Our Favorite ‘Englishes’

Notes on the variety of a great and glorious tongue

Fishing boats and lobster traps in Salvage, Newfoundland (Photo by Sallyledrew, Wikimedia Commons)

A couple of weeks ago, I was writing about Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Florida. I said I didn’t like her politics (at all). But I liked the way she spoke.

“Her voice is redolent of the American South, and of the black American South in particular,” I said. “Ms. Nixon was born and raised in Jacksonville.”

I proceeded to say the following:

I love English, wherever it is spoken—and there is a huge variety of “Englishes.” In our own United States. In Great Britain, of course. In India, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.

What is your favorite English, or your top three, say, “Englishes”?

Before I gave others a chance to weigh in, I weighed in myself (which is different from weighing oneself):

I love the varieties of Irish English. Once, I interviewed Ann Murray, the mezzo-soprano. (Not to be confused with Anne Murray, the wonderful pop singer, who is Canadian.) Ann Murray is a Dubliner. She speaks the most beautiful English—it sounds a bit like singing.

But my favorite English—the English closest to my heart, I think—is that of black American southerners. (True, there are different types of such English, even as there are different types of English in Dublin, to say nothing of the whole of Ireland.) In the black American South, you find my favorite “English music,” so to speak.

Anyway, “What are your ‘Englishes’?” I asked. “If you’d like to let me know, please do.”

Well, thank you to all who let me know.

One reader votes for the English of Newfoundland—its “rural bay communities,” in particular.

“The Rock,” he writes (meaning Newfoundland), “was settled by Irish, Welsh, and English. They went there for the fishing.” And the speech that developed “is the most enchanting English I have ever heard.”

Makes me want to take a trip.

I also received a note from Donald Mace Williams—the poet, novelist, journalist, etc. (I podcasted with him last March, and you can listen to him here.) Writes DMW,

In a small Colorado town—Pagosa Springs, I think—about 25 years ago I was talking about bears with a hardware store owner named Henry. He told me that one day his employee, a woman from Texas, came to the back of the store where he was working and calmly informed him: “Hinry, there’s a bea-yer in the sto-wer.” He said he scooted out the back door. She went back to the front and shooed the bear away.

That woman, in what must have been his perfect imitation, was an aunt I loved, or a nice neighbor lady in one of the small Central Texas towns I grew up in. I seldom hear such an accent these days, and I miss it.

In the last few years it has also come to me that what she said was a rather unusual thing in English poetry, a perfectly trochaic line, DUM-dee, DUM-dee, etc., all the way through. (Partly trochaic lines, with the last dee missing, are common enough.) Maybe it takes a bea-yer and a nice Texas lady to make it work.

I agree with you, by the way, about the beauty of southern black people’s accents, though those, too, are getting scarce.

A lady writes,

The soft country voices of central North Carolina hypnotize me.

(That itself is a beautiful, almost hypnotizing, sentence.)

Says a different reader,

I’m enamored of British voices, especially the wild Englishes of Mike Leigh’s films. At times, they’re almost unintelligible. David Thewlis’s in Naked, Katrin Cartlidge’s in Career Girls, Gary Oldman’s in Meantime—these Englishes are provocative, almost entrancing, to my ears. I recognize something plaintive, lyrical, and old in them that my English, withered by “Newspeak” and “bureaucratese,” regrettably lacks.

Here is an example from Naked (and pardon their French).

A reader writes,

About a year ago I attended a funeral service conducted by a minister who was a native of India. I would guess he was middle-aged. After the service I commented to him about his British accent. His response: “Ah, yes. The British educational system.” The entire experience was wonderful for me.

But then again, I once was a regular viewer of PMQs on C-SPAN.

Oh, yes. (Those letters stand for “Prime Minister’s Questions.” You can hear the most diverse and wonderful Englishes in those sessions.)

Another reader:

During my IT career, many of my colleagues were from India. I grew fond of their musical accent and their turns of phrase such as “do the needful” and “I have no doubt.”

My late friend Paul Johnson, the great historian, knew a lady from the Caribbean who lived in London and whose children were sometimes embarrassed by her “old-fashioned” phrases. For example, instead of saying “Hurry up,” she’d say “Make haste.”

Johnson loved that.

Says a reader,

My personal favorite English is the Scottish variety. Such a treasure trove is Scottish TikTok, I can practically hear it. “Aye, he’s oan the protein.”

(In other words, he’s getting bigger.)

Finally, a colorful, lively letter from a colorful, lively reader:

Hi, Jay,

… After living in a total of eight states so far, I have to say that I find a southern drawl charming, though that may be because my wife spoke that way when I met her. Alas, 42 years of exposure to me and the states we’ve lived in has eroded her drawl to the point of non-existence.

Not to mention the determination of some of her supervisors to eliminate that drawl at work.

(When she started dispatching at the police department, after a few years working for the sheriff’s office, her bosses, not being able to find anything else to criticize, settled for harassing her about saying “yalla” for “yellow”—yellow frequency being one of two main frequencies at the PD. She asked me what to do about it and I suggested thinking “Jello/yellow” before she spoke.)

(One day, she slipped and said “yalla,” then corrected herself to “Jello.” Hilarity ensued.)

I find that I have adopted a lot of regionalisms or localisms into my routine speech, having acquired them from various places. I tend to say “Flah-ri-da” and South “Kah-lina.” When someone makes a mistake, I’m likely to say, “Why’d you did dat?” This comes from my time in New Orleans. My speech is dotted with, interchangeably, “y’all” and “youse guys.”

But I do like a southern drawl, and the “yat” dialect of Orleans and Jefferson parishes [in Louisiana] amuses me. A Michigan accent is immediately identifiable and puts me in mind of the coney joints on Jefferson Avenue near the federal courthouse.

That’d be Detroit—or “Dee-troit City,” as we sometimes say (with the accent on the “Dee”).

Great thanks to my readers, who are, to me, a pleasure, a privilege, and a balm.