Diction-Wary Corner
Surprise! Surprise! A new survey has revealed that hopeful candidates for the top jobs tend to be judged on their appearance, their speech and – most shocking of all – which school and university they attended; caught me by surprise, this news, as did its helpful response. Since when have different rules ever applied for such posts? Variations on the old school tie theme proliferate throughout the media, though nepotism tends to rank fairly high as well; the BBC is dominated by products of broadcasting dynasties like David Dimbleby, Dan Snow, Victoria Coren, Claudia Winkleman, Zoe Ball et al, and family connections are as rife behind the scenes of all the papers that routinely bash the Beeb. Even Martin Amis once admitted that the merits of his first book didn’t really matter, for he knew it would be published regardless, simply because of whose son he happened to be.
One aspect of this undeniably earth-shattering revelation that made me smile was the grumblings about Received Pronunciation coming, as these grumblings so often do, from nice middle-class London folk expressing solidarity with t’common people in a totally non-patronising way, of course.
Clear diction undoubtedly helps get a message across; anyone who has struggled to decipher the broken English of Indian-based call-centres when attempting to solve a problem with broadband connection cannot deny this. It is interesting, however, that all the help-lines on home soil employ Scotsmen or Geordies; no doubt lengthy and expensive market research came to the conclusion that such accents inspire confidence and trust in the caller. Scousers are not so common on the other end of the line – presumably the caller would be worried their hub caps were being nicked whilst they were distracted on the phone; Brummies don’t figure too highly either.
So pervasive has the shame associated with a clear speaking voice become over the past few decades that it’s often only apparent just how pervasive when stumbling upon a segment of BBC TV continuity from the 1970s on You Tube. The announcers speak with a clarity that sounds as cleansing to the ear as a cold shower in a heat-wave. It is true that the early 60s overnight success of ‘Coronation Street’, in tandem with the rise of The Beatles – both cultural revolutions unapologetic about their regional accents – contributed towards a significant shift in the perception of spoken English. Working-class RADA scholarship boys and girls who had had their native tongue coached out of them now had to re-learn it all over again, whilst their middle-class classmates had to practice northern vowels unless they wanted a career condemned to playing authority figures or posh idiots. No longer did anyone emanating from what used to be called ‘a humble background’ seek to hide their origins by taking elocution lessons. It was almost impossible to pinpoint which corner of the country the likes of James Mason or Peter O’Toole had sprung from (making their respective hometowns of Huddersfield and Leeds a genuine surprise), whereas Michael Caine and Albert Finney wore their verbal origins with pride.
The 60s may have finally called time on the rather silly Noel Coward-type of RP that predominates in immediate post-war British cinema and in BBC recordings from the 50s; but it wasn’t really until the turn of the 80s that a wave of post-punk middle-class students on board the Alternative Comedy bandwagon (posing as trendy lefties aping working-class clichés) infiltrated the mainstream media and begat the vogue for concealing the shameful speaking voice that suggests moneyed beginnings, one that continues to this day. It’s there in such modern media heavyweights as Jonathan Ross, Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans. Even Gideon has a crack at it when addressing factory workers, clad in his macho hard-hat to emphasise how in it together we all are. Mercifully, there are some who buck the trend.
‘Test Match Special’ is renowned as a rest home for the quaintest, most old-fashioned form of the Queen’s English, and the retired Rear-Admiral tones of Henry ‘Blowers’ Blofeld are like an Edwardian yacht sailing amongst the plastic pedalos of Estuary English. The show has always specialised in commentators and summarisers with voices abundant in personality, something that was present in the erudite pipe & scotch richness of the late John Arlott and the giddy, PG Wodehouse idioms of the much-missed Brian ‘Johnners’ Johnston. The programme even had a regional representative in the Ee-By-Gum gruffness of Professional Yorkshireman Fred Trueman. It remains a proudly defiant, some might say radical, bastion of eccentricities of speech in a country of Shy Tories speaking Shy RP in private whilst supporting Labour and expressing themselves via mockenyisms in public.
It is unarguably appealing that such a bewildering variety of accents can be contained on a landmass as small as ours. One only has to travel a few miles to detect differences, even remaining within the boundaries of the same city. The colourful character present in the multitude of tongues on offer plays its part in the nation’s identity and few would be happy to see them disappear for good, no matter how much they have been diluted in recent decades. The kind of South Yorkshire accent in Ken Loach’s ‘Kes’ – all the ‘thees’ and ‘thars’ – isn’t as widespread now as it was when the film was made, certainly not as evident amongst the under-60s as it was in 1969; but there is a somewhat Luddite ‘Real Ale’ mindset in some that seeks to preserve the regional accent in artificial amber lest it be contaminated by outside influence. This is a rather futile exercise in that no accent is set in stone. Take any Cockney character from Dickens, particularly Sam Weller in ‘The Pickwick Papers’, and see how pre-sound recording Cockney differed from today’s equivalent; the pronunciation of W as V (as in ‘Sam Veller’) is something that hasn’t existed within living memory, but it was commonplace in early Victorian London.
As we have no tapes of the Victorian voice from the time, we are reliant on the great novelists of the era to provide us with pointers; and whilst there may be a degree of artistic licence present in the dialogue of nineteenth century novels, there is a romantic, poetic fluency to the speech that is absent from modern-day speech and one, as a writer, I mourn the absence of. On a personal note, a woman with a lovely speaking voice I’ve always found to be something of an aphrodisiac. Whether it be Joanna Lumley, Fenella Fielding, Tara Fitzgerald or Lindsay Duncan, there is a seductive, sensual quality to the sound that isn’t present in that of an otherwise attractive actress such as Alison King (Carla Connor on ‘Coronation Street’), whose voice is akin to a chainsaw slicing a blackboard in two.
I have no qualms with the Lauren Laverne’s of this world seeking to maintain their natural accent on radio or television, but I do resent the conscious imposition that one must resist the temptation to improve one’s speaking voice or else one is somehow a faker, particularly when one’s natural accent is especially inelegant. I see no difference between attempting to speak nicer or upgrading one’s wardrobe to make a good impression. Nobody thinks the latter is somehow ‘selling-out’. If you prefer to affect the sartorial hallmarks of a slob and speak with a similarly lazy lack of effort, that’s up to you. I’d rather adopt the voice of the man whose nickname in theatrical circles provided me with my Raccoon nom-de-plume and feel like I’ve had a shave. I do so deplore verbal stubble.
Petunia Winegum
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June 18, 2015 at 9:07 am -
Well, m’dear, coming from where you do, it’s necessary to modify the broad diction of the native tongue!
Yours,
Someone Some Place 60 Miles Away ‘Even Worse’ -
June 18, 2015 at 9:40 am -
It constantly annoys and impresses in equal measure The Bestes Wife In The World when I comment on someone’s origins, education and bank balance moments after hearing them speak for the first time. “Yes he’s the town drunk, dear, but any man who can rhyme the words ‘house’ and ‘mice’ comes from money and Oxbridge” .
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June 18, 2015 at 10:13 am -
Where to begin? Okay, nepotism in the media. I got several warnings from the BBC Archers forum for daring to suggest that nepotism was rife in the organisation citing the Dimblebys, the Snows and the Magnossuns as examples – they, the BBC don’t like it up ’em as Corporal Jones might have said. Onto regional accents. I had great difficulty early on deciphering the “Biffa Bacon” comic strip in Vis. I have always found the broad Geordie accent almost impenetrable and still do.
Some years ago, I was watching an Open University programme showing a rehersal of a Shakespeare play and they had an “expert” on the language of the period. He gave a demonstration of what he thought an Elizabethan audience would have heard. It sounded very different from modern English – more like Chaucer, which is hardly surprising.
As for Test Match Special, someone once wrote that it had become a caricature of itself. At first I thought it was a bit of a harsh observation, but the more I thought about it the more I found myself in agreement. In my view, the same could be said for a lot of Radio 4 output. That brings me onto another Radio 4 subject. I haven’t listened to the wireless for over 8 years. The last time I tuned in Radio 4 had just employed a continuity announcer with what sounded like a broad West Indian accent. Sometimes it was impossible for me to understand much of what he was saying, and indeed opinions at the time were very polarised – some loved him, some hated him. lastly, yes I’m sure that nearly all of us who have had dealings with Indian call centres would agree that the operatives are very often difficult to follow.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:24 am -
The World Service inevitably has some good accents, but generally they are okay to understand but my English is very good. I’m not sure how the foreigners might cope. They also spend a lot of time being twitter on the airwaves these days and some of their vox-pops are occasionally completely unintelligible. Now the BBC is in Manchester, is there any sign it is becoming a little moor Bez?
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June 18, 2015 at 10:28 am -
June 18, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I think “nepotism” is a bit strong. It’s inevitable that many children go into the same trade as one of their parents, and showbiz is no exception. The smattering of obvious examples in the BBC pales into insignificance compared to various acting dynasties, and that’s not just a UK thing. Having a parent famous in the field may get a youngster a foot in the door, but
Still struggling to work out the reason for the inclusion of Claudia Winkleman on The List, though….
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June 18, 2015 at 11:12 am -
Tell it to the kookaburra’s…
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2015/06/16/rupert-murdoch-succession-plan-to-be-discussed-at-board-meeting-today/
Murdoch to Hand Over Fox Reins to Sons James and Lachlan -
June 18, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
June 18, 2015 at 1:36 pm -
Odd this nepotism thing. When I wanted to take up my father’s profession, I was told that roaming Europe in the company of a million or so armed-to-the-teeth other men from the Anglosphere, and blowing Germans to kingdom come was no longer a promising career for a young man. I feel like a miner’s son: unable to do one of the shittiest, most dangerous, jobs imaginable – and cross about it. Fuck! I can’t even blame Thatcher!
PS. If you don’t understand sarcasm, then ignore the above.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:36 am
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June 18, 2015 at 10:15 am -
The loss of accent is probably related to travel. Folk who grow up and remain in their local borough will inevitably retain their local brogue, but if you move to new areas your tongue will naturally and inevitably acquire a revised twang. I can revert fairly quickly into a broader accent, nascent to my youth but my natural voice now carries a much less obvious inflection. I have not consciously sought to do this, but I guess that in the inevitable battle for survival, communication requires compromise. The pronunciations of bath or bus, are often indicative of whether one started norf or sarf of the English Watford Gap. I recall a joke to do with a recently-removed Brummie in the 70’s having trouble with his London tailor when enquiring after a kipper tie, only to have the BBC well-spoken “suits-you-sir” advising him that his establishment was not a tea-room so to please vacate the premises.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:48 am -
Television has a part to play in the loss of regional accents. Some years ago people were commenting how the Australian accents in shows like “Neighbours” and “Home and Away” were being copied and absorbed by our youth. Others have pointed out the rise of “Estuary English” which seems to be spread beyond the South East. I’m also surprised how many young white males try and sound black, which may be the influence of rap music.
As you rightly point out, our vocabulary and accents are ever changing. I doubt that mine will change. It took me 60 years to sound like me!-
June 18, 2015 at 2:24 pm -
“I’m also surprised how many young white males try and sound black”
Known locally as “Ja-fake-an”.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:37 am -
I have heard that ‘RP’ didn’t exist before 1800 and developed from ‘toffs’ copying the street urchins. The same thing seems to be happening now with the BBC trying to introduce London’s Asian-Caribbean hybrid patois to the nation in lots of its output.
I must put in a word for Neil Nunes, the afore-mentioned ‘West Indian’ announcer. He may sound ‘different’, (but then so do Kathy Clugson and the mischievous Susan Rae), but he is perfectly understandable and hardly ‘broad’.
The main problem I have with ‘RP’, (apart from all those extra ‘R’s that get inserted everywhere), is the assumption by its speakers that they are ‘right’. I remember visiting a museum in Scotland where an RP-speaker felt she had the right to enquire of a fellow visitor from whence she came. “Osaka”, said the surprised Japanese-looking visitor. “Oh you mean Osarka!”corrected our RP-questioner.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:41 am -
Yes, apparently if you were, say, the Earl of Northumberland in the 18th century, chances are you’d speak with a North East accent.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:13 am -
Not necessarily, the Earl of Sheffield had a big arse in Sussex and was Irish.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:38 am -
Although it’s always funny to stereotype Liverpudlians, when did cars last have hub caps?
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June 18, 2015 at 10:39 am -
Do they not anymore? I haven’t been behind the wheel for about 30 years, so I never noticed.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:18 am -
Yes, but they’re mostly plastic, so not worth nicking except as a direct replacement for one’s own* lost one/s.
* Not mine – don’t drive.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:39 am -
I you were taught (as I was) by people in their 60s and even 70s, who had themselves been educated in the 1920s and your family background was Army (as mine was) then the outcome is to speak the way wot they did and I do. I never adjust my accent, no matter the company. it is patronising and condescending to do so.
The result is that I can be understood everywhere, although the inverse is not always so. There have been a few exceptions; a motorcycle engineer in Northern Tennessee assumed I was a New Yorker – not a good plan, as it turned out. But I can order a pint of stout in Newcastle or Glasgow with no problem. Understanding the reply can be rather more problematic.
But what is totally unforgiveable is the use of ‘Haitch’. It just won’t do. When I heard a junior government minister do it on the wireless a little while ago, and despaired. I like regional accents. Here in the South West, they are markedly varied, between Somerset, Devon and Dorset and if your ear is attuned, you can more or less tell where folk are from.
But generally, I think Henry Higgins would be out of work these days…
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June 18, 2015 at 11:03 am -
Yes I find “Haitch” particularly irritating.
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June 18, 2015 at 10:56 am -
As we have no tapes of the Victorian voice from the time, we are reliant on the great novelists of the era to provide us with pointers…
True, but we also have the work of Henry Mayhew, who phonetically transcribed the words of the Victorian working classes, from the skilled to the not-skilled-at-all. BBC2’s Timewatch recreated some of them in 1996, extracts of which appear on YouTube, although I do still have the complete thing on tape somewhere. The programme is fronted by Jonathan Miller, who points out that Mayhew didn’t seem particularly discerning about getting a representative sample, with some trades being more covered than others. IIRC, at the time there were only three glass eye makers in London’, and Mayhew managed to interview two of them!
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June 18, 2015 at 11:02 am -
I think I remember that programme. I did once see film of a very old lady being interviewed by Joan Bakewell in the 60s, one who pronounced certain words in a way that suggested the speech of her youth. She pronounced Edwardian so it rhymed with guardian, and described the Suffragettes as ‘fanna-tics’.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:10 am -
Have you told ‘er upstairs about this old archive film you’ve found of her?
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June 18, 2015 at 11:25 am -
I’ve certainly heard of the pronunciation of “Ed-wah-dian” before, as opposed to the now common “Ed-warred-ian.” The fanatics one is interesting. My mother always said you could spot someone who read a lot but didn’t converse with others about the same subjects, because they were apt to mis-pronounce uncommon words, yet clearly know the correct meaning of them.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:06 am -
* I’d rather adopt the voice of the man whose nickname in theatrical circles provided me with my Raccoon nom-de-plume *
Though little-remarked-upon now, I especially recall the black guy who was the boss of Department S. He had the perfect diction of an English gentleman and was the boss. That derived from the culture of ITC and the commercial sector at a time when the BBC were more enthused about the Black & White Minstrels and more likely to send David Attenborough to visit the black folks, rather than Robin Day. If ever monolithic Establishment is revealed as the fraud it is, it was by that. -
June 18, 2015 at 11:11 am -
Isn’t there an early recording of William Gladstone, or possibly Alfred Tennyson, lurking somewhere? Failing that, anything uttered by Donald Wolfit (our greatest ham) probably comes rather close.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:34 am -
Imagine the misconceptions if we had to rely upon the voice of Mike Tyson to gauge the man behind it and how African Americans sounded in the 20th century…
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June 18, 2015 at 1:32 pm -
There’s definitely a recording of Tennyson reading one of his poems.
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June 18, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
There are many recordings of well known people made in the 1920s and 30s, and these people will mostly have been born in the nineteenth century.
The British Library does a series of spoken word CDs which include Edith Sitwell and H G Wells. I have a set of three EMI CDs of “Writers and Poets” which includes Conan Doyle, A A Milne, W B Yeats, Virginia Woolf and others.
All these give an idea of how people used to speak. Tennyson had a regional accent (Norfolk?).
The GPO films made in the 1930s and issued on DVD by the British Film Institute include good examples of what was then received pronunciation.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:38 am -
Petunia, so I’ve been wrong all the time. I thought your surname must be Maynard (hence the winegums) , and that Petunia, being of the Solanaceae, might have pointed to you being a heavy smoker (tobacco), a couch potato, a red (tomato) or hot stuff (chilli pepper) – all those other plants being in the same botanical group. Bollocks. Now I’ll have to resign my membership of the supersleuth Holmes Society!
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June 18, 2015 at 11:48 am -
I blew the cover on this some time ago. Pay attention!
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June 18, 2015 at 1:43 pm -
OK, keep yer Barnet on. I Adam and Eve it. Gi’ us a hint, and I’ll take a butcher’s at it.
If it turns out I’ve plagiarised you, I’ll feel a right berk.
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June 18, 2015 at 1:18 pm
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June 18, 2015 at 11:42 am -
My maternal grand-parents hailed from 1880s Huddersfield, with both the heavy accents and dialect to match, but these had almost entirely disappeared from my own parents. Although I naturally speak with a distinct local accent, any local dialect terms are almost completely missing from my current vocabulary, undoubtedly engineered out to accommodate my past professional life.
That said, I often deliberately accentuated my regional twang when debating and negotiating with those of a more southern RP persuasion: they tended to interpret the accent as some clear indicator of yokel stupidity, thus leaving themselves open to the killer-blow of an unrecognised intellect.
The wide range of regional accents now appearing on TV and radio simply reflect the global spread of the english language, the same basic word-forms simply being garnished with a different flavour. As long as they are comprehensible, that’s OK by me – Neil Nunes with the Shipping Forecast is positively musical.
(And it must really annoy the French, having to accept their language no longer holding sway in international communications – it’s all worth it just for that delight). -
June 18, 2015 at 11:48 am -
I was once (on the basis of my accent) mistaken by two black American G.I.s for being German.
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June 18, 2015 at 11:50 am -
I stood in a queue in Germany and confidently assured my German friend that the group behind us talking English were probably from Yorkshire. They were Australians….
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June 18, 2015 at 11:49 am -
* My maternal grand-parents hailed from 1880s Huddersfield, with both the heavy accents and dialect to match, but these had almost entirely disappeared from my own parents. *
The effects of the wireless presumably.
Much like the coming of the trains meant it was the same time across the country. -
June 18, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
The desire to improve one’s diction, as Noel Coward did so that his slightly deaf mother could understand him, is despised in our metropolitan culture whereas the reverse, with people like Jamie Oliver and David Beckham from middle class backgrounds, adopting ghastly mockney accents is accepted as normal.
But as you say, wearing a dustman’s hat and gorblimey trousers would not be.-
June 18, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
Dexy’s Midnight Runners being an example of the consequences if they did…
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June 18, 2015 at 12:22 pm -
As Kevin Rowland said of his new image: “These are my best clothes.”
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June 18, 2015 at 12:20 pm -
@Mudplugger.
I used to work for a large communictions company, and my job entailed attending residential trianing courses. It was odd to find out that “Londoners” considered any accent from north of Watford Gap as belonging to a bumpkin. I’d always thought I possessed a neutral accent until these “Southerners” disabused me of that notion.
One person I find fascinating to listen to is Brian R Sewell. I read somewhere that he is the only living being capable of giving the Queen elocution lessons.
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June 18, 2015 at 1:20 pm -
Sewell should have received a mention in this piece. I remember him once saying, ‘People often say I sound like a 1930s lesbian.’
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June 18, 2015 at 2:29 pm -
I dislike the content of most of what he says, but I’m fascinated by how he says it. It’s like listening to a well known tune played on an unfamiliar instrument.
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June 18, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
It was odd to find out that “Londoners” considered any accent from north of Watford Gap as belonging to a bumpkin
Whilst the Northern English accents do sound increasingly moronic the further Northwards one travels, with Geordies sounding like retarded Orcs, strangely enough ‘Educated Scots’ or ‘Tartan RP’ sounds the most intelligent of all the UK accents to London ears….there have been studies.
Infact I’m told many English GPs of previous eras considered the accent acquired during their studies in Edinburgh to be almost as valuable as the medical degree acquired there.
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June 18, 2015 at 12:55 pm -
‘…like an Edwardian yacht sailing amongst the plastic pedalos of Estuary English.’
Petunia, I adore you!
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June 18, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
June 18, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
‘…like an Edwardian yacht sailing amongst the plastic pedalos of Estuary English.’
How did I miss that gem?! *Note to self: always ensure sufficient nicotine in my caffeine stream before reading Pet in the morning.*
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June 18, 2015 at 1:07 pm -
Charlotte Green…oh yes!
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June 18, 2015 at 2:00 pm -
pronunciation of W as V (as in ‘Sam Veller’) is something that hasn’t existed within living memory,
My kids still talk of “Weedeeooohs” (‘videos’) but that’s because they are too thick to pronounce either of their mother tongues (German/English) correctly not because they went to school with The Artful Dodger. The W/V ‘thing’ may have died out but other bits of archaic Cockney survived at least into the 80s -remember Pete Beale . Even my Old Man (Lambifff n Beffnall Gerwveen) , when his RP slips (he married above his class), can do things to a vowel that would make Tubby Isaac smile…alwveady or alrrRedd-dee.
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