Just beyond the midnight hour last night, I had the telly on (an a bunch of pens and paper in front of me) and was watching the Discovery Channel, trying to avoid the bouts of suspect television on some of the other channels. Because this was 50 years after the beginning of the Space Age, they had a show featuring ex-engineers who'd been working on rockets and technicians who sent pioneer satellites and eventually people into space.
It made me think about the protagonists of the Cold War, and that all of the spoken communication in space was somehow appropriate. Can you imagine for a second what landing on the moon would have been like if Neil Armstrong had come from somewhere else? Considering that Eastenders was on UK-TV at the same time, I formed the impression that most English accents and particularly those from the North, make people sound just a little thick.
If you go to Leeds you'll hear people (and women as well) speak in monotone, in fact it's dead impossibly lyke to tell if they're happy or lyke reet angry an that eh. Is that the accent of a NASA engineer? Can you imagine:
Houston, we got problem lyke
Don worry 'bout it, wor alrry onnit
Riiiite
Er Brian's fixin' 't now innit. Ow, e'll av some result foor y'inaminnit chill out willya
I mean it's not gonna happen is it?
Worse, can you imagine when the day finally comes and you breathe your final breath, and your soul goes to heaven and you finally meet God Himself. I can not for instance imagine God sounding like someone from Ipswich.
All roiyt moi luvlee. Wel-ome to hev'n. We've got a rite parr'y gaan' on'n 'ere
It just wouldn't be right would it?
There are some accents which simply do not fit the subject matter at hand. NFL should only have commentary by Americans, I have only just got used to James Allen for Formula One after growing up with often confused but excited warbles of Murray Walker and that year that SBS showed the Eurovision Song contest and replaced Terry Wogan was utterly abysmal.
No, some things for sanity's sake need a certain accent and delivery. Though having said that, Australian hip-hop does sound decidedly interesting.
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