The Foreign Accent That Came From Space - 2 of 4

While collecting data from headlines of English papers for my MA dissertation, I came across a curious article about a rather strange language fact.

The following short story is based on such strange fact.

  

Was I actually suffering from paranoia? After waking up in a infirmary ward, with no memory of how I’d been taken there, a complete stranger appeared affirming to be mother; and when my obvious Latin American accent evidenced that I couldn’t possibly have been raised by a native English speaker, the head nurse seemed determined to convince me I had foreign accent syndrome.

“Do you know this nurse?” I asked Sharon, trying not sound hysterically suspicious.

Sharon’s light smile turned into a light scowl. “Wha’, hun?”

If something dodgy was going on I’d better put Sharon on the spot quick, otherwise I could end up in some nutter’s slaughterhouse. So, I raised my voice to a tone of challenge. “The nurse… you know each other.”

Sharon held a sigh. “Oh luv. We’ve been through this…” She turned her head midsentence, and hastened toward the exit.

Discreet as she was, Sharon caused a few necks to turn. Before I even could feel any remorse, I was left to shun facing the looks which other ward patients threw at me.

I'd already rehearsed a non-discreet rant. Following my first meeting with Sharon, I demanded to one of the nurses that I had to talk to some civil authority. After that, a social worker had come to have with me.

"We fully understand your concern. We ask you just a couple of hours so that we can talk to yo... Ms Sharon and make sure she can provide us with evidence of your acquaintance and connection to her."

Roughly an hour later, the social worker was back. "...this was given to us by Sharon herself."

She gave me pictures showing that I bore a striking resemblance to Sharon's actual son. I just could not bring myself to understand what coincidental odds made Sharon's son go missing right at the time that they found me unconscious at Hyde Park. The social worker still told that I was enrolled as an undergraduate in the Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Leeds. Indeed I already knew that. But the social worker seemed to deliberately neglect a small detail: I was an overseas exchange student. I had sound memory that I'd come originally from the National University of Trujillo, northwestern of Peru. She should've had a hint that there'd be something wrong with that information when my English presented no characteristic feature of the West Yorkshire dialect.

All things considered, when all coincidences showed that Sharon should be right in her judgement, I checked the mobile that was found with me. It did list my real parents' landline number in Trujillo. I didn't mention any of these facts to the social worker or Sharon to avoid bringing her more distress. Soon as I brought myself to calm down I'd definitely contact my actual parents overseas.

Half an hour after having raised my voice to Sharon and made her disappear, the same social worker returned again, bringing with her a few documents that evidenced Sharon's integrity as a person. But I wouldn't give up that easy.

"What about the student accommodation? I must live like most students from the University of Leeds." I asked, actually knowing exactly where I stayed - but having to deny that knowledge since I was still faking amnesia. "Could you check this out?"

"Actually, I did check this out with the Student Accommodation Office. It turns out you do live in a shared residence in Headingley." Her words brought me a sigh of relief. Finally something was making sense. "But we're in July, right in the middle of vacation period. And so the accommodation is closed till the beginning of the new academic session in September."

White Lodge, Student Accommodation in Headingley

My memory had betrayed me regarding that information. I was then left with no choice but to go with Sharon to what supposedly was our residence in Horsforth – a town six miles from the commercial centre of Leeds.

Sharon remained supportive and patiently introduced me to what seemed to be my room, my things, and my routine. As far as I could determine there were no immediate issues between us. Despite the fact that Sharon was a single parent, we seemed to form a quite functional family. Most days Sharon worked as the morning shift manager of the Whistlestop Cafe at the main station. During the first two mornings I tried to reach my real parents.

"Madre, es tú?" I used my native Spanish.

I was hung up a few times. In the third day attempt, someone finally answered. "Quién es esso?"

Who is it? I didn't recognise the voice at the other end. It was my turn to hang up. I'd always been a level-headed person and I wouldn't fall prey of desperation so easy. I'd find an answer.

An ocean apart from my real family and home, I took that as challenge to my ability to remain focused under all the madness that was going on around me. So, I initially focused on getting my head around that situation and trying to recall what had exactly brought me to the ward 38.

Continues...

The Foreign Accent That Came From Space - 1 of 4

While collecting data from headlines of English papers for my MA dissertation, I came across a curious article about a rather strange language fact.

The following short story is based on such strange fact.

  

In the morning that I woke up in the ward 38 of the Brotherton Wing, at Leeds General Infirmary, I did not feel like myself. I mean, literally. I'd read Kafka's Die Verwandlung, but it was nothing like that. I had all my human parts in the right place and the face I saw in the mirror, as far as I could remember, was pretty much mine - with the familiar light frown lines of a man of 25. But that was just not me. I had no memory of how I had been brought to that hospital ward and the healthcare assistant was of little assistance on that question. Then this woman named Sharon, who I could not remember of meeting before, came affirming that she was my mother. I had to tell her that I had amnesia and had no memory of being acquainted with her. I lied. I knew perfectly well that I had no amnesia. That woman simply couldn't be my mother because I knew my mother well and she, unlike Sharon, couldn't speak a word of English in the first place. And I wasn't mad either, since my English accent certainly confirmed that Sharon had to have somehow made a mistake. In the minute I began to talk to Sharon, she made an expression of bewilderment.

“What happened t' your voice? I cannot understand you well.”

In the following day - based on the fact that my English sounded pretty much like that of a Latin American and on the information that Sharon fed to the senior staff nurse - I heard the news. “What?”

“Foreign accent syndrome.” The nurse practitioner who came that afternoon emphasised, visibly not convinced of her own words. “You must be suffering from foreign accent syndrome. It's rare. But that's the only explanation we can give you preliminary.”

“I heard you well. I've heard of this... syndrome once. But isn’t this the result of a stroke or a head trauma?” I questioned, observing the nurse's expression turn slightly uneasy.

“You're right. You present no apparent signs of stroke or head injury. But the community support officers who rescued you at Hyde Park informed us that they found you unconscious.” She moved her eyes over the records sheet in her hands, as if to fill her statement with some authority. “Whatever had brought you to unconsciousness must've affected your brain too...”

I drifted off while the nurse excused herself and left. Later, when Sharon appeared again, the head nurse came in person and tried to enlighten us a little.

“Sadly, cases of foreign accent syndrome have become oddly frequent in England in the last years. Yours, as far as we have knowledge, is the third case in the UK just this year.”

The head nurse seemed to have a concern with providing us information on that syndrome. In matter of minutes she gave us a mini lecture that made me feel less of an oddball case. In Devonshire - Southwestern England - an acute migraine sufferer named Sarah Colwill had a severe headache and, after passing out, woke up no longer speaking with her usual West Country lilt but with a Chinese accent instead. Just a hundred and thirty miles Northeast, in Gloucestershire, another case involved a woman named Kay Russell who had migraines as well and who, after a kip, woke up with a French accent. Under that perspective, my case was less unusual.

“The's not much for us to do here now. We're discharging you this evening and you can go back home with your mom.” Then, turning to Sharon, the head nurse proceeded. “Make sure he returns still this week to obtain a prescription from a local physician for an MRI scan of the brain. That should solve this foreign accent enigma.”

Just before making her way out of ward 38, I could swear I saw the head nurse give a wink to Sharon whilst they exchanged a light smile of complicity.

Continues...

Sunshine

Sunshine, in the OED, means 'sunlight unbroken by cloud'

But when the word sunshine is used in songs it hardly ever means sunlight at all. It's more likely to mean cheerfulness.

Cheerfulness is officially acknowledged in OED 
as a meaning of sunshine.

Such meaning is also acknowledged in the OED in the phrase ray of sunshine, meaning 
a person who brings happiness to others.

Caricature of the film Little Miss Sunshine
(2006)

Notice: sunshine above also means bringer of happiness. This matches the use of sunshine in My Girl - song by The Temptation from 1964. The words in the song explicitly states talking 'bout my girl.

Sunshine 'n cheerfulness/happiness, or bringer of happiness,

sounds like a natural association.

Sunny Day in May - Hyde Park (Leeds)

Sunshine evokes images of summer holidays, beaches, barbecues, picnics at the park, and so on. One may find strange, then, to learn that such association is not so obvious to some learners of English.

Reality Series from BBC Three

If you're a UK or US native speaker of English, you're probably used to lower temperatures most part of the year. Sunshine, then, is a sign of comfort, as opposite to a chilling shade spot, or a cloudy cold day.
Thus, sunshine often brings about unconscious associations with positive feelings.

 Even native speakers of English who don't realise such association through their own geographical experience, must be used to such positive associations. This happens, I assume, because they grow up hearing such word used in positive contexts.

The case is different for learners of English who happen to live in areas where sunshine is just an ordinary feature of the weather all year long - equatorial regions.

Here, sunshine may be mostly associated with high temp,
and be a sign of discomfort, of continuous heat.

Heat in Urban areas, and also in Backland / Outback areas.

Whereas a shade spot, or a cloudy day, is a sign of relief.

So, learners of English who have a different experience of sunshine, may need a more conscious realisation of the association sunshine (word) and cheerfulness/happiness.

The same probably is extended to related words, like sun, sunny, shine, hot, warm, warmth, and the kind.

So, next time you hear suchlike words in a song, poem, advert, whatever, pay attention and realise more consciously if they are used with a more or less literal meaning.

The Son - UK Paper

In the 23rd of July

the UK paper The Sun

was printed as The Son.

The unique issue of The Son

marked in the English language

the expression of a historic fact:

the birth of the future King of England.

The birth of the new prince in the 22 of July - date which coincides with my birthday by the way - triggered a social response that reminded me of the opening of The Lion King (1994).

Papers and other media was showing off the newborn to the whole of UK.

Judging by some signs I could spot, The Son was not the only expression of appreciation toward that fact.

'Congratulations to

T' Duke & Duchess of Cambridge

on the birth of their beautiful baby'

Sign at Marks&Spencer at

Oxford Street in London.

Also, The Son wasn't the only UK paper that used English wittily to express the uniqueness of that moment. Other papers - writers actually - did the same by using some peculiar remarks.

Some papers used a common expression used to announce the birth of a newborn male.

This expression, I assume, is used to highlight the fact that the newborn is a boy - thus, future heir of the throne.

Oh Boy! which a colloquial exclamation, however more informal, 

became another option to highlight the same fact in headlines.

 

Allusions to titles couldn't be left out.

Daily Mirror was ahead of the queue

to snatch the fancy (and obvious) choice

for the title of the classic French novella

The Little Prince (1943).

The Sun is left to allude to the

american sitcom starred by Will Smith

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (90's).

Fresh Prince is actually the rapper name that Will Smith gave to himself.

The Son, in its unique online issue, 

had been more daring in the choice of its allusion.

Replacing Eagle for Regal is one among the abundant

occurrences of oddities that appear in the headlines of UK papers. 

Eagle and Regal - save for the initial r-sound in Regal - sounds the same.

                    'The Eagle has landed' uttered by Neil Armstrong right after the moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission (1969) - already became title of a Book (1975).  'Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed' is the full sentence uttered by Armstrong.

                                                                                    In the dawn of 25th of July, after the royal baby's name is revealed, UK papers can't miss that chance to employ their creative English. Boy George not only recalls the baby's gender, but also reminds the name of another British celebrity.

Daily Express took the lead to pick the cleverest expression on the name.

By George!

is itself a deviation of another phrase, exactly By Jove!

By Jove! is used for emphasis or to indicate surprise (OED).

By George / By Jove are mild forms of  swearing in a way that avoids the word God (read Grammarphobia).

Nothing really spells 'news' more than the new uses of old expressions in English. And the newborn royal certainly brought the best of English to the UK papers.

A-Wake! Part Three

"...Wow... What a great name!"

Rich and Nomi from Radio Aire were praising my name after having read the email I wrote to them. I'd spent the night editing the final part of A-Wake! 
After a kip, hearing my name uttered with such consideration on the Breakfast show was a great way to wake up. 

With chills running down my spine, I mustered the focus again
and carried on with the speculations about Avicii's song.

...

Spirituality and  Success, seemingly, tie together the words in Wake.
Wake is about a challenge which is being taken on by some young person, who is warned off about potential pitfalls of endeavouring such challenge.

The young person responds to cautionary advices with irony,
which seems to be recurrent in many lines of Wake.

Irony in Wake gives me the impression that the young person possess a high level of confidence. Such confidence, I speculate, comes from the young's knowledge of some spiritual truth that's been explored in books by American authors of the 20th century.

Speculation naturally. But with every other line of Wake it's possible to feel a subtle reference to ideas similar to those from the referred works. 
Here's for your consideration:

Carrying the weight of the world can only mean being concerned with worry and fear of the life's burden.
 These lines remind me of Dale Carnegie's book.

Dale Carnegie is mostly known for How to Win Friends & Influence People (1936). Here, the main idea is that we can get a better response from other's behaviour toward us by altering our own behaviour toward others. It does echo the idea that events of reality somehow responds to our subconscious mind or thoughts (see A-Awake! Two).

I particularly haven't read How to Stop Worrying in depth. But skimming through it, I noticed one of its main parts: How to Keep from Worrying about Criticism. In the overall, the whole book emphasises the message that there's no good outcome on worrying and giving too much heed to stress - the weight of the world. The same idea is present in other works that deals with conquering success.

This is how the words Fear and Worry appear in Science.
"Every hour (...) you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you spend in worry, sets a current away from you in the whole domain of intelligent Substance."

This is how Fear and Worry appear in Secret.
"...you can't expect results from the subconscious when your conscious mind is full of fear or worry..."

Napoleon Hill, in Think & Grow Rich, wrote: 
"Worry is a state of mind based upon fear."
To explore the topic, Hill uses the heading Old Man Worry.
This, leads to the following lines.


 Growing old is associated with increasing fear (thus worry) and loosing enthusiasm, both in Secret and Think & Grow.

Secret has a chapter entitled Why Grow Old? which says:
"Youth (...) is a mental state. You can be just as brisk, just as active, (...) as you were ten or twenty years ago."

Think doesn't explore the subject as directly but hints at it.
"...PERSISTENCE brought an astounding triumph late in life, long beyond the age when most men and women are done with ambition to achieve."

That's a delicate topic, but the line  - wish that I could stay forever this young - is explicit in Wake. It's followed by - not afraid to close my eyes; this possibly means the attitude of paying no heed to criticism, remaing enthusiastic for life, and not worrying with the gaps (and pitfalls) between one's hopes (dreams) and its full realisation.

This may justify the lines that I skipped. 

Maybe they mean that paying too much attention and worrying to 'how' or the 'plans' to get there may handicap your enthusiasm to set foot on your journey to success.

Finally, before Wake repeats its ironic chorus, it states a final message.

These words remind me of the film The Matrix (1999) which centres around a game-like artificial reality where humans dwell - echoing Plato's Myth of the Cave.

In Matrix, once a person realises the nature of the game (simulated reality), he/she can be enabled to get more control over it. 

The final idea in Wake perhaps is that the young person is aware that life is a virtual-like Game which he/she can play and have control by accessing his/her subconscious mind. This idea is to a great extent the gist of Science, Secret, and Think & Grow. Such idea is naturally too complex to be explored here. But they seem to be the ideas that underlie the choice of each word and lines in Wake Me Up.

Whatever is the message of in the words of Wake, it undeniably has caused a great effect on people. On Radio Aire, quite a few times, I heard it's being considered the song of the year, and it continues topping charts around the world. Also, Wake was the lead single from Avicii studio album entitled TRUE. Avicii stated that it "is about me being true to my sound and my own influences..." Now, that can lead to a whole lot of other interpretations.

Thanks for reading. Keep checking for a next post.

Meanwhile, check out: The Book