You Say Potato Paperback – September 30, 2015

This is a charming and fun book by a father – son writing team. The father is David Crystal and the son is Ben Crystal. David is a professional linguist who has made part of his specialization the study of accents. His son Ben is a professional actor, who has done voice-over work, Shakespearian theater and other projects. David is particularly well-known for reconstructing the Shakespearian accent of Shakespeare’s time, an accent called “Original Pronunciation” (OP). You may have been lucky enough to have seen a video of them demonstrating OP where Ben shares a passage of Shakespeare in OP.David provides the intellectual heft of the book, while Ben provides amusing accounts of the importance of accents in his world of acting. I listened to this as an audiobook and the give and take between them, sometimes within chapters, and sometimes as they had of chapters, made for an entertaining production.The book is studded with eye-opening factoids. The first one is when David realized that the world had changed when Ben pronounced “schedule” as the American “sKeGule” rather than the British “sCHeJuAl.” The explanation for the change was American sitcoms, which have been influencing British English since the 1980s.I’ve always wondered at the British manage to communicate with each other despite what I imagine is the confusing swirl of thick, incomprehensible accents they must deal with.Ben does a nice job of inventorying the many accents in Great Britain and Ireland and shares the social attitudes that are a mystery to Americans. I had perceived that there was something untoward about the “Brummies” – people from Birmingham – but it seems that Brummies are considered dead last for honesty and intelligence simply because of their accent. The Crystals offer some explanations for this, including that Birmingham’s industrialization made visitors associate it with squalor and dirt.However, more important than that bit of social history may have been a character in a popular radio program who made use of an exaggerated Brummie accent to play a thick and dense character. This character seems to have cemented the stereotype in the minds of Britons thereafter, and serves as a warning about how easy it is for a bit of satire to wreck reputations and cement social prejudices. Ben suggests that what the good people of Birmingham need is a charismatic character or music group with a Brummie accent. Although Peaky Blinders might have had such an impact, it appears that this opportunity was botched with an unrealistic accent.The Crystals offer insights to accents past, current and future. For example, since 2000, there has been a reversal of the preference for the posh, “cut-glass” accent of “Received Pronunciation” (RP) in favor of the local accents, which are viewed as more authentic, honest and customer friendly. Likewise, because of increased mobility a kind of “Estuary English” which mixes East End Cockney with RP has developed.I recommend this as an audiobook. I think I got more out of actually hearing the Crystals drop in and out of accents, including the flat American accent with its exaggerated “Rs”, than I could have gotten out of it as a written text.

My undergraduate major was linguistics and, at 80, I still buy books in the field and read them eagerly. I enjoy doing accents, and grew up with a mother who was a Little Theater actress/director and taught several to me so we could have fun washing the after-supper dishes while conversing like stage Frenchwomen, Swedes, American Southern belles, etc. Among my linguistics book collection accents are generally ignored, so I thought the book might help plug the gap. Alas, it did not. Whenever Dr David Crystal contributed academic ideas to this book it became interesting--or at least MORE interesting than the narcissism of his actor son, Ben, who turned most of the book into a tedious, unamusing, autobiographical advertisement for himself as ACTOR, for TV programs I've never watched, and more than a chapter on the nuances of the Birmingham way of talking--at least on the telly. There are a few errors and the 2 indexes were worthless. Instead of a useful index of accent regions (Yorkshire, London East End, Glasgow, Birmingham, etc.) actor Ben put in alpha lists of actors and TV shows/films. Thank goodness the print is large and the number of pages short. I can't bear throwing out a book, so I brought it to my church's book sale shelf. Perhaps someone else will like it better.

This is a delightfully written book, and it arrived here in California with amazing speed.I finished reading all of it in just one evening; I couldn't put it down.Especially interesting was the map displaying the names of the numerous regional accents in the U.K. -- a great eye-opener to an an American such as me, who must travel 1,000 miles to encounter a noticeably different accent.

This is an entertaining book if you like discourse analysis and studyin (Mainly English) dialectical differences. There were parts where I was laughing at the two authors (a father and son team) and then going, "I didn't know that!" It will certainly stay in MY library and WILL get re-read.

It wasn't as good as David Crystal's other books.

Another great Crystal-clear book. It is written in the form of a dialogue as you read a chapter by David Crystal followed by a chapter by Ben Crystal. This delightfully creative form of the book gives the impression of a live talk, and if you have encountered the authors before - you will almost "hear the accents".Ben Crystal's tongue-in-cheek footnotes add a similarly creative dimension to the book as a reproduction of a live talk as does his beautiful narrative. As usual, you will find David Crystal's writing insightful, detailed and at the same time reader-friendly. The different perspectives that come from the background of the authors as a linguist and an actor make the book a really successful collaboration.Volumes can be written about the fascinating variety of English accents (or any accent, for that matter). In this lovely little book you learn why the Birmingham accent has been getting a bad press, how to "sound blue" (!), how to resurrect an accent (or, sound like Shakespeare!) and much more.And as the title says, you say potato and add your accent to the record-breaking collection of "potatoes" on the innovative accent map along the likes of Stephen Fry and Jeremy Paxman http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/bencrystal/yousaypotato.I highly recommend the book to all accent hunters and lovers.