Like many people, I am careless and sloppy in my speech. Droppin’ final g, glieeding or not gliding on vowels, generous use of regionalisms (sho nuf!), and in general not what you hear from articulate speakers. I have observed foreign visitors, who understand and speak correct English, totally mystified by things they hear from my fellow countrymen, things we all hear every day, of course.
Probably the greatest difference in the everyday speech of Americans and Europeans is the importance of vowels. In most European languages vowels carry a lot of grammatical freight, distinguishing gender, number, tense of verbs, and so on. Chinese vowels have three or four tones that may radically change a word’s meaning.
Ancient Greek similarly had subtle vowel intonations resulting in not-so-subtle differences of meaning. A wonderful example is furnished by the following story.
Hegelochos was a tragic actor of some reknown in 5th century Athens. Sometime in 408 bc, he was apparently nursing a mildly sore throat while he was playing the title rôle in a performance of Euripides’ Orestes. In the very last line of the play he was to declaim “After the storm, I see 'tis calm again." But his throat tensed up slightly and it came out “After the storm I see a weasel”, sending the audience into roars of laughter. What?! – a weasel?
It’s hard for us to appreciate the slight slip of the tongue that caused this hilarious blunder. It hinges on the difference between galén (γαλήν), "calm," and galên (γαλῆν), "weasel," that is, the difference between the acute and circumflex accents, which are pronounced slightly differently. Poor Hegelochos’ reputation never quite recovered.
Is this a true story? Yep. It’s attested by several reputable authors of the time and over a period of at least two decades. So be careful what you say - and be calm, don't be a weasel.
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