We should welcome the fact that English accents change over time - unlike conservative French.
Richard Morrison
The Times
December 19, 2006
'Ot un'er the coller 'bow how we spee' the muvver tung
Richard Morrison
Cor lumme, wotcha no? A fowzan’ yeers af’er ’em blimmin’ Normans came an’ skroodup good ol’ Anglersaxern wiv ’em fancy froggy wurds an’ wotnot, peep’l are still get’n ’ot un’er the coller ’bow how we spee’ the muvver tung. Yeah, I’m tork’n’ ’bow nunuvavan the Queen’s Inglish innit. An’ yer know hoos in the fierin’ line now? Only ’Er Majerstee ’erself, gorblessa.
It’s true. A professer of phonetics at the University of Munich has done a survey of all the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts. And guess what? He’s found that she has changed with the times. In 1952, the prof tells us, she would have said something like: “I see thet Tottenhem lorrst to West Hem on Seterday, don’t yew kneow?” Now, apparently, it would be closer to: “Wooja bleevi’! Spurz got stuft by the ’ammers on Sa’erday.” Just as if she was chatting to old Babs Windsor down the Queen Vic!
Well, you can imagine the kerfuffle this revelation has caused in the more reactionary parts of the media. “Good grief,” some commentators are fuming. “If the most appalling plague to strike this great nation since the Black Death — namely Estuary English — has now reached the very portals of Buck House, what are we coming to? It was bad enough when the Prime Minister started dropping his “t”s in the middle of words to show what an ordinary bloke he is. But the Queen as well? Is this the end of civilisation as we know it?”
And there’s worse. According to another professor of phonetics (how many professors of phonetics does it take to change a language?) today’s teenagers urgently need elocution lessons, because they speak so badly that employers can’t tell what they are saying. Which only goes to show that very little has changed in the century since Shaw wrote that “it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”.
And it’s not only Estuary English that gets old fogeys steaming from the lug’oles. Regional accents cause much angst too. Some more than others. A poll last year found that there’s a definite pecking order of accents when it comes to making a good first impression, with Scottish, Yorkshire and Home Counties at the top, and Welsh, Scouse and Brummie near the bottom (we shall tactfully omit opinions about South African and Aussie accents). How unfair is that? People should be judged on their abilities and personalities, not their accents.
What’s really peculiar, though, is that radio and TV were supposed to make us all speak the same. That was Lord Reith’s aim when he started the BBC in 1922. He told his announcers to solve “the problem of spoken English” by devising “a common denominator of educated speech” that he expected everyone in Britain to adopt.
That never happened, thank goodness. As Andrew Taylor says in his interesting new book, A Plum in Your Mouth: Why the Way We Talk Speaks Volumes About Us (Harper Collins), the sort of English that children speak is shaped much more by them listening to their peers and role models, rather than to perceived authority figures such as parents and newsreaders. Their refusal to speak as their mums and dads would wish is a way of asserting their own individuality. It’s the same with adults. People resist anything that they feel is imposed from above. That’s why regional accents still flourish, despite 80 years of broadcasting.
But what confusion now! Politicians try to garner street-cred by chatting like barrow boys, even when they attended the poshest schools in the land. The Queen is accused of modelling her vowels on Alan Sugar’s. And the rest of us, let’s be honest, slip into Estuary English when we aren’t telling our children not to.
But that doesn’t stop busybodies from making a moral issue over the “declining standards” of spoken English. “If we can’t speak it right, we soon won’t be able to spell it, and then where will the language be?” the moaning minnies whinge. Well, yeah bu’ no bu’! When was English ever written as it was said? Spoken English has never been fixed and never will be. Andrew Taylor says that so-called “received pronunciation” was probably never used by more than 3 per cent of the population, even in the “good old days”. And people were first compaining about dropped aitches in the 18th century. Later, dropped aitches actually became fashionable. Now fogeys complain about “innit”. But in 50 years’ time I expect that innit will be as OK as, well, OK.
Nor should spoken English be fixed. The only languages to be spoken the same way, decade after decade, are dead languages. Like Latin. Or French. We should be overjoyed that English is fed with new words, dialects and accents from all over the world every day. It’s nature’s way of keeping the old verbals fresh.
Mind you, one good thing has come out of all this. I bet we will all listen to the Queen’s broadcast more carefully this Christmas. Will the royal vowels bend even further in the direction of luverly Barkin’n’Dag’nam? Will she drop more aitches than a Plaistow plasterer? Or will she go back to the old “mai husbend end ai” style of her youth — just to show that she is, still, the guv’ner?
I can ’ardly wai’er fine ow.
timesonliine.co.uk
Richard Morrison
The Times
December 19, 2006
'Ot un'er the coller 'bow how we spee' the muvver tung
Richard Morrison
Cor lumme, wotcha no? A fowzan’ yeers af’er ’em blimmin’ Normans came an’ skroodup good ol’ Anglersaxern wiv ’em fancy froggy wurds an’ wotnot, peep’l are still get’n ’ot un’er the coller ’bow how we spee’ the muvver tung. Yeah, I’m tork’n’ ’bow nunuvavan the Queen’s Inglish innit. An’ yer know hoos in the fierin’ line now? Only ’Er Majerstee ’erself, gorblessa.
It’s true. A professer of phonetics at the University of Munich has done a survey of all the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts. And guess what? He’s found that she has changed with the times. In 1952, the prof tells us, she would have said something like: “I see thet Tottenhem lorrst to West Hem on Seterday, don’t yew kneow?” Now, apparently, it would be closer to: “Wooja bleevi’! Spurz got stuft by the ’ammers on Sa’erday.” Just as if she was chatting to old Babs Windsor down the Queen Vic!
Well, you can imagine the kerfuffle this revelation has caused in the more reactionary parts of the media. “Good grief,” some commentators are fuming. “If the most appalling plague to strike this great nation since the Black Death — namely Estuary English — has now reached the very portals of Buck House, what are we coming to? It was bad enough when the Prime Minister started dropping his “t”s in the middle of words to show what an ordinary bloke he is. But the Queen as well? Is this the end of civilisation as we know it?”
And there’s worse. According to another professor of phonetics (how many professors of phonetics does it take to change a language?) today’s teenagers urgently need elocution lessons, because they speak so badly that employers can’t tell what they are saying. Which only goes to show that very little has changed in the century since Shaw wrote that “it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”.
And it’s not only Estuary English that gets old fogeys steaming from the lug’oles. Regional accents cause much angst too. Some more than others. A poll last year found that there’s a definite pecking order of accents when it comes to making a good first impression, with Scottish, Yorkshire and Home Counties at the top, and Welsh, Scouse and Brummie near the bottom (we shall tactfully omit opinions about South African and Aussie accents). How unfair is that? People should be judged on their abilities and personalities, not their accents.
What’s really peculiar, though, is that radio and TV were supposed to make us all speak the same. That was Lord Reith’s aim when he started the BBC in 1922. He told his announcers to solve “the problem of spoken English” by devising “a common denominator of educated speech” that he expected everyone in Britain to adopt.
That never happened, thank goodness. As Andrew Taylor says in his interesting new book, A Plum in Your Mouth: Why the Way We Talk Speaks Volumes About Us (Harper Collins), the sort of English that children speak is shaped much more by them listening to their peers and role models, rather than to perceived authority figures such as parents and newsreaders. Their refusal to speak as their mums and dads would wish is a way of asserting their own individuality. It’s the same with adults. People resist anything that they feel is imposed from above. That’s why regional accents still flourish, despite 80 years of broadcasting.
But what confusion now! Politicians try to garner street-cred by chatting like barrow boys, even when they attended the poshest schools in the land. The Queen is accused of modelling her vowels on Alan Sugar’s. And the rest of us, let’s be honest, slip into Estuary English when we aren’t telling our children not to.
But that doesn’t stop busybodies from making a moral issue over the “declining standards” of spoken English. “If we can’t speak it right, we soon won’t be able to spell it, and then where will the language be?” the moaning minnies whinge. Well, yeah bu’ no bu’! When was English ever written as it was said? Spoken English has never been fixed and never will be. Andrew Taylor says that so-called “received pronunciation” was probably never used by more than 3 per cent of the population, even in the “good old days”. And people were first compaining about dropped aitches in the 18th century. Later, dropped aitches actually became fashionable. Now fogeys complain about “innit”. But in 50 years’ time I expect that innit will be as OK as, well, OK.
Nor should spoken English be fixed. The only languages to be spoken the same way, decade after decade, are dead languages. Like Latin. Or French. We should be overjoyed that English is fed with new words, dialects and accents from all over the world every day. It’s nature’s way of keeping the old verbals fresh.
Mind you, one good thing has come out of all this. I bet we will all listen to the Queen’s broadcast more carefully this Christmas. Will the royal vowels bend even further in the direction of luverly Barkin’n’Dag’nam? Will she drop more aitches than a Plaistow plasterer? Or will she go back to the old “mai husbend end ai” style of her youth — just to show that she is, still, the guv’ner?
I can ’ardly wai’er fine ow.
timesonliine.co.uk