Harry Potter's English

This message has also been posted on my revived blog Gyre&Gimble at
http://gyregimble.blogspot.com/ That blog has other posts about
language that might interest members of this group.

Last night I saw the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the
Order of the Phoenix. As with the previous one (Goblet of Fire),
which I watched on DVD, I had a lot of trouble understanding much of
the dialog. Because of that previous experience I paid more attention
to my problem this time and discovered that it was primarily the young
people that I had trouble understanding. I don't remember having this
problem with the first four films.

Relevant background: I am a retired professor and have known and
spoken with British academics for 40 years, and have spent several
months living in Britain as well (Oxford and London). I am also hard
of hearing.

Evidently, British young people, even educated ones, speak quite
differently from their parents and grandparents. This is not just my
experience: linguists have noticed it, for example the phonetician
John Wells here

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/blog0608.htm

(for 29 August). That site provides a clip of a young member of the
aristocracy speaking. I can't understand her either.

I had no problem understanding the actors who played the adults in the
HP movies; I have had a lot of experience with that sort of accent
(Scottish as well as southern English).

The American audience in the movie theater (in rural northern
Wisconsin) had no problem with the kids' accents. They laughed
several times at verbal interactions between them that I didn't
understand.

I had less trouble understanding Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in
the interviews here:

http://media.movies.ign.com/media/035/035558/vids_1.html

Is it possible that in the movie they deliberately spoke like British
teenagers and during their interview they used their usual speaking-to-
adults dialect?

I expect to watch these movies a second time on a DVD player with the
subtitles turned on!

Charles Wells
blog: http://www.gyregimble.blogspot.com/
abstract math website: http://www.abstractmath.org/MM//MMIntro.htm
professional website: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html
personal website: http://www.abstractmath.org/Personal/index.html
NE Ohio Sacred Harp website: http://www.abstractmath.org/fasola/index.html

.

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