f', though it may not be removed before the 'n'). 
Do you mean "oft'n"? I'm sure you're right, but, while I completely believe
you as to real life, I must say it's not to be heard very often in films.
Is it anything worse than "off'n"?
[...]
Bye, FB
-- 
Se dico "siedi!" manca l'oggetto.
Siedo chi? Lei o me?
(da it.cultura.linguistica.italiano)

 wrote in message 
news:19vocoa9cr6do.1cmw2abjripah$.dlg@40tude.net...

I very much doubt if all the compilers of the CUP dictionaries acquired 
their convictions about pronunciation as a result of their undergraduate 
days at Cambridge , and the same is no doubt true , mutatis mutandis , about 
the OUP .
I also doubt whether almost anyone nowadays would have any idea of what a 
Cambridge accent sounds like , though we still use 'Oxford accent' loosely 
for a plummy posh voice .
However , I dimly seem to recollect that , when I was a student at Cambridge 
, the distinction might have seemed more real (not that my accent was ever 
anything other than a Yorkshire/Cambridge hybrid) ; and your distinction in 
this particular case is given some weight by the fact that I claimed , in 
another post , that the 't' is usually heard in 'often' (UK) , whereas 'ofn' 
is a pronunciation I too would associate with the Oxford accent (and I 
almost said that in my other post , sent before reading your contribution 
above) .
Mike 


I'm not very sure what *you* mean by 'oft'n' , so I'm not sure whether 
that's what I mean too .  I'm afraid I know little about phonetics , and 
lack any technical vocabulary . The original query about 'off-ten' suggested 
to me a pronunciation where the second syllable receives something near an 
equivalent stress to the first  and there is a definite value given to the 
'e' . When I say that the 't' is usually heard , it is heard with a range of 
degrees of distinctness , all of which might be represented (if not , how 
else ?) by 'oft'n'. Within this range , however , there is a clear 
difference between the 't' being clearly produced (i.e. the tongue leaves 
the teeth ridge before the 'n' is produced ), and when the 't' merges , as 
it were , with the 'n' ( the tongue not being removed between the two 
sounds) - but in the latter case the sound is still different from 'off'n' 
(it's to do with the fact that the preparation for producing the 't' , even 
if it's not completed , is different from what's involved simply in moving 
from 'f' to 'n' , though I'm unable to descibe this exactly). (I'm not sure 
, either , what you mean by 'worse than') .
I suppose you do mean UK films , as opposed to American ? You may be right - 
I'll have to listen more closely and check . Perhaps I should have been a 
little more cautious in what I said - I think that I myself always give some 
sort of value to the 't', even in quick colloquial usage , and I would say 
that's also true of most people I speak with ; but it may be true that in 
'sloppy' everyday speech it's often not heard - I'll try to pay attention to 
this in the next few days and report back ! One thing's for sure , though - 
even if 'off'n' has become current in everyday use , it has nothing in 
common with the Oxford accent ; the sound of the Oxford 'o' , for a start , 
would be quite different .
I've just checked in my New Oxford Dictionary , and it gives both 
pronunciations , without asserting a preference .
Mike

 would be quite different .
Are you alluding to [O:f(@)n] ([O:] ==> RP "p*or*t")?
[...]
Bye, FB
-- 
"Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with
education?" "She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of
respectability" "It is obviously the same person".
("The Importance of Being Earnest", Oscar Wilde)

 Forse può interessarti questo vecchio thread
Grazie, me lo sono appena letto, arrivando alla conclusione che alla fine
non si riesce a definire la regione di provenienza di una persona dalla sola
pronuncia di "often".
:-)


 television performer .)
He played Oscar Wilde in a movie, didn't he?
 
-- 
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge
them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
    -- Oscar Wilde

 He played Oscar Wilde in a movie, didn't he?
Yes. Oddly enough, its title is "Wilde". (smiling face) He's also been a
sort of sex maniac ("maniaco sessuale", I don't feel like looking it up in
a dictionary) in the very nice tv movie "Cold Comfort Farm". By the way,
Mike, perhaps theee Oxford accent is not to be heard anymore (at least the
"orfen" kind of accent), but Stephen Fry and Kate Beckinsale, who both
acted in "Cold Comfort Farm", do speak very much better than, say, Jude
Law, Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightley. I think I'll write something about
those that I deem to be the distinctive features of a good RP accent. Of
course, I don't pretend to be correct on everything.
Bye, FB
-- 
Just as I thought. Another test that could have cost us our lives, saved
only by the fact that I am enormously well-bred.
(Murder by Death)

 Law, Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightley.
Oh, I forgot to mention that both K. Beckinsale and S. Fry graduated from
Oxford. I think so, at least.
[...]
Bye, FB
-- 
In any case, if you say 'I gotta go' at an important job interview you're
contributing to being allowed just that privilege.
(Tony the ice man on it.cultura.linguistica.inglese)

 Oxford. I think so, at least.
I seem to recall that S. Fry, Hugh Laurie (they've played in "Jeeves and
Wooster" as... Jeeves and Wooster) and Emma Thompson were friends at
Oxford. Curiously enough, in my judgment, Fry's accent is the best, by far.



Probably both 'Oxford' and 'Cambridge accents' don't mean much nowadays , as 
you suggest - but if I had to describe Fry's accent as either 'Oxford' or 
'Cambridge' , I would unhesitatingly have said 'Cambridge' . In fact , he 
read English at Queens (Cambridge) ; Laurie too was at Cambridge , I think ; 
Thompson definitely was . John Cleese and Jonathan Miller (I don't know 
whether you're familiar with them) were both Cambridge men also . I don't 
know their background (apart from Fry's) , but I would guess that all five 
were from educated middle/upper-middle families and were at public schools 
before going up to Cambridge ; I doubt if the fact that they were 
undergraduates at Cambridge was a significant influence on their accents . 
(I think there's a touch of London about Emma Thompson's accent) .
Incidentally , has Boris Johnson (well known to all English people) impinged 
on the consciousness of (Anglophile) Italians at all ?  He has an accent 
that you would more readily describe as 'Oxford' (he was indeed Eton and 
Balliol , where iirc he was President of the Union) .
I suspect that the social/educational backgrounds of Knightley , Bloom and 
Law would turn out to be more 'ordinary' .
Mike 

 Balliol , where iirc he was President of the Union) .
This guy: 
http://www.nigelhaversalliance.com/pics/boris8.jpeg
 ??
[...]
Bye, FB
-- 
"While I'm here, might I make a few changes? I adore my bedroom, but do you
think I could have my curtains washed? I believe they're red, but I should
like to make sure."
(Cold Comfort Farm, the film)


Yes , that's him - mouth open preparatory to putting his foot in it , as 
usual . He's a Tory politician , who had to resign his Shadow post recently 
following the exposure of his (denied) affair with a girl who wrote for the 
'Spectator' , of which he is the editor ; he is very well-known and 
well-liked because of his participation on several occasions in a popular 
(but intelligent and entertaining) BBC TV show called 'Have I Got News for 
You' . He published a novel last year . He comes across as an endearing 
buffoon , but a lot of this is an act - he's actually rather a clever and 
quick-witted man . If you can , listen to him and see what you make of his 
voice .
Mike
Mike 

 voice .
I will.
Bye, FB
-- 
Domanda: "Era il figlio di Iside e Osiride".
Risposta: "Thor".
(quiz televisivo)

 state of things and cannot tell.
È quello dell'intervista estiva a Berlusconi.
 
-- 
She often gave herself very good advice 
(though she very seldom followed it).
                -- Lewis Carroll


'Denied' is a key word ; if , when challenged , he'd said , 'Yes , Tessa and 
I have been sh***ing for two or three years , and it's been jolly good fun' 
he might have got a round of applause , but he insisted it was untrue .
Recently , iirc , half the English FA resigned after falsely denying that 
they'd enjoyed the favours of one of the FA secretaries , whilst Sven Goran 
Erikkson (the English team manager) , who didn't deny it , survived (though 
he was the butt of much envious moralising) .
Mike