Thursday 11 April 2013

Mare of Chicago or Night Mayor?

I posted way back about the move in BrE towards AmE pronunciation of "mayor", not always sounding the /r/ but with more stress than formerly on the -yor. This made it two syllables, rather than one as before, when it was the same as "mare".

I joked that this might be because we were copying the Americans reluctance to get involved in confusion or cracks about standing for mayor, or running for mare. Not so silly as I thought, in that, I notice, the joke occurred in "Boss", starring Kelsey Grammer [sic]. This is well worth watching but, too hard on corruption - and, one might say, much of the American way of life - it has been dropped, I think after its first series.

The latest episode on UK TV (or Sky Atlantic) opened with a nightmare / night mayor sequence about forcing a large pill down a horse's throat. Later the Grammer mayor character makes this dream explicit by punning on mare / mayor. Is someone passing on my ideas to US media or channel(l)ing me to satellite chan(n)el(l)s? *** NB IWS (Irony Warning System) in operation.

Btw, this reminds me of south London comedian Arthur Smith, who calls himself "the Night Mayor of Balham" (with pun on nightmare, for those who have pronunciations which don't allow this wordplay).

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