This summer I went to the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. As you may know, it is the story of a Eliza Doolittle, a young woman who speaks in a Cockney dialect but wants to learn how to speak in a form of standard British English called Received Pronunciation. A linguist named Henry Higgins finds her on the streets of London and boasts that he could make a fine lady out of her by changing the way she speaks and acts.
[Photo from the Lincoln Center Beaumont Theater https://www.lct.org/shows/my-fair-lady/]
Eliza wants to change her position in life from selling flowers on the street to owning her own flower shop. To do that, she believes that she must learn to speak better. Therefore, she asks Professor Higgins to help her. In the photo, we can see that Professor Higgins is trying to teach Eliza to change her accent. To make a long story short, Eliza succeeds in changing her accent with the professor's grueling exercises and unpleasant bossiness, but it takes her longer to find happiness. A young man named Freddy loves her, and we see her leave with him. Henry Higgins is sad when she leaves, but she returns to him only to say goodbye.
So of all the Broadway shows, I went to see the one about a linguist!
Vocabulary:
Broadway musical (noun) - a show on Broadway in NY that involves singing and dancing
Cockney dialect (noun) - a type of English spoken in London's East End, a poor area
Received Pronunciation (RP) ( noun) -- the type of English that Queen Elizabeth II speaks
linguist (noun) -- a scientist that studies language
boasts (verb) -- brags, talks about himself as if he is very important and can do anything he wants
to make a long story short (idiom) -- to tell something briefly/quickly, summarize
grueling (adjective) -- very difficult, very hard to do
bossiness (noun) -- telling someone what to do
Vocabulary Exercise:
Fill in the blank with the correct vocabulary word.
1. The trip to Manhattan was very difficult or ______________ through the snow and ice. But we had tickets to see a wonderful _________________ with lots of singing and dancing.
2. My teacher is a ______________ She studies types of English such as __________________ and ____________________.
3. There is a man at work who thinks he is great and important. He always ____________ about how great he is. Other workers dislike his ________________ when he tells them what to do.
4. ________________, I will only tell you a quick summary of the events.
Grammar Point: The verbs in the entry above are mostly in the third person form in the present tense. This is formed by adding an -s to the base form of the verb after he/she/it:
want--wants (Eliza wants)
ask-- asks (She asks)
succeed-- succeeds (Eliza succeeds)
Grammar/Writing Exercise: Write a 5-sentence paragraph about a television show that you like. All your sentences should be in the present tense. Be sure to use the third person form where needed.
