Cow-d it really be? Have our ears herd this correctly? (Sorry, I can't help myself.)
Patrick Stewart — ahem, Sir Patrick Stewart — mooed up a storm on the podcast How To Do Everything, impersonating cows from various regions. You might even say Stewart was code-switching.
A listener who says she moos with "kind of an American, Nevadan accent" posed the question: Just how would a person moo in a British accent? (And, by the way, it's true: Cows do moo in regional accents.)
Sir Patrick Stewart steered the listener in the right direction with this response:
"It's not a simple, straightforward answer unlike, probably, any other country where cows moo as cows moo. In England, we're dominated by class, by social status and by location. So, for example, a cow that is in the field next to my house in West Oxfordshire would moo in one kind of way, and a cow in a field in the semi-industrial town I grew up in in the North of England would moo in another kind of way."
He continued to udder:
"Well, if I were at home in West Oxfordshire right now and I walked down my lane ... and I say, 'Hi, good morning, cows. And they would moo at me like this: 'Mooooooouhh.' Now that's a very conservative moo ... "
Want to ruminate more on Sir Patrick Stewart's code-switchy moos? Give the episode a listen, and if it behooves you, subscribe to the podcast.
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