Cellar Door

[Mithalwen]

I too have the Tolkiens' recordings and I was surprised, actually by JRR's slightly rural tinge ...and he speaks so fast! I am not surprised his students sometimes struggled to follow him! Christopher sound rather more patrician - maybe it was partly due to the subject matter, but it made me think of a certain type of Anglican clergyman declaiming from the pulpit. Nevertheless it is not untypical of his age and class.

Could we have that in IPA ? It looks quite Scottish the way you write it.... but surely the strangest Canadian accent is the Quebecois one - when I lived in France, I had a friend who hailed originally from Chicoutimi - we teased him unmercifully, telling him that a French-Canadian was someone who couldn't speak French OR English properly (Oh I'll get flamed for that,I know I will...).

From my early schoolbooks, I know I must have picked up a bit of the local "Hampshire burr" ( excessive "r"s all over the place) and my parents despaired of me ever learning to spell "water" correctly. I remember my mystified father saying it was spelt as it sounded. To me it sounded as if it had at least 3 "r"s just in the middle. The difference between the Hampshire accent and the better known, neighbouring West Country one is that we say Dorrrrrrrrrset and they say Daaaaaaaaaaaaaasset . Alas both are disappearing under the hideous slick of glottal stopping and the inability to sound "th" as anything other than "f". I have little hope of an improvement when the leader of Her Majesty's government, despite receiving his education at Fettes and Oxford, pronounces that word as gu'men. [For the record, I sound as if I could work for the World Service - unless I get overexcited or emotional when I sound like I am on Helium... or a banshee!]

Perhaps it is true that foreigners speak the best English - Once emerging from arrivals at Heathrow, my shoulder bag fell from the trolley and I was stopped by a young chinese man "Madam! You have dropped your reticule!".
I was instantly transported to the world of Jane Austen - quite delightful. So reticule is one of my "cellar doors" .

I wonderif the name of the "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" Production company 'Celador" was inspired by that comment of Tolkien?