by David, 1 August 2008 in: ramble

My nephew is a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan. If you have been living in a cave for the last few decades, it’s a British telly series based on the books of the same name, about a train engine called Thomas and his myriad train friends who all puff about on the island of Sodor doing fairly mundane train-y things and constantly having to be rescued from rickety bridges. It is all represented with wonderful model trains and puppets, and narrated in good English.

Now, if you are not yourself British you may be aware of a curious habit the English have of not pronouncing any T they don’t absolutely have to - and the narrator in this case is none other than Ringo Starr. Therefore the “Fat Controller” who gives each of the trains their missions for the day or hands out liberal ticking offs for being irresponsible, is pronounced “Fa’ Controller.”

Very young children don’t pick up on this and mentally fill in the T as adults do. In fact, very young children tend to drop entire vowels out of complicated words.

Which is how I found myself sitting on a train this week with a very excited three year old telling me at the top of his voice about the “fackin’ troll” while passengers in the rest of the carriage either convulsed with laughter or gave me hard stares.

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