I believe that the film "Our Souls at Night" came out in 2016. Starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda it was a light-hearted suburban feel-good romp with many comical moments. If you want to know more about it you can search on Google. You might even have watched it.
Over here in England, for reasons I could not at first understand, the title of the film caused much amusement. I remember that chat show host Graham Norton tittering about it during his interview with Jane Fonda. She looked as non-plussed as I felt. What was so funny?
Here in Yorkshire we pronounce our vowels clearly. Let us focus on the first word of the title. If someone accidentally hit you with a cricket bat you would probably shout out "Ow!" not "Ah!". Taking the "Ow!" that's how Yorkshire folk would pronounce the first part of "Our". In contrast posh southerners in the London area would say "Ahr".
Southerners have similar difficulties in pronouncing "flower" and "tower" for example. The way they say "tower" is almost exactly the same as the "tar" that you find on the surface of paved roads. Anyway, when reading this film title aloud they would say "Arseholes at Night". It's no wonder that up here in Yorkshire we did not get the joke.
A film about arseholes in the night would not appeal to me but I guess that some visitors to this corner of The Blogosphere (mentioning no names) would be gripped by it.
By the way, as well as having a literal meaning that involves buttocks, hairs and pimples , an "arsehole" can be a certain type of obnoxious human being - as with the American word "asshole". Examples of "arseholes" are trolls who patrol Blogworld, spammers, Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk.
Finally, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda are definitely not arseholes in my humble opinion. They have made some great films and in addition to that have both done a lot of good in the world. She is now 85 years old and he is 86.
I watched that movie and the ending made me sad.
ReplyDeleteI guess an asshole is an asshole is an arsehole in many languages.
There are lots of them around.
DeleteHow strange. Being a Londoner myself, albeit not a posh one I have never heard ow pronounced as ar.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could exemplify with sound.
DeleteThey are still an attractive couple and have aged well. Robert Redford always a favourite of mine - I loved his films. I'll have to look out for this one.
ReplyDeleteI heartily agree with the observations in Ms. Moon's second sentence!
Shouldn't horrible Boris be included in your list?
"Asshole" is too mild a rebuke for that fat, pompous ******* ****** ****!
DeleteThanks for the clarification. I would have never caught on either.
ReplyDeleteP.S. My most popular blog post according to the stat counter was one I wrote nearly two decades ago entitled, "Things That Make Noise In the Night".
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how certain blogposts are very much more popular than others. It is possible that Russian or Chinese bots may be involved.
DeleteI didn‘t get the joke, either, as I would never pronounce ‚our‘ any other way than ‚hour‘.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to talk about these things without sound.
DeleteI pronounce our more like hour so I didn't understand why the title would be funny either--until you explained it. I enjoyed the book (we read it in Book Club) and the film was OK. I like Redford more than Fonda, but they are both excellent actors.
ReplyDeleteIn Yorkshire "Our" and "Hour" sound almost exactly the same. Like "bower".
DeleteJane Fonda & Donald Sutherland in *Klute*.
ReplyDeleteRemember the sense of menace from the first scene, all dialogue ?
Directed by Alan J Pakula who did The Parallax View (1974)
with Warren Beatty, a conspiracy fable set in Seattle, echoes of Dallas '63.
Jane Fonda played Lillian Hellman in *Julia* (1974)
with Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett.
The real Lillian Hellman was a bitter Stalinist.
She'd sit in the homes of her rich friends drinking Martinis and watching
the Moscow show trials and she'd scream at the innocent doomed men.
Solzhenitsyn's great *Gulag Archipelago* has been reissued in
a single abridged edition with an intro by Jordan Peterson.
If I followed up all of your connections John, there would be no time left for living.
DeleteYou and Tasker have the life.
DeleteI read the blogs of all your readers, and I'm the richer for them.
A pal is waiting for the final volume of Robert Caro's life of LBJ.
This will cover Vietnam and the anti-war protests of the Sixties.
I have read a short book of Caro's, *Working*, on his research methods.
He works alone in an office in Manhattan. He must be 80 at least.
I'm fairly certain Redford and Fonda wouldn't star is Arseholes At Night. Would they?
ReplyDeleteTrump and his family would be well cast in such a film.
DeleteI liked the book but I've never seen the movie. I pronounce our like hour as well.
ReplyDeleteWell I pronounce "our" like "hour" too but I bet I sound quite different from you.
DeleteAnd then there are different kinds of assholes. My friend calls her son a drunken ass hole and her ex is just an asshole.
ReplyDeleteAlso there's another asshole that is very good for emptying waste.
DeleteI said the swear word to myself, oh. I left the room to say it aloud in case R took offence. Yes, it sounds very much like the swear word to me.
ReplyDeleteIs R anti-swearing then?
DeleteJust paranoid, thinking it was directed at him.
DeleteI didn't get the joke either until you explained it to me, Neil. Which didn't help the joke at all anyway!?! : )
ReplyDeleteYou mean you weren't rolling around on the floor holding your sides?
DeleteHere in Oz, I'd say the primary sense of a-hole is the figurative one. Primary spelling not yet "ass-" but give that time.
ReplyDelete("Fanny pack" on the other hand looks set to raise eyebrows here for a good while to come.)
Literal sense firmly commanded by "arse" ("ass" a bit slower to take on so far).
Suggest that even in jest you should be careful in speculating about tastes of "certain visitors." It's a sensitive area (trying to head off another snigger here), a bit like slang terms (originally derogatory) for minority groups which are now verboten to others. Fixation on that aspect of "certain" sexual preferences is often a bit like invocation of "woke" or "political correctness" by those who proclaim their antipathy to both.
Thanks Marcellous. Great contribution. Is a fanny pack filled with ice to bring blessed relief to that intimate area when it's hot?
DeleteDown here in Aus, "our" is pronounced the same as "hour" and "flour" for most people, although I have heard "ower" and "flower" (flour) and some immigrants I worked with would rhyme "flour" with "your" and be saying "floor" until I corrected them. They all agreed that English is tricky. I've never heard of that movie.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to talk about pronunciation without exemplifying through actual sound.
DeleteBath/Baaaath, flat 'A' or long drawn out 'A'. Sometimes it all boils down to class or culture, unfortunately in this country, we identify by speech. 'Received Pronunciation' was the words out years ago all the BBC announcers had it but now there are plenty of dialects to be found on the BBC.
ReplyDeleteNational BBC has a penchant for Scots and Irish presenters. Yorkshire hardly gets a look in. "Naa then thi. 'Ere's t'BBC evenin' news wi Yorksher Pud tha' knows!"
DeleteWell I'm a southerner and pronounce flower and tower the same as you. I think you are referring to toffs who speak an entirely different English! I get cross about German being pronounced badly. I wish the car Porsche would be said with an "a" at the end, as that is how a German word with an e at the end is pronounced. It is not Porsch but Porsch-a. It so annoys me when even people in the industry pronounce it wrongly.
ReplyDeleteHello Addy, the e at the end of Porsche is not really pronounced like an a. Think of how the e in the words best, rest, test… sounds, and you get closer to the real thing.
DeleteWell I know as I have studied German and lived in Germany, but what I was trying to get at was that the e at the end is not silent as many English people seem to think
DeleteSome English speakers, need to have subtitles to be understood.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've seen it or heard of it - and I think I would have had to heard it pronounced the "right" (=wrong!) way to get why it made anyone giggle...
ReplyDeleteI would never have connected that title to the word "arseholes." I think our American pronunciation of "our" is closer to the Yorkshire version than the tony London one.
ReplyDelete