Following on from today's earlier post about the different spelling and slang in English-speaking countries (which in turn had been prompted by a post over at Big Al's Books and Pals), I was amused by two (British) newspaper reports I read on Adele's reaction to winning the Best Album award at the Grammys.
First I read about it in the Independent. They reported that Adele had shouted, 'Mom, gold is good.'
Next I watched a short video clip on The Telegraph. They captioned it 'Girl did good. Adele tribute to Mum.'
The Telegraph had it right. If you watch the clip you can see that she says, 'Mum, girl did good.' She's from Tottenham and she speaks like a typical north London girl: 'Oh. My God. Fank you so much. Fank you. Ooh. Urgh. Hello! I just, first of all, wanna say, Mum! Gel did good! Mum, I love you. I'm so sorry you're not here. Erm. And I also wanna say a big fank you to Rick Rubin who taught me about quality control...' There's a nice London glottal stop on 'quality'. I won't transcribe it all but, for Americans who are interested in such things, there's also a good use of 'rubbish' in context, above 45 seconds in, and 'you lot' right at the end.
We don't say mom over here. We say mum. The Independent has corrected their error now but they must have taken it from an American news feed as you can see plenty of reports using that phrase if you search for it.
Congratulations to Adele for winning six Grammys. Girl did good.
