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!

I grew up in Surrey and am common as anyfink. You should send the little dears to boarding school. They will talk proper and grow up to be MPs. It's win-win.

Or they might grow up with eating disorders and attempted suicide (as per neices at very famous boarding school, and most of their mates). As well as a post accent and a LOT of uptalking.

posh, not post!

I am born working class. But have become sort of poshed up midlander. Speaking sort of proper. There are tremendous variations throughout the country. From proper to semi illiterate. I suppose all types are passed down through the parents. Too late when schooling starts

As long as you can be understood, what is the matter with a regional accent? I speak with a very old fashioned RP accent and that can be a negative thing in some situations.

I think you'll find if you thoroughly research this topic with any rigour that standard Received pronunciation (RP) has disappeared to a large extent, except for parts of London (Kensington & Chelsea, Fulham, Richmond Village, Wimbledon Village, Kew, Twickenham, Teddington, Surbiton) and in the southwestern reaches of Surrey, where it is still a standard part of everyday usage from most people residing in such locales.

To be frank, you'll notice these places mentioned are not only wealthy areas whose inhabitants were largely educated privately, but they are also mostly populated by old families of native English stock, affected very little by immigration from Eastern and Central Europe and the reaches of the Empire over the last 200 years.

For instance, there are areas in North London (eg. Golders Green, Hampstead) where the people are just as wealthy, if not more so, and similarly well educated, but who speak mostly with an Estuary English accent than old standard Received Pronunciation.

I am Irish (arrived in England age 8), not one English ancestor to my knowledge. I sound like a BBC radio announcer from the fifties. I did spend my formative years in Chiswick though. Maybe being so near Kew had an influence. DH sounds equally "posh" and he's originally from Egypt so I must disagree with your English stock theory.

I'll be the judge of just how well spoken you are, Biddy.

You will not, as I have already judged you as not worthy, PST.

Ha ha, just kiddin', Sue52.

We live in Surrey. When DD1 was in reception, she spelled the grassy thing that cows and horses live in like this:

feeyold

Now, of course, she's nearly nine and just says "wateva" like all the other tewibwy well spoken kids in her class.

I'll still take Surrey over Bucks anyday. Buckinghamshire just seems too terribly plastic, commercial, materialistic and new money kitsch for my liking. Just way too many treeless, souless housing developments full of recently built McMansions that look more like suburban Dallas than suburban London. And new money, of course, means terrible accents and tackiness. I realise Surrey isn't the aristocratic Cotswolds or Dorset coast, but it is at least a part of an older upper middle class tradition. Most people in Surrey (Southwest Surrey area of Waverley and the Mole Valley area in south central Surrey) have had some measure of wealth, education and breeding in their families for generations. Bucks to me seems to be populated mostly with bookmakers and salvage yard owners. Not quite as low class as Essex, Hertfordshire or Medway Kent but close. I'd say the only area that comes close to Surrey in substanance is the Eastern fringe of Hampshiresay from Winchester to Peteresfieldjust lovely. Perhaps Berks around Sunningdale and Windsor, but that's it.

PMSL at idea of preservation of a class tradition. And 'breeding'. And 'low class'.

PST7777 - I really think you need to get out a bit more.

I think for PST's sake, Surrey should be ring fenced before standards slip further.

Arf- my father's family moved out from Belgravia to Surrey when their home was destroyed in the blitz... they had fantastic accents.

Utterly, utterly penniless now though, bah.

Surrey has everything a woman of a certain class could ask for. Surrey is home to the top private primary schools in Britain, beautiful golf and tennis clubs, riding facilities, forests, hills, superb shopping in towns like Guildford, Godalming and Dorking, haute cuisine dining in restaurants for every taste, quick and easy train access to the City, Holborn, Bloomsbury or Harley Street if DH is employed in finance, the bar, academia or medicine. Simply paradise. I couldn't imagine why any woman who has been blessed with bounty could want to reside anywhere else.

Hmm I would still prefer Chelsea, Kensington, Belgravia ie central London to Surrey.

I don't think an academic could afford those areas and pay school fees. His DW would have to get (whispers) a job.

It's another world ...

LadyCCM, ere, have you 'ad me curtseying under false pretences?

Darling Sue52, I believe most academicsat least those who study in the arts & humanities, and at the more prestigious institutionsmost likely come from families of means and position, so property costs are usually not a matter of too much concern to most professors/lecturers. It was always tradition that the younger sons of the old aristocratic families to either enter the clergy, military, medicine or academia. Finance, trade and the bar were gradually accepted later. Now, in the less prestigious institutions of higher education and those who teach the more hard sciences, i'm sure you would see people representing all levels of society, so they would be tied more to their income than say, a history lecturer from Durham university, who's grandfather was perhaps a hereditary Lord and who's father was a large landholder. Remember, class is less about income than it is about education and background. Only Americans seem to see it the other way around. Thus, while an academic may only earn £50,000 per annum from Oxbridge, the social capital that comes with such a position is enormous. They will have access to the corridors of power in this society more so than say, a motor-car dealer earning £200,000+ in his business.

They might have access to the corridors of power but do they have the means to pay a couple of million for a (shudder) mock Tudor pile near a golf club in Godalming? I think not. Having a Grandfather with a title does not get you a mortgage. Most academics I know need to think twice before buying a round of drinks.

I think the "old" definition of class is disappearing though.