Friday, 2 September 2016

Roxette and the Australian Accent

Recently in a fit of nostalgia, I went looking for my copy of the CD "Look Sharp" by the Swedish pop duo Roxette.
I couldn't find it. I suspect that it is "safely packed" for the house move... somewhere...

I hope it turns up at some stage in the future.

It is a little known fact that the very first CD (Compacts Disk) that I ever bought was Roxette "Look Sharp".
It is classic 80's pop. And I love it too!
I actually got this album from Myers in Orange, and I made a tape recording of it (on my brothers stereo) when I got home, that way I could listened to it - believe it or not I didn't  own a stereo capable of playing a CD at the time, all I had was a small AM/FM radio.

So, at the time, I  was super excited to play my tape of my album, and look at CD...and sing along to the Swedish superstars... I didn't own a CD player until after my 21st Birthday  (I used the funds that I had been given to buy a rather cool Pioneer brand unit, complete with twin tape decks and a turntable, in January 1992)

Swedes, singing great pop music, in English, played on a tape in a AM/FM radio cassette player... it is just so 1992!

All of which will sound like a foreign language to any person who is reading this who is under the age of 20!

It is a pretty amazing achievement by Roxette and all those other Swedish bands that have made it big - Abba, Ace of Base, Shocking Blue, The Cardigans, and The Rednex, to name those that pop into my mind without the all powerful Google search. All managed to make hit songs in their second or third language.
Pretty amazing achievement really.
Every year I have watched the SBS broadcast of the Eurovision Song contest, the majority of the songs performed in English... Ah Europe, so advanced that they will sing in a foreign language... Even when the origin of the language is brexiting out of it' s geographical reality!

And here I am speaking New South Welsh (that is Bogan Australian), with an understanding Pigin and a smattering of German... and these guys write hit songs in another language. Pretty damn amazing.

So here is the link. I speak fluent English, even if I do have a rather nasal accent and and a vocabulary that is not particularly influenced by the modern cool US ghetto talk. And to be honest I  generally rally  against the ubiquitous US ghetto cool talk. I find it incredibly jarring, pretentious & fake. Additionally, I find it just too hard to keep up with the rapid change that happens in thos recieved lingo.

In some respects I suppose I will end up being a language fossil of 1970 & 80's New South Welsh English. Nasal and Bogan as Anything. And I am in no way fashionable enough to change, therefore relegated as the anachronism.

However, when I compare my gripes with the realities of the aforementioned Swedes I suppose that I am getting upset over nothing. Roxette had (by the accounts of Wikipedia) a heap of hit songs in The Nordic world, in Swedish. Thus in order to be respected in the rest of the world they had to switch to English build on the Swedish past in the brave new world of International English Pop.

When you campare that reality to my complaints abount "zed" v "zee", "Footpath" v "Sidewalk" & the endless arguments with spellchecker about the use of "s" as opposed to "z" in all the words that have the suffix "-ise/ize", I may just be in the category of grumpy middle-class white man.

Here I am, a native English speaker complaining, about the influence of some "other dualect of English"  influencing "My" dialect. I Googled Dutch speakers - it turns out that there are a similar amount of Dutch speakers as there are Australians - around 25 million of them. I would suspect that the Average Dutch person would be happy to have a similar complaint about cool ghetto Dutch "Invading" the language

26ish million Nordic-types people must learn English in order to get a hit song.

So, what to do about this situation?
Well first up, I am to going to respect "other" languages & the native speakers of that language

As for "my own native" language (New South Welsh boganese), well, I am going to be less judgemental about the dialect/slang used and listen more to the message and the intent behind the words.

And be more careful about what I say too!