patchworkbunny reviewed You say potato by Ben Crystal
Review of 'You say potato' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Written by a father and son team, it’s a conversational style non-fiction book that’s easy to pick up and read in snippets. As someone with a hodge podge accent, I loved the fact that it helped me trace different parts of my accent to different places I have lived. It also tells us a lot about Received Pronunciation English, that accent that everyone who is not British assumes is what we all talk like. It’s actually pretty new in our history and it turns out we trust regional accents more. Maybe that Jaguar ad had a point.
David Crystal is involved in Original Pronunciation Shakespeare, in which they perform the plays in an accent as close as they can get to what would have been spoken at the time it was first performed. Now I’d love to see a performance, but I felt it went on a bit too much …
Written by a father and son team, it’s a conversational style non-fiction book that’s easy to pick up and read in snippets. As someone with a hodge podge accent, I loved the fact that it helped me trace different parts of my accent to different places I have lived. It also tells us a lot about Received Pronunciation English, that accent that everyone who is not British assumes is what we all talk like. It’s actually pretty new in our history and it turns out we trust regional accents more. Maybe that Jaguar ad had a point.
David Crystal is involved in Original Pronunciation Shakespeare, in which they perform the plays in an accent as close as they can get to what would have been spoken at the time it was first performed. Now I’d love to see a performance, but I felt it went on a bit too much near the end about this. There was a conversation with an actor about his use of accents that didn’t quite fit the rest of the book. However it does seem to be David’s passion so I’ll let him off. I would certainly recommend this to any American writers planning on including a British character in their next book!