Clean Monday, Fine (-ish) Art and Phonology

 Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday (shrove apparently meaning ‘to confess’) and Clean Monday are gone and done so we’ve eaten the special foods that lead us gently into the period of Lent.  We were invited to sit at our neighbours’ generous table of beans, potato salad, octopus, pease-pudding, stuffed vine-leaves, cuttle-fish, taramas, cabbage salad, pickled tomatoes,  to name only some – all absolutely delicious but ultimately not so gentle on the digestive system when, like me, you insist on sampling everything. 

Art classes continue and I continue to enjoy them. The strange thing is that I feel less confident about it than I did this time last year.  Then I was just beginning with oils, and didn’t feel capable of doing much at all. So any kind of vague facsimile produced was well-nigh joy-causing. Also what we drew and painted was wisely selected by our teacher who was well aware of our capabilities …. and limitations. 

 Now we choose our own subject matter, blithely unaware of the difficulties it may entail. In addition, every now and then I take on a project in the medium of water-colour which I’m finding a wee bit hard to handle but I’m determined to improve on. So I don’t get that sense of progress that I had last year and have more of a sense of frustration: knowing where I want to go but being aware of how remote these goals still are.

However, just to keep you posted with my process – rather than progress! – here are some of my latest endeavours.

My water-colour rose looked very washed-out so I tentatively tried a little splash of red which brightened things up and then  I decided that a general red wash would bring the flower more to life. I like the dew drops! 

 

                                                                                           

Next, in water-mixable oils, is my little, Shetland puffin – or something mildly resembling one. I’ve just discovered that these strange birds actually nest in crevices in the rocks or in little burrows which they hollow out themselves. 

                                                              

In one of our conversations in class, someone mentioned the French Post-Impressionist painter, famous for his Polynesian subjects but she couldn’t remember his name. There ensued a silence of brain-racking until, “Gaugin’ said I, exultant that the grey matter could still retrieve. I pronounced the final syllable as in ‘gratin’ only to be ‘corrected’ as my classmates wanted it rendered ‘go-gen’ both hard gs and with final syllable stress. Some have difficulty in producing this nasal sound: even Satcho in “La Vie En Rose’ pronounces ‘en’ as in ‘pen’.  

There can be an intrusive yod – a ‘y’ sound – brought into English words where they don’t exist: in Greece the name Andrew is often pronounced ‘Andriew’ as in ‘view’.

 The omission of the yod can also be problematic: a Slovenian friend was enthusing about a film she’d seen: ‘Two Doors’ as I took it to be. In this case, the omission of the necessary yod in the first syllable together with erroneous final stress had rendered Tudors unrecognisable for me.

 A borrowed phrase that eluded me thanks to that ubiquitous and erroneous final-syllable stress placement was ‘Sthroo’, a consonant cluster  repeated with speaker-surprise that I didn’t recognize it. Asking for an alternative expression, I was given the Greek word ‘diaphanous’  - ah! What they were saying was ‘see through’!

The short /I/ vowel as in bin, is often heard and pronounced as the longer /i/ as in bean. Add to this the fact that /S/ as in she is often heard and rendered as /s/, its closest equivalent as in see, and we have complications. 

Those pictures below indicate some of those: the seaside scene with a very young Neve, my brother and his wife’s lovely doggie, Jessie, and the tasty, sweet vegetable would all be pronounced as /bits/, confusing beach, bitch and beets……and we may as well throw in  bits, beats and beech as well !!

 

                                                          

In Greek the written consonant combination /gk/ usually produces the oral ‘g’ as in go, while the written /gg/ combination produces  ‘ng’ as in ring, depending on word position and sound environment, the sound ‘nk’ can also be produced. 

That is why the dear and recently-departed Demis Roussos, in one of his many, beautiful recordings, exhorts his audience to ‘Sink alonk with me’  and the actress, Trudie Styler, is said to be married to that famous singer/song-writer …..Stink!