Soapen University

If Soaps like Coronation Street are being used to teach foreigners about Britain and the English language, Mark Simpson wonders what kind of Britain they'll be expecting to find.

Some might regard it as the homework of their dreams. Others, a cruel and unusual punishment. As part of their training, foreign nurses and doctors recruited to fill shortages at Macclesfield District General Hospital in Cheshire have been told to watch episodes of the Manchester soap Coronation Street. Health chiefs hope it will give these new recruits, who are apparently fluent in American English – in other words, they’re avid viewers of Baywatch and E.R. - a grasp of living, regional English like wot it’s spoke, and help them master such colloquialisms as ‘by eck’ (gosh), ‘’ow are ya diddling’? (how are you), ‘jiggered’ (exhausted), and ‘peaky’ (unwell). After all, you never know when Vera Duckworth might need her gallstones removed.

A spokesman for Granada TV, makers of Coronation Street, pronounced it ‘fantastic’ news (well, it’s one way of combating falling soap viewing figures), and applauded the hospital chiefs for recognising how closely the series ‘mirrored real life’. But just how closely do the soaps mirror ‘real life’? What kind of regional ‘English’ do they converse in? And what kind of ‘England’ will foreigners be familiarising themselves with by attending this, ahem, Soapen University?

Well, the would-be soap student will find little excuse for neglecting their homework. Even on a Friday night: the four flagship soaps are lined up one after t’other, for a two-hour study session, beginning at 7pm on ITV with the tale of everyday Yorkshire folk, Emmerdale. The opening sequence shows lots of fast, exciting aerial footage of dales, sheep, crags and reservoirs - obviously people in ‘Yorkshire’ are not only farming, outdoor types but fly around in helicopters a lot. Oddly, though, once the action begins, no one actually seems to be a farmer, own a helicopter or even venture outdoors (location shots are so expensive). Mostly they spend their time sitting around in a pub called The Woolpack gossiping and ordering hot food which mysteriously never steams.

But the most peculiar thing about ‘Yorkshire’ is how few of the people who live there actually have Yorkshire accents, and even those that do don’t seem to use any expressions that might not travel beyond Ilkley Moor. There are however several loud-mouthed cockernee ladies up here, dropping their aitches all over the place and lots of posh people with home counties accents - perhaps property prices have driven them oop north? (Or is it viewing demographics?) You can tell the posh people in ‘Yorkshire’ because they’re very unpopular and have leather three-piece suites and bookshelves. Everyone else has chintzy sofas and stripped pine dressers festooned with plates. No one, not even posh people, can afford windows or televisions (they must always look inwards; never outwards).

There are two black people in ‘Yorkshire’: A cleaning lady and a young ‘street’ cheeky-chappy called Danny, who is permitted the strongest local accent of all the characters. He doesn’t know any other black people. There are no shops or nightclubs in ‘Yorkshire’. Everything you might wish for is to be found at the Post Office. Which is just as well, as you never see any cars in ‘Yorkshire’. However, when people who aren’t posh are filmed on their chintzy sofas we can hear the sound of heavy traffic. Obviously Yorkshire folk, pining for real automobiles, like to play ambient traffic noise on their hi-fis.

Emmerdale works itself up into a suspenseful moral dilemma and the credits roll, and we stay with ITV but whiz over the Pennines to ‘Lancashire’ for Coronation Street, and some of those famous colloquialisms. But while the accents are generally more native than they are in ‘Yorkshire’, there’s actually not much more in the way of authentic idiom. I counted only one ‘ay up’ and even that was from a joke character. Gratifyingly, a lady called ‘Audrey’ with big hair, did warn one young upstart with a facial piercing, “You’ll soon get the edges knocked off you, young fella-me lad,” but that was as ‘colourful’ as it got. True, I couldn’t understand anything a mechanic called ‘Kevin’ said, but then I’m told that no one in Lancashire does either.

There don’t appear to be any black people in Lancashire, but there are quite a few Asians. However, they very kindly allow a white person to manage the corner shop.

As in ‘Yorkshire’, there’s no nightlife, no one watches television, unless they’re depressed or a dangerous loner. No one ever phones before coming round. However, unlike Yorkshire, there are jobs here: People work in a clothes factory, a pub, a shop and a garage. There must also be a tanning salon, as a lot the white folks have orange faces, especially Kevin. Despite the presence of a garage, no one seems to be able to actually able to afford a car (this is still the north). In fact, there appear not to be any roads in ‘Lancashire’ at all, in case they give people the idea that they might be able to leave.

‘Corrors’ leaves us on a murderously vertiginous cliff-hanger (a very nice, mousey housewife's hubby is a secret serial killer - I think the neighbours will have something to say about that) and we switch over to BBC1 and ‘dahn sarf’ for Eastenders (8pm) - zooming in from outer space towards the thriving, throbbing global Metropolis that is London but then veering past the U-bend of the Thames and finding ourselves in Albert Square.

Apparently, there is one family that runs the East End - and as far as I can tell the whole of the South East. The head of this family is an elderly female publican in a wig who wears cerise and peach twin sets and lots of gold jewellery. She enforces her will by baring her teeth and jabbing her finger over the bar she can barely see over. The ‘South East’ is very cramped, and so everything seems to be two-thirds scale, including her. Perhaps this is why there is more DRAMA in Eastenders than in the other soaps – you can tell it’s real life stuff because most of the men possess no hair and no razor capable of shaving them closer than three days’ growth. One, the son of the matriarch, wears black shirts two sizes too small and, perhaps as a consequence, is prone to turning turn pink and beady eyed, especially when he says things like: ‘Ahmm not an unreasonable man. Unless people MESS ME ABAHT!!’ Maybe because of the pollution (this being the congested ‘South East’ you might actually glimpse the odd taxi or van, but still no cars), there are a lot of sore throats and blocked nasal passages, especially in common-but-likeable gutsy girls. There are black people and Asians in London, but, like the white people, they all belong to one friendly, unhappy community.

As in all British media nowadays, enouncing an ‘h’ in the ‘East End’ is forbidden by local bye-law (unless you’re a doctor or newsreader). ‘Th’ has to pronounced ‘f’; ‘ing’ as ‘nk’ - as in ‘sumfink’. Meanwhile ‘t’ in the middle of a word, especially if you’re threatening someone, should be silent: e.g. ‘WHERE IS MY DAUGH-ER??’ But for all these familiar tropes, I heard none of the rich and ripe tradition of cockney vernacular and slang that you might hear from a real Londoner like, say, Madonna.

Eastenders bruises it’s way to a winding climax and it’s over to Channel Four and back to the north for Brookside and our last lesson in How Real People Live.

‘Brookie’ is of course set in Liverpool, which is technically in the North West, like Coronation Street, but then Liverpool is another country. Or at least Brookside’s version is: The opening credits show us that ‘Liverpool’ is a city of greenery, pedestrian precincts, public footpaths and pleasant modern housing estates. In fact, everyone in ‘Liverpool’, even the one recovering drug addict, lives on a close in a detached or semi-detached house with double glazing. There are no pubs, because Scousers don’t drink anything save mugs of tea in their echoing living rooms, chatting to their neighbours and in-laws about plot developments.

People in ‘Liverpool’ are however permitted the strongest accents of all the soap regions, but then scouse is the internationally recognised language of the Beatles, Cilla Black and Big Brother winners – and is the main reason for giving one small city a whole soap to itself. Nonetheless, I still couldn’t find any evidence of local vernacular that might scare off non-scouse viewers - or educate foreign nurses. Instead, a lot of sentences begin and end with ‘Ey!’. Slightly scally or shifty characters are allowed to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘d’, and the word ‘that’ is overworked, as in the phrase: ‘Dat’s grayte, dat is’ which can be sarcastic or sincere, depending on the position of the eyebrows. (See also The Harry Enfield Show).

The final, ‘shocking’, ‘twist in the tale’ of today’s soap-opera realism is that it doesn’t ‘really’ offer a portrait of regional English life or language, just a bland illusion of it. And, perhaps, a ghostly echo of some of its rhythms. Even ‘Corrors’ has become deracinated, middle class and ‘global’. The poor foreign nurses forced to watch this stuff will only end up being able to understand the bloody managers who told them to watch it – which isn’t exactly a useful skill. Mind, they will have something to laugh about at work the next day with real live local people.

ENDS

© Mark Simpson 2002

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