Since, like… ALWAYS, Selkie.
(For this installment of Poor Time Management Theater, I may focus on trying to make Wednesdays strip on-time then go back to this one later.)
I'd ask how many people had wondered about where Selkie's speech patterns come from, but I am afraid the amount of affirmative responses would crash the comments server.
Well, let me be the first to say: YES PLEASE
I’ve wondered that from the beginning
Dave will have his own reasoning for Selkie’s speech patterns (I’m betting “It’s cute” weighed in heavily. 😛 ) My rationalization is that, while Lillian taught her basic English, she spent all most all her time surrounded by, and talking to, children in her general age group, both at school and at the orphanage. grade school children are relatively sloppy with their grammar, and unlikely to bother correcting her if she said something strangely (or they stopped bothering in Selkie’s early days there, when she barely spoke English at all. Children have less patience and little sense of responsibility to educate other children; that’s the adults’ job). While most of her peerage got their start with English from birth, Selkie got hers at age five. She grew up speaking a very different language with no reason to be at all similar to, well, ANY human language, nevermind English specifically. Most children internalise the basic grammar rules of their native tongue from hearing it spoken properly from grownups during their early years. Selkie missed those lessons, and spending the vast majority of her time between ages 5-8 around kids with little to no real interest in polishing her English skills have let bad grammar habits become reinforced by repetition until they’re fairly permanent.
In other words, she doesn’t so much need to LEARN English as she needs to UNlearn the slipshod version of English she’s unfortunately mastered. 😛
This is like the time I was a person with an English accent and grew up very sheltered to find that when I went out into the world of my Texas home I spoke funny.
Hey, at least yours was an actual English accent (I assume). I grew up with a speech impediment that apparently makes me sound British and had me explaining constantly to kids that I was in fact born and raised in Michigan, as were both of my parents.
I have the exact damn thing! Something about the way I talk sounds British to people’s ears and I get asked the “where are you from” question a lot.
I get it even as an adult. Just last week a guy got really indignant with me when I insisted multiple times that I was born in Illinois.
It doesn’t help though that for some reason I said Happy Christmas instead of Merry Chistmas this year. XD
For whatever reason people say I have no accent at all. And thanks to my mixed blood I can usually BS where i come from.
Well, it call came to a head recently one LOVELY morning eating breakfast WITH MY MOTHER IN LAW while my HUSBAND was telling her I say naked weird. O_O
I live in Mexico.
I keep getting asked if I’m from outside the state since I don’t speak in the same way everyone does. I’ve lived here all my life and I still get that. -_
I was born in California and have always lived in California. I haven’t even moved to a different town. Both of my parents are American. All of my grandparents are American. And yet people tell me I have a British accent. HOW?? HOW DOES THAT WORK??
That’s the same way with my brother everyone he talks to says he has a english accent and it’s the same with me too only I have a german accent well pennsylvania dutch at times other times I have a typical maryland accent.
It most likely doesnt help my case that I am part german and around christmas espeically I say a lot of things in german. Oh speaking of which! My parents just became Oma and Opa! my baby girl was born on friday!…I wonder if she will have an accent like me too her father is italian so who knows how she will speak!
Congratulations! 😀
well i have a terrible southern accent and when i talk around my friends they always point it out even though they also grew up where i live.
Yeah, my sister and I have the same problem.
I meant that in reply to Yumi.
I have an american accent despite being born and raised in scotland. Though I blame things like mostly learning english from sesame street…
It’s only in the past year that I’ve been able to roll my rs, to my great shame.
Mine’s Baltimore/Maryland/DC/Tidewater region. I live in this region. I have my whole life. There might be some Pennsylvanian influence in it (my mom’s side of the family are PA Dutch), but it’s pretty clear Maryland.
… But since I have autism, I regularly get questions about where I’m from because my speech cadence sounds odd.
Wow – lots of Pennsylvania Dutch people on this thread! Me too! I was born in Allentown and, as far as I can figure it, am at least 70% German.
I had a speech impediment when I was young and so did my youngest sister. That kind of thing often runs in families and we don’t know Selkie’s immediate family background…
Even now there are words I mispronounce unless I am working REALLY hard not to, like “anomoly,” “rhododendron,” and “amalgam.” However, after a decade in NYC I seem to have finally shed my New England accent!
It’s true, Selkie. We never told you, but…you’re a cockney.
YOU MEAN YOU NEVER TOL’ – NEVER TOL’ THE GIRL WHO DI’ SOMETHIN’?! NEVER TOL’ HARRY AND EDNA’S DAUGHTER WHAT – WHAT SHE IS?!
*Sigh* … Selkie, yer a Cockney.
(Completely self-indulgent Hagrid references, but that’s what your comment made me think of.)
Ha, I didn’t get the Hagrid until you said it. Then I lol’d
I always figured it was a combination of her dentition, that most of the other kids did not talk enough with her at the orphanage, and that she was already a bit into her formative years when she was dropped off (I imagine that the Sarnothi language would make a lot of use of sounds and mechanics not present in primates too, it would be like dropping a 3 year old that just started talking off with some whales and telling them good luck with that).
Psh, I say happy christmas all the time, and I get the same question a lot “where are you from, you sound british”. I’m pretty my accent is northern new england….. but it still amuses me!
I keep wondering why the school never tried her in speech therapy, most schools do whenever there’s a pronounced difference.
Maybe because Selkie’s “pronounced difference” comes with the radical difference in diet and looks too. They might’ve just assumed it was meant to be like that.
We’ve also seen that this school generally doesn’t care either. The priniciple is an incompetent weasel only interested in protecting his own self and only moves when it might hurt him. I imagine some of the teachers have suggested it, just to be put down.
True. Although in the cases where the kid DOESN’T improve at all over a certain period of time, they give up trying. I have never pronounced the ‘th’ sound correctly, according to my teachers. After two months of me never getting any better at it, they gave up and the speech therapist teacher stopped coming in to see me. Being a dumb 7-year old, I assumed that meant that I talked perfectly finally, despite having not changed my speech patterns at all. They didn’t come back to teach me anything, so I just sort of assumed.
It may have been the same with Selkie. She didn’t improve at all in the period of time they paid special attention to her, so they gave up. Their speech therapist had better things to do than waste time on a kid who wouldn’t improve at all.
I look forward to less annoying Selkie speech.
I can’t wait to hear what’s the story behind that, but I always assumed it had something to do with an awkward transition from Sarnoth to English. Like how non-native speakers of a language talk with an accent, or emphasize on certain syllables or letters. Her speech has never really bothered me; my youngest brother has a speech impediment, and he talks with a lisp. Far from annoying me, her speech patten has endeared Selkie to me. 😀
I’ve always believed it to be the fact she has gills and it was part of a speech style from such, and that over time and more adaption to breathing on land would remove it but that Selkie was still young and breathed through both mouth and gills causing an “S” sound at the end of words. Either that or she’d learned to speak from a talking snake.
Good thing she’s not green, or people would think she’s about to explode.
“That’s a very nice… everything… you’ve got there. It’d be a sssssshame if something were to happen to it.”
“I don’t have an accent. *You* have an accent.”
So, this explains why there weren’t any trailing s in her memories.
Soooo… you’ve got an extra “S” everywhere, except in “embarrassing,” which has one too few. Something almost karmic about that…
I figured it was a translation thing, too, and that her native language had a lot more esses ending words as part of the grammar.
Honestly, I just filter it out when I read the comic, haha.
Aw, I liked her accent.
also, judging by the comments, I am the only one here who missed that she had poisonous spit.
I like that Selkie is clever enough to realize that “speech patterns” refers to her “talking funny”.