I haven't heard Sussex in years - last time in a tea garden at Alfriston. Rural Kentish only once, decades back, while pushing my bike up a Roman road near Dover - soon to be lost to a lorry park, to the disgust of the local inhabitants.
But one of the most interesting accents I've heard was from staff at the Bodleian in Oxford. It wasn't just that it was RP, it was a very - yes, probably clipped is the word, but I've only heard it there, not from middle class outside (and that includes college people, but not college people since school).
Where I live there are two - Estuary in the town, which has the excuse of being on the estuary, and the village back of the town, which I didn't realise was different until we had a student in school for teaching practice, heard her in the staffroom and thought she was my cousin. She lived in the same village. My cousins have kept that accent all their lives, despite having very senior jobs in a prestigious company in London, one being a multilingual secretary where secretary meant that and not typist.
They used to talk about conservative RP, I think Brian Sewell had this. Of course, notoriously, the Queen used to, but moderated it. One of my old teachers used to pronounce "parliament" with 4 syllables, i.e., pronouncing the i, which we thought was hilarious, also "miniature". I do enjoy a genuine speaker of conservative RP, Sewell was splendid. Rare today.
In relation to estuary, local builders in west London have a very strong accent, sounding like a caricature, but a Fulham accent was something to behold, so maybe it's that, or a hybrid.
Another clue to conservative RP, and much ridiculed, is "off", pronounced awf. I would say quite rare now, but I have one friend who says it. There are recordings on the interwobble.
Nothing wrong with it in and of itself. It's its pushing out of other accents and dialects that's more of a problem.
Yes, that's why. My mother's family came from Northamptonshire and my great-uncle had a lovely, very distinctive Northants accent that I haven't heard now for years.
Apparently that Northants accent is what I produce when I've had a few to drink - I grew up and attended the local village primary and nearest comprehensive school there until I was 15. I picked up the accent to lose the bullying for being different. But it's only one of a few that I unconsciously chameleon between as protective colouring, which can make it look as if I'm extracting the Michael when I can and do switch between accents in the same conversation to different people.
Out walking recently I heard an Essex accent for the first time for ages - old boy, looked like a retired farm worker. That too is not the same as the more ubiquitous Estuary.
There used to be a difference between north and south London accents - really could hear them, but that's blurred too.
London accents are difficult to decipher. S. London is probably different from estuary, and I am aware of various West London accents, which I tend to call Fulham, and some of these are monsters. I sometimes hang around building sites to catch a flavour, but then a lot of Polish also. Where this leaves Cockney, dunno. Peter Trudgill, the esteemed sociolinguist, has said that estuary tends to be lower middle class, whereas Cockney is working class. An interesting Ph.D., I think.
We used to use "milk" as a test, /miok/ in Cockney, and estuary maybe. The loss of dialects, so sad. My Yorks grandad still said "thou", ("wheer's tha bin"?). Damn, damn and damnation.
I used to use voices in reading stories at school, and I can feel the shape of accents in my mouth. I thought I was doing S London OK until I realised that what I was doing was male S London, not female, a distinction I had not even thought necessary. (I've read about Japanese gender differences, but not heard anyone mention anything similar here.)
When I was in shops in Cirencester where there is a quagmire of pronunciations I had to be very careful not to sound as if taking the michael. There are very posh speakers who say things like "We'll have to come here when we are doing your wardrobe," in a dress shop, not a DIY place, and there were locals with good Gloucestershire accents, calling the place something like Zoiren. Posh is Cisseter, even Cister, proclaimed loudly to be correct. I prefered Zoiren, but stuck with Cirencester, so everyone could think I was ignorant.
Another accent that I think may be dying out is Hampshire.
John Arlott (of blessed memory) was a proud "Basingstoke Boy" but I doubt that many people in Basingstoke speak like him these days. I knew of a few people in Southampton who had similar accents but they were getting rarer and rarer even 20 years ago (ie when I last lived there).
I grew up in north Hampshire, during that period when there were plenty of GLC overspill estates being created in the area. As a result, that area went distinctly "sub-Cockney" for a while - especially in the schools.
Everyone who speaks English speaks it differently! It's a wonder we ever understand each other at all...
The one which caught me out when I'd lived for several years in Texas, and thought I'd found all the different words, was pot holder. My Texas friend looked blank when I asked her to pass the oven gloves. I can imagine there's a few other names for these, too.
Where this leaves Cockney, dunno. Peter Trudgill, the esteemed sociolinguist, has said that estuary tends to be lower middle class, whereas Cockney is working class. An interesting Ph.D., I think.
We used to use "milk" as a test, /miok/ in Cockney, and estuary maybe. The loss of dialects, so sad. My Yorks grandad still said "thou", ("wheer's tha bin"?). Damn, damn and damnation.
I think use of Estuary in London is also an age related thing - maybe under 50? Over 50 it would be cockney. But that is London only. It is spreading country wide, quicker in towns and cities.
... Posh is Cisseter, even Cister, proclaimed loudly to be correct. I prefered Zoiren, but stuck with Cirencester, so everyone could think I was ignorant.
I'm under the impression that Cisseter is as obsolete as Utcheter for Utoxeter, and Cister is and always has been quite simply wrong, only used by those who wanted to show off but didn't actually know how it was supposed to be pronounced. Zoiren/Syren are widespread but colloquial.
The Dorset dialect I grew up with used "gotten", not often, because the preferred verb was "to be" in the various forms, applied in non-standard ways. And I also encountered fall, sidewalk and a few other supposedly American uses of words and other Old English dialect words (I suspect, due to similarity to German). Which makes historical sense, as there were Pilgrim Fathers of West Country origin who travelled from Plymouth.
I used to use voices in reading stories at school, and I can feel the shape of accents in my mouth. I thought I was doing S London OK until I realised that what I was doing was male S London, not female, a distinction I had not even thought necessary. (I've read about Japanese gender differences, but not heard anyone mention anything similar here.)
When I was in shops in Cirencester where there is a quagmire of pronunciations I had to be very careful not to sound as if taking the michael. There are very posh speakers who say things like "We'll have to come here when we are doing your wardrobe," in a dress shop, not a DIY place, and there were locals with good Gloucestershire accents, calling the place something like Zoiren. Posh is Cisseter, even Cister, proclaimed loudly to be correct. I prefered Zoiren, but stuck with Cirencester, so everyone could think I was ignorant.
Your point about gender is interesting, and I remember research on Yorkshire dialects, which seemed to show that men had "stronger" dialects than women. I don't know if there is much research on this. On Cissister, my wife's family are from there, and said that. Zoiren is lovely. I lived in Bristol and most people said Bristow, even la di das. As they say, alright my lover?
The Dorset dialect I grew up with used "gotten", not often, because the preferred verb was "to be" in the various forms, applied in non-standard ways. And I also encountered fall, sidewalk and a few other supposedly American uses of words and other Old English dialect words (I suspect, due to similarity to German). Which makes historical sense, as there were Pilgrim Fathers of West Country origin who travelled from Plymouth.
Not AFAIK. The Mayflower restocked at Plymouth but continued with its original passengers: the closest to Plymouth were the Eatons from Bristol (info from Wikipedia but supported by official Mayflower 400 site).
Your point about gender is interesting, and I remember research on Yorkshire dialects, which seemed to show that men had "stronger" dialects than women. I don't know if there is much research on this.
I do know that in the mill towns, the women (who tended to be the ones working the looms) often had a very distinct way of speaking so as to make it easier for others to lip-read, as they wouldn't be heard over the noise of the looms. I certainly knew a couple of old women who were like that. You may remember that Les Dawson used to do an impersonation of women who spoke like that. I was never aware of any men who adopted the same speaking habits.
I lived in Bristol and most people said Bristow, even la di das.
As I understand it, Bristol was originally Brigstowe, but gradually got renamed due to the local inhabitants' tendency to drop consonants and to add an "l' sound on the end of words that ended in a vowel sound. I once has a delightful book called "How't'speak prarper Brizzle." That certainly encouraged readers to add ls to the end of lots of words.
Yes, the old Les Dawson routine, but my grandmother worked in a cotton mill, and she used to do the mime routine as a joke, it was very facially exaggerated, but of course, silent.
I was told Cister by a cousin who was in the RAF at Aston Down or Kemble, and he was told that was the pronunciation by locals in the vicinity, so not actually Ciren people.
I find that by saying one of these names in the way suggested I can tell what accent the speaker uses for other things because it isn't possible to switch my mouth into the shape of it from "normal" speech without contortions. (I'm just trying this with some American names to get back on thread, but it isn't working. I can't remember enough placenames that British speakers would automatically get wrong - Arkansas, Berkeley, Wichita?)
Everyone who speaks English speaks it differently! It's a wonder we ever understand each other at all...
The one which caught me out when I'd lived for several years in Texas, and thought I'd found all the different words, was pot holder. My Texas friend looked blank when I asked her to pass the oven gloves. I can imagine there's a few other names for these, too.
This is true, at least in my family. We have:
milk and melk
coupon as Q-pon and coo-pon
pillow and pellow
khaki as kaah-key and car-key
The evening meal as supper and dinner
The noon meal as lunch and dinner
mom (mawm) and mum
grade 6 and 6th grade
Or the evening meal as dinner or tea? I say dinner, my partner is from Liverpool and to him, the evening meal is "tea".
A good example of word evolution. In the middle ages "dinner" was the principal meal of the day, taken as early as 11-00 am. (But people often got up at 5-00 am, and only posh people had breakfast - although it became more general in the later middle ages.)
Gradually, the ruling class pushed the hour of dinner later and later. Until by the nineteeth century it was fashionable to eat in in mid-evening.
Luncheon was unknown as a word until relatively recently. (Can't quite remember exactly when, but broadly 18th or 19th century.)
Working class and northerners tend to be conservative about such important things as meal times so "dinner" remains around midday for many people.
"Tea" in the sense of a meal arose originally because of the large gap between upper class meals. Afternoon tea and "high" tea developed to fill this gap. Those who have a "dinner" at midday have a (high) tea in the early evening.
No usage is "wrong". It's just what's fashionable and what isn't.
Tea is merely a drink in all circumstances in Canada as far as I know. Though more correctly in my pedantic view, should be called "teabag". Coffee seems more popular.
It's common that children would have an "after school snack" to tide them over to supper. Usually about 4p.m. This presumes that people actually sit down to meals at all, which I'm not sure how many do.
In the city it was breakfast, lunch and dinner. At the farm it was breakfast, dinner and supper. In both places dinner was the larger meal. City was Washington D.C. farm was Virginia.
Here I think it's traditionally breakfast, dinner, and supper (though lots of people do say breakfast, lunch and dinner these days). A "lunch" is often a before-bed snack, often toast, a cup of tea, or some kind of cookie/sweet biscuit.
My daughter's boyfriend's family apparently calls this snack "bed lunch" which I have never heard before.
I had never heard of a pre-bed snack like that being called "lunch" until I got roped into serving it to the residents of St. Luke's Home in St. John's, and was puzzled to hear one of the other volunteers asking a lady if she'd enjoyed her lunch.
The only time we don't have dinner at the evening meal is on special occasions such as Christmas and possibly Sunday when we have dinner at midday or so. On those occasions the evening meal would be called tea. We certainly don't have a meal called supper - supper is a little snack such as a biscuit about 9pm which accompanies a cup of tea or coffee before bed.
The meals here are generally breakfast, lunch and supper. Traditionally, either lunch or supper might be called dinner—that term could be applied to whichever was bigger (though my daughter insists that only supper should be called dinner) and often implies a larger than usual or special meal. The exception is Sunday dinner, which is always lunch.
Sunday dinner in the middle of the day is very much a thing of the past here. It was a term used by my grandparents' generation (as was the meal), rarely in that following, and I've not heard it used in mine since I was a child.
Or the evening meal as dinner or tea? I say dinner, my partner is from Liverpool and to him, the evening meal is "tea".
A good example of word evolution. In the middle ages "dinner" was the principal meal of the day, taken as early as 11-00 am. (But people often got up at 5-00 am, and only posh people had breakfast - although it became more general in the later middle ages.)
Gradually, the ruling class pushed the hour of dinner later and later. Until by the nineteeth century it was fashionable to eat in in mid-evening.
Luncheon was unknown as a word until relatively recently. (Can't quite remember exactly when, but broadly 18th or 19th century.)
Working class and northerners tend to be conservative about such important things as meal times so "dinner" remains around midday for many people.
"Tea" in the sense of a meal arose originally because of the large gap between upper class meals. Afternoon tea and "high" tea developed to fill this gap. Those who have a "dinner" at midday have a (high) tea in the early evening.
No usage is "wrong". It's just what's fashionable and what isn't.
Yes to this. The idea of how often you eat and when has completely changed as lifestyles have changed.
English is not the only language where this has occurred. Having learned Danish, I started Swedish and it did my head in. 'Frokost' is lunch in Danish, but it's breakfast in Swedish. And then in Swedish the evening meal is 'middag' - literally meaning 'mid-day'.
Entree is indeed a stupid word for a main course that surely isn't the first in a meal that has multiple courses. Someone somewhere seemed to think since it was French it was fancy. :rolleyes:
A fascinating word, tied up with complicated terms for different courses, e.g., the releve, that is, replacement dishes. It's commonly said that entree refers to a starter in UK, (and France), but main course in US. But it could refer to roast meat in France, I think. Of course, posh people had 5 courses, so probably the terms changed, as people ate fewer courses.
I got that wrong, the point is entree wasn't the first course in England for a posh dinner. I think the order went soup, fish, entree, roast, dessert, plus cheese. So the entree could be meat, e.g., roast guinea fowl. I don't know the US derivation. But now entree is the first course, I think, but it's very posh, starter is commoner..
Thing I never got used to in North America - salad as a separate and inevitable (whether you wanted it or not) course.
I mean, I like salad. But either I eat it as a meal in itself - usually lunch - or a side to a main dish. But this You can't get to the food you want until you chomp a heap of lettuce - is just weird.
Thing I never got used to in North America - salad as a separate and inevitable (whether you wanted it or not) course.
I mean, I like salad. But either I eat it as a meal in itself - usually lunch - or a side to a main dish. But this You can't get to the food you want until you chomp a heap of lettuce - is just weird.
In my experience it's a very narrow stripe of the restaurant spectrum that has the mandatory salad any more. Down the fork a tiny bit and you get no salad at all, and up the fork only slightly you have to pay extra for it.
And you can, of course, order "no salad, please." Or get soup instead.
IMHO the reason salad comes out first (pure speculation, but hey) is because you can get it on the table instanter, whereas the entree is going to take time. And hungry people will be happier if they have something to munch on. Not everybody does appetizers.
I think it REMAINS part of the lineup because so many people are dieting and think that eating (a particular kind of) salad (in a particular way) is going to help them avoid woofing down the main course.
I'm not sure about the last bit, eating salad avoids woofing main course. Other stuff is good. I've heard the "time filler" explanation for many years.
Sunday dinner in the middle of the day is very much a thing of the past here. It was a term used by my grandparents' generation (as was the meal), rarely in that following, and I've not heard it used in mine since I was a child.
Don't you know we Americans have big Sunday dinners and eat leftovers for the rest of the week?
I'm not sure about the last bit, eating salad avoids woofing main course. Other stuff is good. I've heard the "time filler" explanation for many years.
This is the (not) Gospel I had preached to me, many a time. Feh.
I've never been to the US. Do people really eat their salad as a separate course there? It's usually seen as a vegetable to accompany the main course here, particularly in summer, though sometimes in separate individual dishes which sit next to the one with the your main course on it.
Some starters/hors d'oeuvres are also served with accompanying salad.
Comments
But one of the most interesting accents I've heard was from staff at the Bodleian in Oxford. It wasn't just that it was RP, it was a very - yes, probably clipped is the word, but I've only heard it there, not from middle class outside (and that includes college people, but not college people since school).
Where I live there are two - Estuary in the town, which has the excuse of being on the estuary, and the village back of the town, which I didn't realise was different until we had a student in school for teaching practice, heard her in the staffroom and thought she was my cousin. She lived in the same village. My cousins have kept that accent all their lives, despite having very senior jobs in a prestigious company in London, one being a multilingual secretary where secretary meant that and not typist.
Of course, one person's idea of a "classless"/ RP accent is another's idea of "posh" - and don't even start on U and non-U!
In relation to estuary, local builders in west London have a very strong accent, sounding like a caricature, but a Fulham accent was something to behold, so maybe it's that, or a hybrid.
Yes, that's why. My mother's family came from Northamptonshire and my great-uncle had a lovely, very distinctive Northants accent that I haven't heard now for years.
Out walking recently I heard an Essex accent for the first time for ages - old boy, looked like a retired farm worker. That too is not the same as the more ubiquitous Estuary.
There used to be a difference between north and south London accents - really could hear them, but that's blurred too.
We used to use "milk" as a test, /miok/ in Cockney, and estuary maybe. The loss of dialects, so sad. My Yorks grandad still said "thou", ("wheer's tha bin"?). Damn, damn and damnation.
When I was in shops in Cirencester where there is a quagmire of pronunciations I had to be very careful not to sound as if taking the michael. There are very posh speakers who say things like "We'll have to come here when we are doing your wardrobe," in a dress shop, not a DIY place, and there were locals with good Gloucestershire accents, calling the place something like Zoiren. Posh is Cisseter, even Cister, proclaimed loudly to be correct. I prefered Zoiren, but stuck with Cirencester, so everyone could think I was ignorant.
John Arlott (of blessed memory) was a proud "Basingstoke Boy" but I doubt that many people in Basingstoke speak like him these days. I knew of a few people in Southampton who had similar accents but they were getting rarer and rarer even 20 years ago (ie when I last lived there).
I grew up in north Hampshire, during that period when there were plenty of GLC overspill estates being created in the area. As a result, that area went distinctly "sub-Cockney" for a while - especially in the schools.
The one which caught me out when I'd lived for several years in Texas, and thought I'd found all the different words, was pot holder. My Texas friend looked blank when I asked her to pass the oven gloves. I can imagine there's a few other names for these, too.
Well, there are six endemic languages here, only two pairs (English and Scots, Irish and Gaelic) of which have any mutual intelligibility.
I think use of Estuary in London is also an age related thing - maybe under 50? Over 50 it would be cockney. But that is London only. It is spreading country wide, quicker in towns and cities.
It's almost like the topic deserves a different thread, another thread, a separate thread, all of its own.
The Dorset dialect I grew up with used "gotten", not often, because the preferred verb was "to be" in the various forms, applied in non-standard ways. And I also encountered fall, sidewalk and a few other supposedly American uses of words and other Old English dialect words (I suspect, due to similarity to German). Which makes historical sense, as there were Pilgrim Fathers of West Country origin who travelled from Plymouth.
Your point about gender is interesting, and I remember research on Yorkshire dialects, which seemed to show that men had "stronger" dialects than women. I don't know if there is much research on this. On Cissister, my wife's family are from there, and said that. Zoiren is lovely. I lived in Bristol and most people said Bristow, even la di das. As they say, alright my lover?
Not AFAIK. The Mayflower restocked at Plymouth but continued with its original passengers: the closest to Plymouth were the Eatons from Bristol (info from Wikipedia but supported by official Mayflower 400 site).
I do know that in the mill towns, the women (who tended to be the ones working the looms) often had a very distinct way of speaking so as to make it easier for others to lip-read, as they wouldn't be heard over the noise of the looms. I certainly knew a couple of old women who were like that. You may remember that Les Dawson used to do an impersonation of women who spoke like that. I was never aware of any men who adopted the same speaking habits.
As I understand it, Bristol was originally Brigstowe, but gradually got renamed due to the local inhabitants' tendency to drop consonants and to add an "l' sound on the end of words that ended in a vowel sound. I once has a delightful book called "How't'speak prarper Brizzle." That certainly encouraged readers to add ls to the end of lots of words.
I find that by saying one of these names in the way suggested I can tell what accent the speaker uses for other things because it isn't possible to switch my mouth into the shape of it from "normal" speech without contortions. (I'm just trying this with some American names to get back on thread, but it isn't working. I can't remember enough placenames that British speakers would automatically get wrong - Arkansas, Berkeley, Wichita?)
This is true, at least in my family. We have:
milk and melk
coupon as Q-pon and coo-pon
pillow and pellow
khaki as kaah-key and car-key
The evening meal as supper and dinner
The noon meal as lunch and dinner
mom (mawm) and mum
grade 6 and 6th grade
It's tea. That's why as kids we were tortured by School Dinners, not School Lunches.
A good example of word evolution. In the middle ages "dinner" was the principal meal of the day, taken as early as 11-00 am. (But people often got up at 5-00 am, and only posh people had breakfast - although it became more general in the later middle ages.)
Gradually, the ruling class pushed the hour of dinner later and later. Until by the nineteeth century it was fashionable to eat in in mid-evening.
Luncheon was unknown as a word until relatively recently. (Can't quite remember exactly when, but broadly 18th or 19th century.)
Working class and northerners tend to be conservative about such important things as meal times so "dinner" remains around midday for many people.
"Tea" in the sense of a meal arose originally because of the large gap between upper class meals. Afternoon tea and "high" tea developed to fill this gap. Those who have a "dinner" at midday have a (high) tea in the early evening.
No usage is "wrong". It's just what's fashionable and what isn't.
It's common that children would have an "after school snack" to tide them over to supper. Usually about 4p.m. This presumes that people actually sit down to meals at all, which I'm not sure how many do.
Breakfast--something quick so they could get out into the fields.
Brunch--around 10:00--a more substantial meal which would include eggs, sausages, potatoes.
Lunch--usually early afternoon--often just a light meal
Dinner--late afternoon, usually during the heat of the day; and
Supper--mid-evening after the sun had gone down and the field-work ended.
Elevenses. 11 am
Lunch. 1 pm
Tea. 4 pm
Dinner. 7.30\8 pm
Supper. 10.30 pm
I tend to skip elevenses and Tea, but Mr F observes them. Supper for him is a milky drink, for me a savoury nibble of some sort.
My daughter's boyfriend's family apparently calls this snack "bed lunch" which I have never heard before.
Yes to this. The idea of how often you eat and when has completely changed as lifestyles have changed.
English is not the only language where this has occurred. Having learned Danish, I started Swedish and it did my head in. 'Frokost' is lunch in Danish, but it's breakfast in Swedish. And then in Swedish the evening meal is 'middag' - literally meaning 'mid-day'.
Though admittedly some of the portion sizes in expensive restaurants make them look like appetisers...
Salad eaten after main course at home. Most seem to have it before.
I mean, I like salad. But either I eat it as a meal in itself - usually lunch - or a side to a main dish. But this You can't get to the food you want until you chomp a heap of lettuce - is just weird.
In my experience it's a very narrow stripe of the restaurant spectrum that has the mandatory salad any more. Down the fork a tiny bit and you get no salad at all, and up the fork only slightly you have to pay extra for it.
IMHO the reason salad comes out first (pure speculation, but hey) is because you can get it on the table instanter, whereas the entree is going to take time. And hungry people will be happier if they have something to munch on. Not everybody does appetizers.
I think it REMAINS part of the lineup because so many people are dieting and think that eating (a particular kind of) salad (in a particular way) is going to help them avoid woofing down the main course.
I may be wrong.
Don't you know we Americans have big Sunday dinners and eat leftovers for the rest of the week?
Not really,
This is the (not) Gospel I had preached to me, many a time. Feh.
Some starters/hors d'oeuvres are also served with accompanying salad.