Accentuate the positive

It’s 40 years since I moved to live and work in London and I still have my Derby accent. It’s not as strong as it once was but people still guess that I come from Yorkshire! I will never be able to say “paarth” and “baarth” and people still sometimes laugh if I say with my short, flat vowels, such as, “I’m going to catch the bus”. It’s only in recent years that I’ve begun to understand how well I did to achieve so much in my career, particularly in the early years, given that I carried the hindrance of a Northern accent. Back in the 70s and 80s, I reckon that I was quite a novelty to some folks when Northern accents were not as common in London as they are now, especially not in the media unless you were a ‘Coronation Street’ fan.  In fact, ‘common’ is the word for it: I remember the mother of a former boyfriend advising me to take elocution lessons; I was so affronted by the suggestion. People either take me for what I am or not at all.

The speaking world has changed since then and, in my opinion, for the better. People who speak ‘proper’ are in the minority; only 2% of the population speak with the Received Pronunciation (RP) accent (otherwise known as the Queen's English or BBC English). This decline in RP shows a growing accent fluidity which should allow us all to move in all directions, no matter what our accent.