You Say Potato, Ben Crystal
You Say Potato, Ben Crystal
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You Say Potato
A Book About Accents

Author: Ben Crystal, David Crystal

Narrator: Ben Crystal, David Crystal, Hilton McRae, Jane Savage

Unabridged: 7 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 05/21/2015


Synopsis

Some people say sconn, while others say schown.

He says bath, while she says bahth.

You say potayto. I say potahto

And-

-wait a second, no one says potahto. No one's ever said potahto.

Have they?

From reconstructing Shakespeare's accent to the rise and fall of Received Pronunciation, actor Ben Crystal and his linguist father David travel the world in search of the stories of spoken English.

Everyone has an accent, though many of us think we don't. We all have our likes and dislikes about the way other people speak, and everyone has something to say about 'correct' pronunciation. But how did all these accents come about, and why do people feel so strongly about them? Are regional accents dying out as English becomes a global language? And most importantly of all: what went wrong in Birmingham?

Witty, authoritative and jam-packed full of fascinating facts, You Say Potato is a celebration of the myriad ways in which the English language is spoken - and how our accents, in so many ways, speak louder than words.

About Ben Crystal

Ben is an actor, author, and creative producer and explorer of original practices in Shakespeare rehearsal and production. He is an Associate Artist at the Shakespeare North Playhouse, and a patron of Shakespeare Week. He is the co-author of Shakespeare's Words (Penguin 2002), The Shakespeare Miscellany (Penguin 2005) and An Illustrated Dictionary of Shakespeare (OUP 2015, shortlisted for the 2016 Educational Writer of the Year Award) with his father, David Crystal. He wrote Springboard Shakespeare - a quartet for Arden Shakespeare / Bloomsbury, and his first solo book, Shakespeare on Toast - Getting a Taste for the Bard (Icon 2008) was shortlisted for the 2010 Educational Writer of the Year Award.He brought together the Passion in Practice Shakespeare Ensemble and was invited with his father to explore original pronunciation (OP) in the newly finished Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe over 2014-2016. He founded theShakespeareEnsemble.com, an international ensemble who make full-scale productions of Shakespeare plays in 3 days or less, exploring a fusion of Elizabethan rehearsal methods and modern physical theatre techniques. They create work that responds to the environment, the community, and the space they find themselves playing in.He gave the English Council Lecture at the British Council on Speaking the bright and beautiful English of Shakespeare. His TEDx talk was called Original Practices: Shakespeare's Craft. He tweets from @bencrystal and gives workshops & talks on performing Shakespeare around the world.


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