| |  Accents vary regionally as well as from UK country to country I guess there was a time when all non-English people thought that every English person spoke as if they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. In other words everyone had a posh accent. The good old BBC only employed newscasters who spoke with a beautiful text book English accent. Regional variations were unheard of. If you wanted to get ahead in life, you had to lose the working class, Liverpudlian or Brummie accent, for example. Personally I think all of this changed with The Beatles. Young John, Paul, George and Ringo all spoke with a Liverpudlian accent. Sure John's upbringing was not the working class one you may have imagined. However their accents were all similar. As the Liverpool scene grew you had people like John Peel starting to change their polite English accent to something more in line with modern trends. The Liverpool accent went out to the world and was accepted. From here on in a change began to occur. People who had a strong regional accent did not have to change their speaking voice in order to have a career. This did still happen in some circles but we began to see and hear actors, musicians, celebrities, news readers and more speaking in their regional accent. Within a few years it was almost as if the broader your accent, the more guaranteed you were to become famous in certain fields. Some accents are worse than others though. My Hull accent is dreadful. It is not as bad as many other residents of my city but I do not like it. Our regional accent seems to leave us unable to pronounce our vowels properly. To my trained ear I instantly know when a person from my town appears on the news. As soon as they have to pronounce and O or an A their accent comes through. I do not mean any of this in a bad way though. |
I totally believe that we should keep our local accents. They add a charm and individuality to our language. Just because you speak with a local accent does not mean that you have to swear like a trooper, or miss-pronounce every other word.
My favourite regional accents are spoken in Somerset and in Newcastle. Newcastle's citizens are called Geordies and I love their twang, that is speaking voice.
One thing that is noticeable about many of those who would have traditionally spoken with an accent that was termed BBC English is that they seem to be dumbing down.
Sam Cam, as the wife of Tory leader David Cameron has been called, is a good example. Samantha Cameron is the daughter of Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet, a landowner and three times a descendant from King Charles II of England, by his first marriage to Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones. Benefiting from a private education one would assume that she spoke with an excellent English accent. However she speaks more with an indistinct middle of the road accent. The press have questioned whether or not this has been an attempt at dumbing down.
My favourite regional accents are spoken in Somerset and in Newcastle. Newcastle's citizens are called Geordies and I love their twang, that is speaking voice.
One thing that is noticeable about many of those who would have traditionally spoken with an accent that was termed BBC English is that they seem to be dumbing down.
Sam Cam, as the wife of Tory leader David Cameron has been called, is a good example. Samantha Cameron is the daughter of Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet, a landowner and three times a descendant from King Charles II of England, by his first marriage to Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones. Benefiting from a private education one would assume that she spoke with an excellent English accent. However she speaks more with an indistinct middle of the road accent. The press have questioned whether or not this has been an attempt at dumbing down.
