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I know from watching enough Peter Morgan TV shows and movies that you address the queen as "ma'am" to rhyme with "ham," not "ma'am" to rhyme with "farm."
But on "Inspector Lewis," Lewis and Hathaway addressed their supervisor, Jean Innocent, as "ma'am" to rhyme with "farm" (although with their soft R sounds, they make it sound more like "mom").
Why are their two ways of pronouncing that word that vary according to whom you're addressing?
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | July 3, 2020 7:33 PM |
Accents vary, OP.
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | July 3, 2020 5:43 PM |
[quote] Why are their two ways
How many ways are there to pronounce, "Oh, dear!"?
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | July 3, 2020 5:47 PM |
It's all about class, OP, in Britain, although the character of James Hathaway did grow up hobnobbing with the gentry and went to Cambridge. Lewis has a Geordie accent. Both solid bourgeois and working class.
As for the aristos and that German family, it's ma'am has in "ham." It's very hard to understand them at times. The Queen has toned her high-pitch "My husband an I" down, but watch an interview with Princess Anne with her first husband right before they were married, and you might strain yourself to understand what she is saying. You'll also come to see how dull and stupid they are!
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | July 3, 2020 5:57 PM |
Maybe 'Ma'am' as 'Marm' is exactly to distinguish from the usage reserved exclusively for The Queen.
'Ma'am' in a 'regional' accent also runs the risk of sounding like 'Mam', as an Alan Bennett character might refer to his or her mother.
Such are the infinite nuances of the old English Class System, still just about hanging on. Enjoy them, if you like, while you can.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | July 3, 2020 6:03 PM |
It's weird though that in "The Queen" and in "The Crown," both Tony Blair and then someone else (Harold Wilson? Ted Heath?) are explicitly instructed by courtiers when they first meet the queen to "address her as 'Your Majesty' when you first speak to her, and then afterwards as 'ma'am' to rhyme with 'ham.'"
If it were just a regional difference, I would think it would not matter how people pronounce it, since they will use all their other regional pronunciations anyway when they speak. In any case, the Queen is supposedly so far above class differences you would think she wouldn't care. Whenever people break the rules of royal protocol with her (such as when Michelle Obama hugged her, or when Trump walked in front of her), she never seems to mind.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | July 3, 2020 7:33 PM |
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