You Say Potato: Event and Book Review

One of the many festivals that comes to Edinburgh in August is the International Book Festival. The only event I got to go to was a talk by David Crystal. He was talking about his two latest books, one of which talked about dialects, and the other accents (which he co-wrote with his son). I had picked up and read the latter, called You Say Potato, and I was very excited to hear what he had to say.

I read You Say Potato quite quickly because I found the book easy to read and quite funny at times. I liked the father-son dynamic. They switched off explaining different topics and it very much felt like a dialogue between two experts on the topic of accents. It would have been very easy for these experts to get really technical, but they did a really good job of writing the book for anyone. As a student of linguistics, I could have understood a more technical explanation of the topic, but I was really glad it wasn't so pedantic. This was a book I read in my own time for fun, so I enjoyed its being easy to understand.

I think anyone who has a casual interest in accents would enjoy this book, but it's not too simple for a student of linguistics, as long as you are willing to look past their system of transcription (not IPA). I understand they did that so anyone could understand it, but I think it would have been easier for me personally if they had transcribed things into IPA.

I really liked how they made little checklists for several different kinds of accents and how to identify them. Having lived in the UK for a year now, I have thought about the characteristics of accents here, so it was kind of cool to see a lot of them written down. I think this book would be more interesting to someone who had a significant amount of exposure to British accents, otherwise too much of it might be completely new information.

Another reason I sort of wish the book hadn't focused so much on British accents is that there are a lot of cool accents in the US and in other parts of the world, where English may or may not be an official language, but is popular anyway, such as India, South Africa, Singapore, etc. A lot of what is interesting in those places has more to do with dialect, but those places definitely have their own accents that could have been discussed more. I understand that the authors are from the UK, thus expanding on other areas of the world would have involved a lot more work and would have resulted in a much longer book.

So I read the book before going to the event, which was good. Although I am glad I hadn't read both books before the event, because I found the part of the talk about the book I hadn't read more engaging.

I was pretty surprised to see how many people were in the audience for the event. It did not, however, surprise me that we were probably the youngest people there by a few decades.

The talk was really great. David Crystal is a great public speaker. He is engaging and funny, as is his son. I am now extremely interested in reading the other book he talked about, The Disappearing Dictionary, which is all about cool dialect words that have fallen into disuse and are being forgotten. 

My two favorite parts of the event were without question the presentation of OP (Original Pronunciation), which is a recreation of the accent that might have been used in the time of Shakespeare. I had already read about this in the book, but when Ben Crystal (David's son) recited one of Shakespeare's sonnets in OP, I was completely amazed. It is so unlike any accent I have ever heard, yet it sounds so familiar. It has characteristics of modern English accents, but at times it sounds Irish or Scottish or American. I am amazed by the work that was put into reconstructing the accent and also by the result of that work. 

The other highlight of the event was much more unexpected. For some reason, David Crystal finished the talk by rapping. David Crystal, for those who don't know, is a 74-year-old man from North Wales. I was definitely not expecting that to happen, but I'm so glad it did because it was absolutely hilarious.

After the event, we went to the signing table and I got my ticket signed by both David and Ben Crystal, which was pretty cool, but the original plan was to get my book signed (I sadly forgot it at home).

In line to meet Ben and David Crystal

I am so glad I got to go to the event and I am excited to read more of David Crystal's books!