It’s like Brits can’t calibrate their “R” button - it’s either too much or too little, and never anywhere in between.
In the British cop show New Tricks, the men always called their female superior “mum” or “guvner”. They had accents, but no clue which was what.
“Guv’ner” goes way back, but I wouldn’t have thought it was used to address a female superior.
It was often used by the male subordinates of DCI Jane Tennison on the excellent Prime Suspect.
Well yes, obviously. It’s just different conventions for different circumstances.
Informally so, sure it is. Particular in contemporary times when gender neutral language is used more frequently.
And my point was that the “convention” that Buckingham Palace are requesting here is not just a specific word, but the pronunciation of that word with a specific vowel sound. And that seems very dubious to me when this is the kind of vowel sound that varies with regional accent/dialect.
It strikes me as odd, considering how respectful most of us try to be these days about how to pronounce people’s names correctly, that we can’t extend that courtesy to the Queen.
What strikes me as odd is that you apparently don’t realize that “ma’am” is not the Queen’s name.
It’s still a term of address, which is basically all she’s got. No one is calling her Liz.
True, but usually individuals don’t expect as much control over the pronunciation of standard forms of address which are commonly used to other people as well as to themselves.
It’s not quite like, say, being named “Jessica” and wanting people to pronounce it “Ja-SEE-ka”, which of course any reasonably civil person would readily comply with. It does seem a bit weird to claim your own preferred pronunciation of a quasi-universal form of address like “ma’am”.
It isn’t actually quasi-universal any more.
This says it rhymes with “jam” . I do not get your point?
Exactly.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be. Vowel sounds vary with regional accents in the U.K… Dictating that only one vowel sound is acceptable for an ordinary word (not a proper name) seems highly dubious to me, given the sordid history of class prejudice and its association with accent.
Exactly what? Again, the word “ma’am” is not her name.
To draw a parallel - if protocol is to address a judge “your honour”, fine. But nobody is going to accept a protocol that says you must use Received Pronunciation when doing so, and that use of an Irish accent is contempt of court.
So what I’m taking away from this is that if I call the Queen “mam” instead of “mom”, either nothing will happen, or I’ll be thrown in the Tower of London and occasionally placed in the stocks at Charing Cross, that the peasantry might pelt me with rotten fruit.
She’s Queen, perk of the job.
Brenda Blethyn (Vera) is not a native Geordie, so he has had to adopt that accent for the role. She does quite well, all things considered. The ‘Pet’ and ‘Luv’ might be a bit overdone, perhaps, but that is to be expected.
Pretty much. She’s famous for not noticing what she doesn’t want to notice. You’d probably only say it once or twice in the course of even an extended conversation: if you overdo it, there might be a certain froideur, and you might not be invited again - which would be the case anyway for most people.
I’m watching an episode of Heartbeat right now. A suspect being interrogated says “I’m not a grass!” when he refuses to name his accomplices.
Assuming I heard correctly, a “grass” would be the same thing as a “rat” in Mob-speak.
A “rat” sells out his friends because he’ll do anything to get off a sinking ship. Does anybody know the derivation of “grass”?
The series is set in Yorkshire, near Whitby, if that makes any difference.