tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post5825162594633182013..comments2024-03-16T00:21:43.240+00:00Comments on Separated by a Common Language: Sesame Streetlynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-70136977029518551052022-03-15T19:32:09.428+00:002022-03-15T19:32:09.428+00:00Came across this just now, many years later. But t...Came across this just now, many years later. But this comment spoke to me and no mistake.<br />Learning language by watching mouths... sure I did! Being hard of hearing and getting worse in the course of my life, lip-reading was invaluable to my understanding. And I got hugely frustrated by watching TV puppet mouths, who did say nothing but Wah-Wah-Wah to me. (Go look at them and try lip-reading them yourself, for God's sake.) Petra1945https://www.blogger.com/profile/06559677258676647710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-85154139998719800572015-08-26T21:11:08.508+01:002015-08-26T21:11:08.508+01:00I don't have the skills to fully portray word ...I don't have the skills to fully portray word pronunciation in type, but generally around here (western Canada) 'river' is pronounced with the final r quite clearly making an r sound. Like a very short growl.crisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-35780887755790905552015-08-12T15:17:01.533+01:002015-08-12T15:17:01.533+01:00So how do people in western Canada pronounce it? ...So how do people in western Canada pronounce it? <br /><br />My grandsons are now just 5 and almost 2; the older boy has had crazes on all sorts of CBeebies programmes, although I've lost track of what he likes now. Mostly the learn-to-read ones, now he is beginning to read, I think. The younger is still at the "In the Night Garden" stage, but they both enjoy Thomas the Tank Engine, Peppa Pig and Chuggington.... Mrs Redboots (Annabel Smyth)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11270027663691257254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-73196512962704845562015-08-11T16:55:07.777+01:002015-08-11T16:55:07.777+01:00I just couldn't resist looking up this older p...I just couldn't resist looking up this older post to make a comment when the same thing just happened to me;<br /><br />In our (western Canadian) house my 2.5 year old has become addicted to Peppa Pig, he watches it on youtube ("I want Peppa Pig, pleeeeeease! On Mama's computer, Peppa Pig!")<br /><br />And now he has added a few words to his vocabulary in the BrE dialect of the Pig family, it was really obvious to me when he started saying 'riva' (river), asking if we could "Go to the riva, pleeeeease?" <br /><br />Which is utterly unlike how people around here pronounce the word.crisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-72298291631876474402012-08-24T23:03:15.848+01:002012-08-24T23:03:15.848+01:00Oh, Bagpuss.... I loved him when my daughter was g...Oh, Bagpuss.... I loved him when my daughter was growing up. I date back to the era of Andy Pandy and the Flowerpot Men - and, of course, Listen with Mother.<br /><br />My grandson is now 2 and adores Thomas the Tank Engine AND In the Night Garden, especially Iggle Piggle! And recognises far too many other CBeebies characters! ("But he is two now," said my daughter, "So it's all right to let him watch television" But he's been watching since he was very small!).Mrs Redboots (Annabel Smyth)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11270027663691257254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-24498966563708148772012-08-24T18:56:15.172+01:002012-08-24T18:56:15.172+01:00Quoth biochemist:
There was also a snippet of a p...Quoth biochemist: <br /><i>There was also a snippet of a piano piece that always takes me back to those days - Debussy's 'Berceuse' I think.</i><br /><br />The Berceuse from the Dolly Suite by Fauré (not Debussy). Even after all these yaesr I go weak at the knees when I hear it.<br /><br />Daughter and I are both Postgate fans. I adored Noggin the Nog when I was little: she loved Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine. <br /><br />enitharmonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17829757748223670291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-64654583381071015592011-10-14T14:55:39.492+01:002011-10-14T14:55:39.492+01:00Son2 has just discovered Dr Seuss - I'm quite ...Son2 has just discovered Dr Seuss - I'm quite happy with the nonsense words, illustrations etc but I don't like reading the ones where the rhymes don't work in RP (e.g. pass/alas or lance/chance/pants).Rachel Wardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06218353720195613236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-4915105692490262692011-03-04T09:14:50.972+00:002011-03-04T09:14:50.972+00:00Colin, I don't put my child's real name on...Colin, I don't put my child's real name on the web. When she was introduced on the blog, I <a href="http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2008/01/baby-talk-introducing-grover.html" rel="nofollow">explained why her nickname is Grover.</a><br /><br />Nevertheless, I've received rather abusive emails from people who've not got the whole story for being so cruel as to give my girl a 'boy's name'! To me, the bigger ethical no-no is putting one's minor child's real name on the web.lynneguisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-47395361027717528682011-03-04T01:54:44.366+00:002011-03-04T01:54:44.366+00:00American here. Interesting that you are familiar ...American here. Interesting that you are familiar with Sesame Street but you named your female child Grover? Does everyone you meet assume "Grover" is a boy's name? They would in the United States - there are an abundance of male "-er" sounding names: Hunter, Tanner, Connor, Tyler, Skylar, Gunner (not to mention we had a President Grover Cleveland...) but the only female -er name I can think of is Jennifer. (Amber doesn't count!)Colinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-59997048638635781392010-02-17T09:24:16.377+00:002010-02-17T09:24:16.377+00:00I also hate Dr Suess! I found them weird and alien...I also hate Dr Suess! I found them weird and alien as a child. <br /><br />I also wasn't so keen on Sesame Street, which was very loud and brash and brightly coloured.<br /><br />I grew up on English nursery rhymes. On tv, I liked playschool, bagpuss, button moon, the magic roundabout. Later I loved Tony Hart's Hartbeat and animations such as the French "Mysterious Cities of Gold" and "Ulysses 31".<br /><br />Strangely enough, the one US import I was obsessed with as a child was Scooby-Doo.<br /><br />I think you are correct about the differences - I was brought up on gentler things I suppose. I hated Roald Dahl as a child too, and preferred reading things like the Narnia series and Enid Blyton.<br /><br />As for the Alphabet, my Grandma, born in 1903, taught me as follows:<br /><br />A-b-c-d-e-f-g<br />h-i-j-k-lmnop<br />q-r-s-t<br />u-v-w-x-y-z<br />xyz<br />she banged her head<br />and if you don't pick her up<br />she'll have to go to bed.<br /><br />My Grandma also used to sing me lots of songs like "Jack and Jill", "Billy-boy", "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do" etc, and quite a few music hall songs like "when father papered the parlour" and "my Grandfather's clock".<br /><br />I was born in 1979.lammylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-63831475486032465742009-12-13T02:54:39.773+00:002009-12-13T02:54:39.773+00:00I'm a Yankee (BrE). Sesame Street is good, bu...I'm a Yankee (BrE). Sesame Street is good, but it gets old fast. My 3½ year old is through with it and on to some other great PBS shows. See if you can get on pbskids.org and get a preview. Some of her favorites: Between the Lions, Dinosaur Train, and Sid the Science Kid. The last two are new in the last two years.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00406367712158494511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-74429007295830661662009-12-10T22:23:05.449+00:002009-12-10T22:23:05.449+00:00I loved Sesame Street, and am very sad it no longe...I loved Sesame Street, and am very sad it no longer gets shown here.<br /><br />You might find In the Night Garden easier to get into if you approach it differently to Sesame Street: Night Garden isn't supposed to be an exciting, bouncy watch. The whole programme is design to calm children down ready to go to sleep. It's like a bedtime story. That's why it has that little repeating tune rocking away in the background all the way through, coming in and fading out, being sung as Iggle Piggle's tune.<br /><br />In contrast, my tame 2-year-old (a few weeks older than Grover) bounces around if Thomas the Tank Engine is on, pointing and dancing and 'discussing' and matching the trains on-screen to the toys. He'll happily take an afternoon nap to In the Night Garden (mostly).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-53831940769316172972009-12-07T13:01:44.490+00:002009-12-07T13:01:44.490+00:00Ladybirds are still about, though the range is dra...Ladybirds are still about, though the range is dramatically depleted. Hopefully you'll be pleased to know they're a little more deverse in representation now too.Solonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-11133108243532151332009-12-01T11:40:57.864+00:002009-12-01T11:40:57.864+00:00And before TV there was radio! British children in...And before TV there was radio! British children in the 1950s had 'Listen with Mother', a 15-minute programme which began with a 'Din-de-don' tune - what we would now call a jingle, followed by the words 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin'. The programme contained a little story, and one or more nursery rhymes sung by trained singers. It was all very genteel and comforting - cultured tones and lovely diction. There was also a snippet of a piano piece that always takes me back to those days - Debussy's 'Berceuse' I think.<br /><br />'Sesame Street' has the winning formula of a cast of characters that can have different prominence in each episode - much like any soap opera for adults, from Coronation Street to Wisteria Lane. <br /><br />An early comment from eclexia refers to Alice in Wonderland as 'vulgar'. This mystifies me. The whole book, and its sequel, is based on pastiches of Victorian songs and rhymes, and like Dr Seuss, would have entertained the adult reader as much as the child. <br /><br />Is anyone familiar with the British Ladybird Books? These are a small-format hardback series - poetry, early readers, traditional tales, guides to places and towns, how-to-make things. The Charles and Diana wedding special was a bold venture at the time. The illustrations were criticised for being too cosy and too 'white', but older editions give a very accurate picture of British middle-class life at the time they were published. Reading a selection to our little daughter certainly provided a nostalgic experience when we lived in North America twenty-thirty years ago. Having said all that, I don't know whether they are still for sale - grandson still too small to read ... Grover may like them.biochemistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-34632883768047292522009-11-30T21:31:52.947+00:002009-11-30T21:31:52.947+00:00As in peekaboo? I was wondering. I thought it was ...As in peekaboo? I was wondering. I thought it was some kind of euphemism...Solonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-67572674630084720782009-11-26T21:40:23.687+00:002009-11-26T21:40:23.687+00:00I forgot to say earlier, where I grew up (SW Lanca...I forgot to say earlier, where I grew up (SW Lancashire with Wirral parents) it was Peep-o not peebo. I think Peep-o describes the action rather better...Sarahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06148992289166413933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-18829498938729038252009-11-24T04:49:20.293+00:002009-11-24T04:49:20.293+00:00"Now I know my Z-Y-Xes / Backwards like they ..."Now I know my Z-Y-Xes / Backwards like they sing in Texas."John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-16226127448963568712009-11-23T20:09:00.319+00:002009-11-23T20:09:00.319+00:00Maggie - your children are safe from the evil Sesa...Maggie - your children are safe from the evil Sesame Street! No-one much under the age of a university linguistics student learns how to make the sounds of their own language by watching mouths. Certainly not TV puppet mouths. Really. Even if that's what the speech therapist thought was happening. <br /><br />And people in general, why all this denigration of the absolutely wonderful fantastic Dr Seuss? A hero of modern culture! Everyone should read him, at least once a year. We should all keep the 24th September as Green Eggs and Ham Day and eat green eggs and ham and wash it down with a decent G&T :-)Ken Brownhttp://ken.wibsite.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-66971694862440649042009-11-23T15:49:58.907+00:002009-11-23T15:49:58.907+00:00Have people seen this?
http://www.newsweek.com/id...Have people seen this?<br /><br />http://www.newsweek.com/id/222618<br /><br />Apologies if it's already been linked to and sorry I don't know how to make links in HTML. I'm working on it...Solonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-74508039048259668122009-11-23T15:24:42.015+00:002009-11-23T15:24:42.015+00:00Well, I fess up to missing the -e, but q and g loo...Well, I fess up to missing the -e, but q and g look identical when underlined, and your name is *always* underlined as a link so... uh... it's not my fault, nyah nyah!<br /><br />/childish<br /><br />At any rate, I've fallen prey to one of the world's classic blunders, just slightly less well-known than that one about Sicilians - never correct somebody else's spelling without using spellcheck!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-56943384824902943462009-11-23T10:04:52.152+00:002009-11-23T10:04:52.152+00:00My older son, now seven, had trouble articulating ...My older son, now seven, had trouble articulating words, making sounds and being understood when he was little. We did sign language with him from when he was an infant, and he had a huge vocabulary, just no one could understand him when he talked (using his voice). All his problems were resolved when he was three and took three months of speech therapy. It impressed me that the therapist first had him pay attention to her mouth, to watch her mouth and to try to repeat the sounds. He didn't watch TOO much television when he was so little, but he did watch some - Little Bear and Thomas the Tank Engine. But after hearing that the therapist wanted him to watch her mouth- how important this was, and after hearing that many children learn English through Sesame Street, - well, I guess it's for older children who already make the right sounds, but I wondered what affect learning to make English sounds by watching a puppets mouth - or any animated thing or Thom. the Tank in which only facial expressions are shown, you don't actually see them speaking- would be somehow misleading. <br /><br /> Where does Postman Pat fall in any of this? Picked up a few videos of this. Like the claymation- should watch it again to pay more attention to the language.Maggienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-88855854413425533792009-11-22T20:53:56.760+00:002009-11-22T20:53:56.760+00:00Having just watched that Sesame Street clip, I'...Having just watched that Sesame Street clip, I'd like to add utter disgust at children's characters who refer to themselves in the third person. It's bad and wrong and probably unhygenic.<br /><br />P.S. What's wrong with Thomas the Tank anyway?Solonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-89903857331427674432009-11-22T20:21:08.580+00:002009-11-22T20:21:08.580+00:00Ohhh- Lynne...Guist...linguist. I get it! Clever.
...Ohhh- Lynne...Guist...linguist. I get it! Clever.<br /><br />Well for the record I always hated sesame Street, it was too raucaus and American for me, even before I'd been programmed into cultural snobbery. I especially hated the way they said 'zee'.<br /><br />I've always found Seuss atoundingly overrated too (though I did have a soft spot for <i>Hop On Pop</i>) As a former bookseller, specialising in children's and young adult's fiction, I can assure everyone that there is a wealth of superior verse and storytelling out there. Case in point- <i>Where the Wild Things Are</i> the live action remake of which I await with trepidation.<br /><br />I'm too young for the Clangers and I haven't heard of most of the other stuff (sorry) but we definitely had pupperts during my 'preschool' years. (Late eighties if you really must know) Not least on the redoubtable Playdays, one of the most respected and enduring under-fives edutainment series of British boradcasting history. The was Lizzie and Why-Bird and Poppy the Cat and Peggy Patch. I could read by the time I started nursery, despite occasionally getting the alphabet in the wrong order, so they (or perhaps my mother) must have been doing something right.<br /><br />We learnt to read with the 'Magic Key' series when I was that age and I believe they're still knocking about nearly twenty years later, so ther must be something in that too.<br /><br />As for the decline in puppets (on television, they're certainly still about in xhildren's theatre) is mayhap a causal effect of a decline in pupeteers? Just a thought.Solonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-1408433405122405972009-11-21T20:32:00.682+00:002009-11-21T20:32:00.682+00:00@conuly: No, I don't have that.
But after o...@conuly: No, I don't have that. <br /><br />But after our spelling conversation, I feel I must point out that I have an 'e' and a 'g' not a 'q'! (It's a pun, donchaknow.)lynneguisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-73314926638038222732009-11-21T20:06:33.314+00:002009-11-21T20:06:33.314+00:00Oh, you're right, I did spell it wrong. I was ...Oh, you're right, I did spell it wrong. I was so busy correcting Williams I forgot that I still had an A in there! D'oh!<br /><br />No, I didn't know that - I have to get some now now now! (I have to find out next time he'll be in the city and bring my nieces to see him read again. Last time he signed their books and it took me two days to realize he wrote Mo! and not No! and I felt kinda silly when it made sense.)<br /><br />Lynnquist, you wouldn't happen to have a copy of The Important Book, would you?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com