I've been thinking recently about the kinds of judgements that we make upon each other based upon the way we speak the English language. Eliza Doolittle and Professor Higgins will immediately spring to mind!
Whether you have an accent as clipped as the Queen, or have a broad Yorkshire brogue, someone, somewhere, will make some sort of judgement about you, either positive or negative. We make all sorts of assumptions based upon the way that someone pronounces a given word, although those assumptions do seem to be changing over time.
Back before the Second World War, a regional accent was largely regarded as improper, and the BBC would never have considered using a broadcaster who could not converse in pure received pronunciation. Those who decided to take up acting were often taught how to speak 'properly' at drama school, regardless of their regional origins. These days, those attitudes are changing, thank goodness, and the airwaves are awash with the rich diversity of the regional accents of these Isles, as well as the accents of those who have come to live here from overseas.
But we may be in danger of losing our dialects. In the South of England, spreading through Kent, Surrey, Essex and Susses, much as been made of the emergence of 'Estuary English', an accent which seems to be spreading fast, taking much from working-class London speech, or Cockney.
Change is inevitable in all things, particular in languages, which are living instruments, formed and re-formed by those that use them. But what a shame it would be if the nation's dialects were eventually all homogenised into one, and we lost the musicality and rhythm of those dialects which create such uniquely interesting diversity.
Whether you have an accent as clipped as the Queen, or have a broad Yorkshire brogue, someone, somewhere, will make some sort of judgement about you, either positive or negative. We make all sorts of assumptions based upon the way that someone pronounces a given word, although those assumptions do seem to be changing over time.
Back before the Second World War, a regional accent was largely regarded as improper, and the BBC would never have considered using a broadcaster who could not converse in pure received pronunciation. Those who decided to take up acting were often taught how to speak 'properly' at drama school, regardless of their regional origins. These days, those attitudes are changing, thank goodness, and the airwaves are awash with the rich diversity of the regional accents of these Isles, as well as the accents of those who have come to live here from overseas.
But we may be in danger of losing our dialects. In the South of England, spreading through Kent, Surrey, Essex and Susses, much as been made of the emergence of 'Estuary English', an accent which seems to be spreading fast, taking much from working-class London speech, or Cockney.
Change is inevitable in all things, particular in languages, which are living instruments, formed and re-formed by those that use them. But what a shame it would be if the nation's dialects were eventually all homogenised into one, and we lost the musicality and rhythm of those dialects which create such uniquely interesting diversity.
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