Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

The very first lesson on my first day at Roundhay was my favourite subject, Latin, and I was pleased to find that I appeared to be more advanced than the rest of the boys in that subject. After a few minutes I was told to read some Latin out loud and that prompted lots of giggles because no-one had told me that at Roundhay the Latin letter V was always pronounced as a V whereas at QEGS the classical pronunciation was always used where V sounded like the English W. I soon realised that the Perfect Tense of the verb to love, amavi amavisti amavit etc, sounded much more masculine when the Vs were pronounced as Vs and not Ws! Nevertheless it took some getting used to. I did wonder, however, how anyone really knew how the ancient Romans had pronounced their language.

It was not only Latin as spoken in Leeds that had had its quirks. I had to learn quickly, in the interests of what today's teenagers would probably call street cred, to drop the fairly refined version of the Yorkshire accent I'd been forced to use at the QEGS in Wakefield and adopt the distinctive Leeds dialect. I caused laughter when I pronounced my aitches and said that I lived in 'Hare-hills' and went to 'Round-hay' School. My school mates mimicked me, mostly in a friendly, bantering fashion, I think. At Roundhay, initial aitches were almost always dropped and glottal stops were very frequently used. The teachers made absolutely no attempt to correct us. They probably spoke that way themselves but I can't remember if that were so. Throughout my time at Roundhay I always thought it rather odd that although the French and Latin teachers insisted on correct pronunciation of those languages, no-one was concerned about the correct pronunciation of English. So, I learned to say that I had moved from 'Wa'field', that I now lived in 'Are'ills and that I went to 'Roundi' school and then I was soon accepted as one of the crowd. Who would have thought that ten miles could made so much difference?

The Leeds dialect was my downfall when I went off for RAF Aircrew Selection several years later but later still, when I worked in Arabic-speaking countries, the Yorkshire 'glottal stop' was a positive advantage in learning Arabic where the glottal stop is a fully-fledged consonant in its own right. While I easily mastered that aspect of Arabic, it took me longer to master the two quite differently-sounding Hs in Arabic. Furthermore, when there is a H in an Arabic word, it is always pronounced and never dropped.