Well spoken areas - Accents

[arizonagirl]

Hi there,

We currently live in Surrey and I have to admit - the accent is really nice and the children speak so nicely. Always gets comments.

Ok, so we are looking at preps in another home county (probably Hertfordshire/Bucks/Berks). I am going to probably get really slated for this thread but hey...I am intrigued and really do wish to know people's thoughts. Which areas within an hour of London could we go to where people are very well spoken eg. 'yes' instead of 'yeah' etc. Not too impressed with Kent, Essex, Epsom tbh. Looking at Bishops Stortford - any thoughts.

Thanks!

Just fine thank you seeker, I'm very happy with it. Apologies that you've jumped on that as being potentially patronising or something, but I think that it perhaps says more about your chip than my attitude?!

Think it was the 'at the moment' line, made me laugh too. Larf, I mean.

Just you and me, then, PuppyMonkey!

Inverness.

Apparantly that's where the purest English is spoken!

I"m sorry, panicmode. It made me laugh because eit sounded as if they were in the state system at the moment but the very minute you heard a single glottal stop they would be out so fast their feet wouldn't touch the ground!

I think it was just in the context of the rest of the thread that is was so funny.

ds and his friends, all 7yos, like to say 'I'm a mockney' and talk in Estuary English. Dunno where they've got the word from - TV or older siblings, I imagine - but it sounds very funny coming from a bunch of middle class small children in the Home Counties. Even funnier that they don't realise mockney isn't the legitimate name of an accent but a disparaging term for people who are just playing at being Londoners.

I spent most of my childhood in Yorkshire surrounded by people speaking the most gorgeous dialect but my mother and my school were fussy about accents so I don't speak the same way. Whenever I hear a Yorkshire accent, it makes me feel all nostalgic and want to clasp the person to my bosom. (Obviously I don't or I'd have been arrested or something ).

One of my sisters lives in Worcestshire, not far from Brum, and my nephew's started to pick up an accent. At the moment it's cute when he says 'Mom' in Brummie but he'll be made to knock it off when he's older as there's still a lot of prejudice about W Midlands accents. Think when research has been done people associate them with being not too bright, unfortunately. And Yorkshire comes across as trustworthy so is apparently v. good for call centre staff (although I assume those firms that have outsourced to India aren't training their new staff to speak Yorkshire).

Edam "there's still a lot of predujice about W Midlands accents" - if the OP is to be believed there is a lot of predujice about most accents. Which is a shame really, since one would hope that a teacher/dep head would be a little more open minded/non-judgemental.

Ooops - that'll be prejudice then!!

True but we live in a country where there is prejudice about W Mids accents (think the research showed they were the least popular) so what do you do - risk your child being held back by prejudice or teach them to speak something approximating RP?

If I lived near Birmingham, I'd leave a child alone when talking to their friends, but make sure they knew how to speak neutrally (as in not making their origins immediately clear) for formal occasions such as job interviews.

PanicMode/Arizona - I grew up in the town "of which you speak" and parents still live there. Undeniably, the accent is deemed posh, even having left 30 years ago.

Although there was definitely a variety of accents at my all girls grammar school, some having come from, shock horror, a certain area of town!

Lol at this thread. I went to school in Weybridge and I used to get the mickey taken out of me for 'talking posh'

seeker - sorry for being touchy - I've had about 2 hours sleep with an non sleeping #4 child, and looked at MN before I'd had any caffeine. I appreciate that it sounds 'precious'; I beat the glottal stops out of them, obviously .

If I didn't want my children to speak with a particular accent, I wouldn't live where that accent was a course of normal speech.

I'd also encourage my children to leave, permanently, or never live, in any place so ridiculously backwards their worth as a person is based on their accent.

Because life's too short for BS like that.

Reading threads like this, it really puts me off ever living in England, tbh.

Aren't similar assumptions based on accents made in the US Expat - I believed that people with Deep Southern accents are considered to be slow and backward, and thoses with New England accents more educated and sophisticated? At least that is the predjudiced view? People make judgements according to your accent (and therefore where you live and your social class) all over the world - the divide between town and country/ poor and rich/ simple and sophisticated is Global.

It certainly is not correct to make these judgements but no one is completely immmune to it - imo. How we communicate is key to how we are perceived by others.

Not in my experiernce, Big. People like regional accents there, IME.

But then, you know, I don't live in the US and haven't done so for nearly 10 years, so I fail to see what the US has to do with this conversation.

I should clarify, people from one area in the US will make such unfair judgements on those in another area - simply based on cliches and accent is part of that. (Deep South polite/ North rude etc)

Not really just talking about the US Expat - just saying that predjudice based on accent is not an English phenomenon, cultural imperialism means I know more about US culture (as it is exported) than Lithuanian for eg.! So it provided another example.

Agree it's not purely an English phenomenon. Parisians are very snobby about people from the countryside.

It's possibly that the English have a more extreme/developed consciousness around accents and social class, though.

It's not provided as an example. It's used as a tool to justify accent prejudice here, because, hey, everyone knows expat's American by birth.

I get it all the time here whenever I make a negative point about the UK.

'Well, it happens in America!'

Really? When did you experience it, when you were living in America?

Oh, that's right! You never have lived there! You're getting ideas based on TV.

Well, that's like someone getting ideas about the UK based on watching Eastenders.

It's a tiresome, innocuous, weak and pointless argument trotted out to me time and again.

Getting back to the topic, this is about accent prejudice in England.

Exactly, edam.

When I was little (in posh - ish Cambridge) my mother drummed it into me that there were two cambridge accents - Cayme - Briddge and Cambridge. So when i started to slip and say things like 'Caiyke', I got corrected. Actually the Cayme -briddge accent is vry Lahndon really.

Coolma I remember loving the accents on Cambridge market... "Pertaytaz ownly tin pince a paaand"... and the kids fresh from Westminster "Doo Yoo hev enny essperriguss may good men?"

OK, exaggerating a bit, but there was a bit of a divide of accents!!

Sorry Expat I was trotting out a cliche one based one many books and films and TV programmes etc about the US that give me a particular view of the Country. I have not lived there but I don't think that precludes me from having an opinion but I also said accent predjudice was a global issue - just to make the point that accent prejudice is not just an issue here.

I used the US example as it was what first came to mind and not to somehow beat you down with it in some way; though I can see how it would look like that, so I apologise for offending you.

Personally as long as someone speaks clearly then I think their accent is immaterial to their worth as a human being (though interesting)- toffs and scousers can all be intelligible! But we cannot pretend that judgements are made based on the way we speak only in England.

I'm in West Sussex and i speak like the Queen, i am always getting comments about the way is peak especially when I'm with my sisters (who are ace by the way) who speak very common.

What's most important, accent or what's in your heart?