Arizona

Well, I’ve been following this Arizona nonsense about discriminating against same-sex couples. And, at last, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a controversial bill that would have allowed businesses in the state to deny service to gays and lesbians if they felt that serving them would violate their religious rights. Really? Really, really? Oh Arizona, such codswallop to have even considered such a bill in place in the first place. It’s 2014!

Hopefully it will welcome EVERYONE 🙂

I didn’t know that the state lost the ability to host the Super Bowl in the early 1990s after it declined to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Really? Really, really?! Oh my, Arizona, oh my.

‘Curl’

In my fitness class I often ask my ladies to ‘curl’ as in to ‘bicep curl’. Today I realised that I shout this word with a rather thick Somerset accent attached to it. It sounds like I am extending the ‘rrrrrrr’ part of the word. I pointed this out to my British friend who is in my class – how we laughed!

‘I say “curl” like I’m from Somerset!’ I said. ‘Oh hang, on I am from Somerset.’

I don’t think the lovely American ladies in the class knew what the flippin’ heck we were on about.

The Somerset accent is one all of its own and has its own dialect, even. Such as ‘Whirr be gwain to?’ and ‘Tiz getting dimpsey, zo cummin yer an wet thee’s whistle.’ and ‘Dang I if there ain’t a gurt big wapse innun.’ Etc.

These girls describe the Somerset accent and its hilarious dialect for your pleasure 🙂 .

Liverpool accent

In addition to this Somerset thing going on with me, I am finding, curiously, that I am saying certain things to my American friends with a Liverpudlian accent. I do not know why this is, though I seem to have nailed it down to particular comments or phrases that I say at the end of a sentence, which might be deemed to be funny, or embarrassing, or, perhaps, unnecessary.

For instance, I said something yesterday about the sun coming out for a bit and I added at the end (in a Scouse accent) ‘It’s great though, innit.’ as if I were an extra on Brookside. I don’t think the American mother with whom I was conversing got what I was saying at all. And I don’t blame her.

Today, after a key got stuck in a lock, an American said the keys got stuck because of the cold, and I replied, in a Scouse accent ‘They do though, don’t they, though….’

Much like the Beatles….

Anyway, apologies, Americans. I’m not sure why this is happening, but I am fully aware that the shift in my accent is both confusing and slightly weird.

😉