Accents

[Daisy]

I've just read an item on i-news about TV news readers and how they never seem to have a regional accent, apart from Huw Edwards. I hadn't ever noticed, and certainly radio news readers seem to have a variety of accents. Perhaps I don't notice accents unless I really can't understand them. What do you think?

https://inews.co.uk/culture/televisi...iously-1886567

[Gemini]

Well, regional accents can sometimes be hard to understand so there is some logic to an RP easy to understand accent.
Clearly spoken not too broad accents are a good thing though.
Certainly here we have northern accents on our regional news programmes.

[Plantaholic]

I quite like accents, not too broad if it is a television or radio programme. One of the things I found so enjoyable on our first Birmingham get-together was to hear Gemini, Oma and Qwerty's accents. Oh and WeeGranny.

[Oma]

Our local news readers are all northern ,
I can understand why it needs to be a more none descript accent though ,
If Newcastle/Sunderland people get together we talk so fast and our accent can be very thick especially Newcastle , plus we both have some difference in our dialect .

[Grauntie Mag]

It’s a good job news readers don’t have the ‘estuary accent’ as it’s known here, it’s pretty awful!

[Glammanana]

We have had the same presenters here for a long time all with Northern accents I love the Geordie accent I can listen to it all day long,I struggle with broad Scottish and love the lilt of the Irish accent,me !! think of Margie Clark and you wouldn't be far wrong x

[Daisy]

Our local presenters all sound southern - pretty much RP I suppose.

Staying in Stoke a couple of weeks ago I was surprised to hear the local presenters had Brummy accents. I don't know why that should be a surprise, but it was!

Glamm - I love the Geordie accent, too - and the Scouse accent. It always sounds warm and friendly, although when I first went to work in Liverpool I found it quite hard to understand.

[Sum1Ls]

We all have an accent, I think it’s just conditioning to describe the newsreader voice as the default. It’s just as much of an accent as any other. I love regional accents wherever they are. I think it gives character and interest to a voice.

I dislike ‘lazy’ speech, but I think that’s often embarrassment as it’s often young lads who mutter and mumble!

And I think that understanding is only a matter of familiarity. It takes a bit to ‘get your ear in’. When I first came to London I struggled mightily to understand Londoners and my OH still chuckles because I wrote Wharf Road on some instructions, not realising the London pronunciation of Walworth Road. I was also mystified when I first started teaching here to be told that my missing children in class had ‘gon ‘oppin’. My late MiL asserted that my father, who had a slight northern intonation, had a very strong accent while speaking with the strongest south east London accent herself!

I do remember the feeling of relief when after an hour of frustration with Indian call centres trying to get a problem resolved, I finally made contact with a woman from Liverpool. Her accent was unmistakable, clear and very comforting.

I know now I use a fairly neutral or RP accent partly because I’ve moved around a lot, but I still stick to the short A in words like bath or path. It sounds pretentious to me to say barth or parth. But that’s just prejudice too....mind you I can speak with strong Nottingham accent if I want too. And I can always pinpoint a speaker very close to their place of origin.

[Sum1Ls]

And, as an addendum to that, a friend from Inverness described her uncle’s partner as his ‘bidie-in’. I loved that.

[Gemini]

Off topic a tiny bit, but although I have always said a short A in bath, grass etc, I use a long A in plaster and master.
My OH does too, we always have! My DDs think it odd and a bit pretentious, but for me it would be as unnatural to use a short A in those words as it would a long A in grass.

[Daisy]

Stokie friends tell me I've lost most of my Potteries accent, but I still say 'bath' and 'path' - all my a's are short! But southern friends laugh - literally - at my pronunciations of words like 'cook' or 'book'. I honestly don't think I say it any differently from them, but even my OH thinks it hilarious.

Years ago when I first started to teach Pitman shorthand (which is phonetic) in the south I had to explain that their problems with the words 'are/our' were over. They're written differently, even though most southerners pronounce them the same, but I always say 'arh' and 'ower', and they'd know which to write.

Sum1 - I love bidie-in - I've never heard it before. When I read your missing children had 'gon' 'oppin' I thought they'd gone to help with the hop harvest in Kent. When we lived in rural Bedfordshire children used to go "peasing" - someone had to explain it meant harvesting peas!

Gem - I wonder why plasters and masters are long a's for you and OH?

[Gemini]

No idea Daisy! We grew up 20 miles apart as well, not totally in the same area.

[Plantaholic]

I use strong A's in bath and path, nothing posh here. My OH was a Brummie, he had more or less lost his accent except for his strong 'G' in words like singing.

[Oma]

Makem is different to Geordie but I suppose to others we all sound alike ,

Newcastle (Geordie) is much harder than Makem ( Sunderland)

Makem we don't pronounce H , things like House is just ouse
Our, is ower
We are, is wear

Geordie's pronounce we are going out as wurr gannun oot

Strangers always say , oh your Geordie …. NO im Makem
A big difference in the north east and some can get quite upset to be classed a Geordie haha

[Lizzie48]

My father was from Scotland and very well spoken, we lived in typical Yorkshire village, we often talked about one of the lanes in the village, pronouncing it Hopped Lane, he was reading in the night paper that they were going to build houses down Hopwood Lane and where was it? We told him it was Hopped Lane, he said " you and your Yorkshire accents"!!!