How to pronounce Talia

My DH doesn’t have an RP accent, but he does have a generic southern UK, BBC news-reader voice.

Like Huw Edwards's?

RP was the epitome of a BBC Radio 4 news reader's accent, that the whole point. They had to have that accent so there was no regional trace in their accent. It is what the Queen speaks but generally now RP is slightly less formal. If you listen to speeches by the Queen over the years, it has changed slightly. There are also now news readers with regional accents ( on Radio 4). Fewer people say syoot for suit now but most still say dyook for Duke and haven't gone to the more American dook. I love languages and accents, it's fascinating.

tah-lee-a

RP is a regional accent, though?

It belongs to the region of England, within the UK.

My DH doesn’t have an RP accent, but he does have a generic southern UK, BBC news-reader voice.

We live in NZ. When NZers hear him speak, do you think they perceive him to have an accent?

I’m telling you right now - yes, they do. To many Kiwis who can’t differentiate between many regional UK accents, he has a generic English (that’s the region, albeit it a large one) accent.

Before I went overseas, I naively thought we Kiwis didn’t have an accent, so I kind of get where you are coming from, @TwinsandTrifle

I’m just picturing OP rocking in the corner with her head in her hands...

This thread certainly doesn’t disappoint! Gin for all, I think.

Ta- leah

Tar-lee-uh

There is no R in Talia,

I would say Tally a

I think it's because it related to class not geography. And every other accent is. So take the thing I said earlier, which you agreed with "you can have posh Mancunian, or standard Mancunian"

I’m sure there are many variations, I’m not an expert on Mancunian accents.

Now take the Mancunian out. Now what. A "posh" what. What if there's no accent you can attribute to a place there. Now what if they're not posh either. Now what are they?

You are trying to have a rigid structure of subdivision across all accents where they all have to follow the same rules. Your logic above is not transferable across all accent groups.

Try looking at it the other way. Start from the sounds. A lot of people talk in a similar way. Ok, that’s a recognisable accent group. And then it’s a case of ‘what do they have in common, how do we describe this thing’. For some accents it’s clearly driven by locality. For others - such as RP/SSE there is a combination of geography (mainly out of the south east) and class/culture.

But literally all those people have to have in common is the way they talk. That’s their accent group. That’s your accent. Someone has put a label on it based on common factors in many people who have that accent. That’s all.

Yes, but every other English accent relates to a place. And if you don't have any of those recognisable regional accents, you are covered by this general blanket of RP, which actually doesn't relate to your class at all these days.

This is still, totally untrue. You couldn’t pitch up in Berkshire speaking with a totally different and heretofore undiscovered accent and have it be RP. RP is a specific, documented group of sounds used in speaking English. It just doesn’t categorise by geography.

Stop trying to make accents about geography. Just stop. Many are, but not all.

They’re a way of making sounds when we speak. That’s the accent. That’s it.

Everything else is an attempt to categorise.

(But also stop trying to pretend that RP/SSE is free of geography. It’s geography and/or class and/or other stuff.)

Which is why if you went to Bradford, for example, you'd hear a lot of young British born people from the Pakistani community speaking in a West Yorkshire/Pakistani accent hybrid. Which is entirely due to the influence of the way the people around them speak and is not based in geography.

I think the problem is that you're getting too hung up on the geography of accents, there's noting inherent in the geography Manchester that gives people a Mancunian accent, it's entirely picked up from the people around them. Hence different parts of the city have different accents.

If you are primarily surrounded and brought up by people with an RP accent, you will have an RP accent. Possibly with a slight geographical tinge.

It's that simple!

You are still looking at RP as a ‘absence’ of anything else. It’s just a way of speaking. Literally a way of saying words.

I think it's because it related to class not geography. And every other accent is. So take the thing I said earlier, which you agreed with "you can have posh Mancunian, or standard Mancunian"

Now take the Mancunian out. Now what. A "posh" what. What if there's no accent you can attribute to a place there. Now what if they're not posh either. Now what are they?

With RP, it's a way of saying words related to class. A long ago "posh" accent. Yes, but every other English accent relates to a place. And if you don't have any of those recognisable regional accents, you are covered by this general blanket of RP, which actually doesn't relate to your class at all these days.

To be honest, I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've tried to explain. I can't get it. Two things I've never been able to comprehend in my life. Reading sheet music. And this.

Even if you reduce it to toddler speak, something is making me incapable of understanding. I get to a certain point, and it's all complete sense, then it's just wrong. But thank you, sincerely. I absolutely get it's me, not you.

Henry Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter,
Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered.
By law she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue

I think the poor OP has probably decided to go for Mavis. Nice solid easy to pronounce name. We like Mavis.

Which is pronounced ‘Marvis’, yes?

hides

Yes, they very well could, if they had no recognisable regional dialect, they are RP......right

Are you just taking the piss now?

RP isn’t an absence of anything else. It is a specific way of speaking. Of saying those sounds. That. Is. Literally. It.

Absolutely no different than a Scouse accent is the absence of ‘any accents that aren’t Scouse.’

Accents. Are. The. Sounds. We. Make. When. We. Say. Words.

RP isn’t ‘well, you don’t fall into any other category so here’s a label’. It’s a well-documented group of sounds used in making words that are common to that accent.

And there's that large part of the UK that's in the midlands.

People in the North speak RP too!

Yes, they very well could, if they had no recognisable regional dialect, they are RP......right?

I just had a listen to Holly Willoughby, she has a pronounced SE accent. Definitely not 'neutral.

Ah, I did say I couldn't think of her voice in my head particularly well, maybe she's not a good example. It's really hard to think of someone on the TV nationwide who speaks how I'm trying to describe, without the immediate "trained voice!" thing.

I said Susanna Reid initially, and just got "who??". But again, she's a TV presenter and sounds a bit on the posh pronounced side of what I'm trying to describe.

😂😂😂

Accents is a REALLY nice change from Covid misinformation though which is my usual groove.

How did we all agree to pronounce Talia? Was it ‘Greg’? I think it was ‘Greg’.

But overall - just ditch your idea that you have to be able to tie an accent to a geography for it to be an accent, or that there’s a straightforward way that you can know where someone belongs by their accent.

Many people’s accents are a total mixture. Many people’s change over their lifetimes. I know kids who have accent-switched between home and school from a very young age, speaking with the dominant accent in each setting.

My own kids have aspects of Australian English dialect and the occasional pronunciation because I have raised them, and they are contrary fuckers who delight in saying ‘vitamin’ differently from their peers ‘because I’m half Australian you know, so I know how to speak Australian too.’

You are still looking at RP as a ‘absence’ of anything else. It’s just a way of speaking. Literally a way of saying words.

You know how you have that accent if you say words that way.

I mean I’m about to blow your mind, but we all speak a dialect, too.

Dialect is made up of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Everyone has one.

It goes
Language
^
Dialect
^
Accent

This might be a helpful primer if you’re interested.

I just had a listen to Holly Willoughby, she has a pronounced SE accent. Definitely not 'neutral.

People in the North speak RP too!