I’ve never spoken to a woman called Stella and in all probability, barring a flood of women called Stella suddenly springing out of the freguesias in Terceira, I won’t be doing so in the very near future. Nonetheless, if one day I happened to bump into a woman called Stella on this island or any of the others in the archipelago I would at least feel confident about one particular element of our conversation: her intrigue surrounding the English accent.
What it is about this accent still continues to confound me. Is it the rolling of the Rs? The delivery? The exaggeration? Whatever it is, it has a powerful almost mystical charm about it which doesn’t fail to deliver.
As I muse over some muesli I observe how our friends over the pond often sit and listen in awe as extracts from newspaper cuttings or magazines are read out in the Queen’s English whilst others desperately attempt to mimic these foreign sounds with a sudden adjustment of their facial expressions or a dramatic change in the tone of their voices. They stress and strain their mouths repeating vowels, letters and words over and over again like a broken record. Seconds, minutes even hours go by as ‘Stellas’, ‘Bags’ and ‘Slabs’ fly around the rooms permeating the humid Azorean air. And we eventually come to reach the point when the very meaning of the extract and the very items themselves which are at the very heart of the mere seven lines – ‘the fresh snow peas’, ‘the blue cheese’ and ‘the toy snakes’ – become lost, when all that matters is the pronunciation – nothing more, nothing less.
It’s a love-hate relationship for our American compatriots but one which they will continue to indulge in – the pull, it seems, is too great to resist.
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