From: tgpedersen
Message: 63096
Date: 2009-02-18
>Nah, I forgive you ;-) I wasn't exactly right on the money myself.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > Joan and Mirren are not Dutch names. I figured they were Scottish
> > or English in relationship with Dutch guys. I was one generation
> > off. Pretty obvious there was some kind of collision of
> > incompatible Weltanschauungen, or they wouldn't be so funny.
> >
> >
>
> [Stretching this thread to its limits] Actually, I've begun to
> think that maybe you were the right one on this debate, Torsten,
> because I claimed that they were not native English speakers. But
> with a Scottish mother (as is mentioned either on Myspace or
> Youtube), they probably are in fact native English speakers, at
> least originally, but their native English pronunciation has been
> much modified by their being in the Netherlands all their lives (at
> least Mirren's pronunciation), so much so that Mirren's
> pronunciation appeared completely foreign to me. Then again who
> knows how much English they spoke at home -- but I would say that
> English speakers (in this case the mother) tend to assert their
> language in such situations because they are aware of the status of
> their language in the world and feel entitled to speak it and
> indirectly promote it. So I would guess that at least when they
> were young our protagonists Joan and Mirren learned English
> natively, perhaps equally with Dutch. So my claim that they are
> not native speakers of English must then be considered false, even
> though they may be equally native speakers of Dutch (from their
> father). Perhaps Mirren followed her father more, while Joan
> followed her mother more. Perhaps this debate ultimately leads to
> a stalemate, because of equal parts native English and native
> Dutch. I was too eager to claim victory, as most people are, I
> would say.