the North-South divide

I used to have a Northern accent ( :sniff: ) - now only the sad remnants of my short 'a' remain. No longer do I say 'bun' (for starters it's bloody 'fairy cake' down here - southern softies), 'bus' now sounds more like 'bas' and I have difficulty pronouncing the name of The Best Band That Have Ever Existed; my voice struggles with the 'u' like an adolescent boy. Ca... Cu... Coo... Cur... Agh! I give up!
That's what comes of living Dahn Sahf.

Accent appears to be an issue of great debate down here, and it is a topic about which I have strong opinions, as you will see.
Southerners seem to take great exception to anyone who cannot speak 'their' language correctly. Northerners are often mercilessly teased about the way they speak. Those, like me, who have strayed from their 'home' territory and are invading the South seem to be worst affected. Perhaps they feel threatened.
A Southern friend of mine recently moved 'Oop North' and now, having been on the receiving end of similar persecution, vows she will never torment anyone about their accent again.

I have had people genuinely being unable to understand things I've said, which I find incredible.
A few years back, while playing a 'listening-to-instructions' game with my class (pronounced as it is spelt I might add, I see no 'r' to make it say cl-ar-ss) of six and seven year olds I asked (not ar-sked) them to draw a winding path with a castle at the end of it.
"A what with a what at the end of it?" came the reply.
I translated:
A p-ar-th with a c-ar-stle at the end of it.
Good God!
Have these children never heard Northern accents before?! Do they not get 'Byker Grove' down here?!

From a teaching and learning angle, being Northern helps to makes spelling and reading a helluva lot easier - all the letters make their correct sound, the letters p-l-a-n-t say 'plant' not 'pl-ar-nt'.
This adherence to the rules of phonics is taken even further in parts of Lancashire where all 'double-o' words are pronounced with the 'oo' - like in 'moon'.
Now try saying 'lets have a look in the cook book.'

I take great delight in noticing when my pupils make changes to their own accents as a result of being 'exposed' to mine - when they say 'cl-a-ss' and 'gr-a-ss' and 'gl-a-ss'. I've even had some kids over-compensate for my accent and instead of saying 'Maths' have said 'M-ar-ths'.
This extreme southern accent is not unheard of, however. There are those who, silly as it sounds, pronounce plastic as 'pl-ar-stic', 'pasty' as 'p-ar-sty' and 'plaque' as 'pl-ar-que'.

To try and add (a little) balance to this post, I will now rectify a misconception.
Northerners:
Despite accent, not all Southerners are posh.

Now, Southerners, it is your turn.
Southerners:
The UK does not revolve around London / the South East. Things of importance do happen elsewhere.
Birmingham is in the Midlands, not Oop North.
The words and 'giraffe' and 'scarf' do not rhyme.

Comments

[Jessa]

Kirsty,

I just spent a few weeks in England round about Hebden Bridge and Huddersfield way up NE, and though I have been speaking English (well, really it should be called American) all my friggin life, I for the freaking life of me could NOT UNDERSTAND A THING FOLKS WHERE SAYING.

Hell is calling an british tech support and asking the guy to repeat every bloody sentence. I kept saying "Um...could you repeat that? I am American." Funny!

[Kirsty]

Nah then lass, is summat wrong wi' t' Yorkshire accent?

Ha! I find your observations amusing!
If you think Yorkshire is incomprehensible you should go to Glasgow and try that accent!
Even I can't understand it and I used to live in Scotland.

I can identify accents from several parts of the US, but there just seems to be less variation from region to region.
I think the most marked difference in accent over here is the difference between broad Manchester and broad Liverpool - less than 40 miles apart.
Somewhere like Texas is massive. Doesn't the whole of the UK fit into it? Yet, the accent, to my untrained ear, seems pretty much the same from one side of the state to the other. Am I way off mark with that comment!?

There are theories that the modern American accent is closer to how we used to speak over here in the 1500s and 1600s than the 'Queen's English' accent today.
We know the Pilgrim Fathers took our spelling with them - leaving us with kings and queens and printers to mess it up while yours stays untouched, so why not the accent!

Children over here get exposed to American accents a lot on TV, and it is not unusual for me to hear them during role play putting on an American accent. I think that's why Brits have less trouble understanding Americans - you're not used to it! Don't you get Coronation Street over there?
Humph! I suppose you only get EastEnders via BBC America. Bloody cockneys!

[John]

So having a go at the Scots now? True, the weegies do have a fairly incomprehensible accent. I'm just about to move there after 5 years in London and I'm prepared for rapid readjustment.

You are so right about the vowel sounds dahn saath - it seems like such a small difference but can make comprehension almost impossible. My accent is Scottish Standard English - good middle class Scots in other words. But I only have about half the vowel sounds at my disposal as the southern English do. It's not wrong it's just different. But when I first moved here I went to work for Granada - and when I said that word in my normal accent no one could understand it! Within days I'd lengthened the 'a's to say 'Gr-aa-n-aa-da'. Sell out. Unfortunately my dear wife has a name which contains that long 'a' sound - and I still have trouble pronouncing it comfortably. So I call her darling instead.

BTW I thought I was the only one that posted a pic of my cat on my blog and pretended it was me...

[Steve]

Great post. We have a friend who moved up from Essex. The first time we had dinner at her house she asked us if we wanted batter on our baked potatoes. I thought this was some novel "cockney" cuisine, battered baked potatoes (after all, the scots eat battered mars bars), but of course she meant butter, she just couldn't pronounce it properly ;-)
I get sick of southerners and even midlanders taking the piss of my accent and trying (very badly) to mimic it (I'm from the Durham/Sunderland area). I never bother trying to take the piss of theirs, I wouldn't stoop so low.