Sunday, November 13, 2005

Madges Gets Parked !

I wasn't feeling very well yesterday, so I stayed home and watched tv (on a Saturday Night!) , a nice effect of this was catching a full hour of Madonna being interviewed on Parkinson. She started by doing a very credible live rendition of Hung Up, which is in turn her best single that she's released in ages. She looks fantastic these days, and for a 47 year old woman who fell off a horse just 2 months ago to look that good is amazing (and a tad annoying). It was a very insightful interview, especially about her marriage to Guy Ritchie ('he's a man's man) and her reconciliation with her strict father. She also tipped her hat to her gay fans, something I am glad she still acknowledges and appreciates for her success after all these years (unlike some other singers, and yes thats you Donna that I'm talking about).

Anyway, watching the interview I started to notice Madge's accent and the way she spoke with this faux-british sound, with some very distinctly Brit-specific words (she used the term 'naff' for example). Some people think its a put-on 'fake' accent, but I think its genuinely the way she speaks now. I know this because of the way my way of speaking has changed in the past four years living in London. You become so accustomed to using certain words that they become part of your everyday language (for example I say 'hello love' A LOt now, which is not very North American sounding). And also, the accent gets smoothed out a bit, and so now I have this weird mixture of Canadian / English accent with some of my (fairly subtle) Arab inflictions / sentence structures thrown into the mix as well. The result of which makes me sound Irish to most people. I think accents are always a bit adaptable to a place and time (like most behaviour). For example I will be much more Canadian sounding in front of my Canadian friend Chris in London while I'd throw in a bit of northener sounding words when with Phil or Steve, but its not a concious choice. I even noticed my father who has a very arab accent put on this very exaggerated American accent when speaking to some people on the phone. And I'm sure Madge's accent is much more Americanised when she is speaking to David Letterman as opposed to Parky. So me and the biggest pop star in the world have something in common, maybe I should sign up for some pilates classes next.

2 Comments:

At 4:37 PM, Blogger Bourgeois Wife said...

I heard her being interviewed on an American radio station last week and her accent was full-on US. But you're right, people's accents change depending on where they are and who they're talking to. And chances are she spends much of her time these days with very posh Brits.

 
At 3:24 PM, Blogger Ramification said...

I just hope people don't think I'm putting it on when I am speaking. Thats my biggest fear.

 

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