Summer Transfer Shit and Everything Else

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Letters

While you're being boring, what do you make of people (I'm looking at you Nigel Kennedy) who shifted accent from quite posh to mockney?
(I have an idiot uncle who went the other way, our family accent is fairly neutral, his is plummy in a way which doesn't come from him upbringing).

---

People's accents sometimes drift with time, I know that much. I haven't studied accent change on an individual level so I don't know the exact causes at play.

Neither does anybody here, though as you'll see above that doesn't stop anybody from making up explanations that suit their own worldview and assuming they're correct.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

And I also say balls to this class distinction, it’s cultural…you’ll get a middle class white lad just as likely to talk like a Yardie just as much as a poor kid from Bermondsey..

---

I did say I was oversimplifying ;)

The process I described applies to the birth of MLE.

It's since spread to other social classes via a similar dynamic: middle class kids spend time with working class kids and so pick up aspects of their speech.

Honestly, making moralistic judgements about accent/language change is a bit like making judgements about particle physics or biological evolution. They're all natural phenomena that the individuals involved have essentially no control over. ESR speaks MLE for broadly the same reason he's 6 feet tall. We don't make moralistic judgements about people's height (well some people do, but they're generally regarded as morons), so why do it about their accents?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WMUG

We don't make moralistic judgements about people's height (well some people do, but they're generally regarded as morons)

---

:gp:

:angry:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WMUG

I did say I was oversimplifying ;)

The process I described applies to the birth of MLE.

It's since spread to other social classes via a similar dynamic: middle class kids spend time with working class kids and so pick up aspects of their speech.

Honestly, making moralistic judgements about accent/language change is a bit like making judgements about particle physics or biological evolution. They're all natural phenomena that the individuals involved have essentially no control over. ESR speaks MLE for broadly the same reason he's 6 feet tall. We don't make moralistic judgements about people's height (well some people do, but they're generally regarded as morons), so why do it about their accents?

---

But this isn’t some generational change, this is like me picking up a Mancunian affectation because Oasis were big when I was a teenager our kid

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

But this isn’t some generational change, this is like me picking up a Mancunian affectation because Oasis were big when I was a teenager our kid

---

I don't think that's what ESR's doing, is it? I don't have any clips of him speaking at age 10 to hand, but I'd be surprised if he was full-on RP at that age.

People do speak differently in different situations, which is called code-switching. Again, I've not studied that very much so I don't know the ins and outs of it, but it's something we all do unconsciously from time to time. As far as I'm aware, a common place where code-switching is observed is in the classroom vs in the playground, i.e. when speaking to authority vs to peers.

What we switch between, and how much that happens, is again something that depends on the individual.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WMUG

I don't think that's what ESR's doing, is it? I don't have any clips of him speaking at age 10 to hand, but I'd be surprised if he was full-on RP at that age.

People do speak differently in different situations, which is called code-switching. Again, I've not studied that very much so I don't know the ins and outs of it, but it's something we all do unconsciously from time to time. As far as I'm aware, a common place where code-switching is observed is in the classroom vs in the playground, i.e. when speaking to authority vs to peers.

What we switch between, and how much that happens, is again something that depends on the individual.

---

Doubt he was calling people Bruv or saying you get me? at ten

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

Doubt he was calling people Bruv or saying you get me? at ten

---

Perhaps not, but do you speak the same way you did when you were ten?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn

Doubt he was calling people Bruv or saying you get me? at ten

---

You understand that the way we speak is influenced by our peers and friends, right?
I say "Really?!" when I'm exasperated by something because of a colleague at work who used to. And now my son does.
:shrug:

I'm currently working with a lady who grew up in Australia, came over here at around 10 with an Aussie accent which she says was "bullied out of her". She now speaks quite posh, like.
What is your anyone's actual problem with any of this?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chippy

As a true Cockney from Shoreditch in 1973 (before it came gentrified). I think it is fucking embarrassing. You are obviously a younger person that thinks anyone with the balls to question it is related to Alf Garnett.

---

The Yute of today or the Mandem as the Yute like to call themselves all kind of speak this way, especially if raised in Urban London / Greater London / Any town near to London with a big ethnic minority.

When I was growing up as a kid in Brixton (I am black and from Caribbean parents), some of the white kids use to speak some of the yardie / patois slang that derived from Yard Jamaica but not all of them, you were either a urban kid or a cockney back then. These days it seems most kids adopt the street slang, patois mixed with even some Arab Muslim type words / sayings.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WMUG

Perhaps not, but do you speak the same way you did when you were ten?

---

An increased vocabulary aside mainly yes

My flat dull Essex intonation is an irritation on the ears even to me