The indefinite vowel
3 September, 2009Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs. Krillis about linguistics and phonetics as shown in Pygmalion. Mrs. Krillis is a teacher who majored in engish but took linguistics for 3 years at university. She has such knowledge and expertise,as well as a full understanding and love of Pygmalion. This was so insightful as I learnt a lot today about phonetics, the importance of phonetics and how to pronounce different aspects of Eliza’s cockney accent. For example, at the begginning of Pygmalion, Shaw writes ‘ In the dialogue an e upsire down indicates the indefinite vowel, sometimes called obscure or neutral, for wich, though it is one of the most commonest sounds in English speech, our wretched alphabet has no letter’. After speaking to Mrs Krillis I now understand what this obscure vowel is. It is such a common sound as shown in the or away or cinema. With this understanding, Eliza’s ‘pore gel’ accent is much clearer and the pronounciatin is much more evident. This has shown me that in understanding the speech of Eliza, an actor must have a basic comprehension of phonetics. Moreover, to perfect their accet an actor can employ many methods such as mimicing examples including films or recordings, and actually using the phonetics techniques Higgins teaches Eliza, since these are true phonetics methods that truly work. Such things as the flame for pronouncing ‘h’ which is always funny in Pygmalion. So of course, a big thanks again to Mrs. Krillis for all her help!
On a different note, completing an RI on Pygmalion has shown me that sometimes to show a moral message, an author must excessively portray the converse opinion. This I feel relates to our IPP which used elements of the ridiculous and uncaring to show a message. Take the American Tourist’s opinion of a dead, pollution-choked penguin “totally ruined my buzz”. I love the way Shaw puts across feminist opinions by showing the cruel and uncaring Higgins. If I were to ever write theatre, that is the style I would wish to write and stage. Theatre is a fantastic medium for showing society the problems they may ot wish to see. I just think that’s amazing. Truly.
