Essex and London accents deemed less intelligent, researchers find

Discussion in 'The Lounge Bar' started by CL1, Jun 11, 2021.

  1. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  2. Uncle Target

    Uncle Target Mist over Dartmoor

    Not Surprised. Always a subject for people to dig at Accents.
    When I went to college in Birmingham I was called a country bumkin and when I went back to Evesham or any place south west I was a Brummy.
    Locally I was an enigma as my dad had a Bristol accent which could appear in my voice from nowhere and my acquired Midland accent became a source of amusement anywhere close to London.
    Lancashire and Yorkshire were bad enough but Geordie got me a black eye aged 16 when I asked him which part Ireland he came from.
    As for Stoke on Trent : Ow ya doin Ducks?
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2021
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  3. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Here's an intelligent accent :)

     
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  4. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  5. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

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  6. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Well mate if only most Londoners talked like that these days
    most can barely string sentences together with their gangsta speak
     
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  7. m kenny

    m kenny Senior Member

    Anyone who spends time browsing through Facebook pages can not help but notice l that the majority of the population are functioning illiterates. Sadly it would appear that the new defining part of your politics is your intelligence. In time it won't be Left v Right but morons v normal people. Not joking I really believe that is what is happening.
    Check the film Idiocracy and wonder why no one realised it was an accurate depiction of the way the world would evolve.
     
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  8. Rich Payne

    Rich Payne Rivet Counter Patron 1940 Obsessive

    You'd better Adam an' Eve it, Son !

    I've been gone a long time.
     
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  9. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

    I'd argue that this isn't about Essex accents, its about London over spill and its descendants. My rural Essex antecedents spoke nothing like that.
     
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  10. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Dead right mate, and its all relative, in both senses of the word.

    Listening to me speak in the 1950s & 60s, most people outside of Essex and east London would have thought I was a cockney. But I grew up in Benfleet, so I spoke fluent "Estuary" as did my mates on the island (Canvey) and in Sourfend (Southend-on-sea).

    Further west, and my mates in Thurrock sounded like east enders to me, but people from Hackney and other east end boroughs would have thought they had an Estuary accent.

    Further north (certainly from Chelmsford up) and they sounded like true Essex people.

    So where did "Estuary" come from?

    Most of my mates at school had one or more parent or grandparent from the east end of London (my mum was from Dalston) so this became a major influence on the way we spoke. But the accent was modified a little by non-Londoners (my dad was from Dorset) and we ended up with a sort of mongrel cockney accent.

    I don't know what kind of accent I have now, having left Sourfend in 1984. But when I started making lots of working trips to North American in the late 1980s, many Americans asked if I was Australian...which probably had as much to do with the recent success of Crocodile Dundee as it did with my use of English.

    I also remember the first training course I did to a bunch of engineers in Chicago. By mid-day I wasn't sure I was getting the message over...then I suddenly realised that they did not know the meaning of many English words such as "lorry". After lunch I switched to calling a lorry a truck, and drew on my extensive knowledge of US programs like 'The Rockford Files' for the right words for my American audience.

    That seemed to work; so now they had a much better idea what I was talking about...even though they probably thought I was a bit of a dick! ...or maybe (even worse) that I was taking the piss!
     
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  11. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

    I Googled a thick posh English accent...



    Personally it doesn't matter to me what the accent sounds like, unless it is so strong in dialect that it really starts to become relatively unintelligible to those not versed in it, but it matters more what people say.

    Quite a few intelligent people um and err to the extent that it's practically every other word.

    I once said "yea" rather than "yes" to a games teacher at school and was told immediately to say "yes" rather than "yea"... so it depends too who one is speaking to... ;-)

    yea
    /jeɪ/
    ARCHAIC•FORMAL
    adverb
    yes.
    "she has the right to say yea or nay"
    noun
    an affirmative answer.
    "the British government would give the final yea or nay"
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2021
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  12. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    yes indeed the Essex and London accents of today are not the ones I remember

    There are still a few of the locals around (that can be said for most large conurbations


    I do not participate in social media for obvious reasons but do view twit twat regularly and it astounds me the lack of reason and commonsense of most of the users



    its all gone up the pictures
     
  13. Wobbler

    Wobbler Well-Known Member

    My entire ‘knowledge’ of the New York accent comes from film and it’s the one I instantly recognise, or think I do anyway.

    Whenever I attempt it myself, it revolves mainly around changing certain sounds to “oy”, for example New Joy-zee, ham-boy-ger and, thanks to dear old Max from Hart to Hart, MOY-dah.

    Kind of limited on my part and probably as erroneous and clichéd an assumption, however, as dear ol’ Dick’s Cockney.
     
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  14. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

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  15. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

    Things like accents change more rapidly with external exposure, hence local accents diminish and die. Film and television are much to blame; if anyone disputes that listen to personalities such as Franklin Roosevelt in US broadcasts, he sounds almost English. Having left the UK shores over thirty years ago, I note on my infrequent returns significant changes in accents over that period.

    On a related matter, I saw (endured) one of those internal (infernal) TV ads for East Enders today. Cor blimey, luv a duck, where was Crusty the Clown in that comedy ensemble?
     
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  16. Buteman

    Buteman 336/102 LAA Regiment (7 Lincolns), RA

    My in-laws, came from East Ham. Not a cockney twang between them. They spoke real proper and they knew the Crays and the Richardsons, as did most in that community.

    I'm from "Saarf" London with a slight accent and live in Glawster. People occasionally ask me if I'm a cockney. I just say no, as I could not hear the sound of Bow Bells when I was born. That comment normally throws them.

    From the Macmillan Dictionary "someone who is born within the sound of Bow Bells is said to be a true cockney (= someone from the East End of London)"

    Amended as per Bluto. :D
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2021
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  17. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    When you travel around the old east End you still bump into proper cockneys and there are still a few pie and mash shops knocking about

    there is one z lister who comes from Bedfordshire and that accent is utterly common as muck based on gangsta vowels
    The proper cockney is a joy to listen too.As are all the British dialects

    also the east ender bloke who is a caricature of himself good grief.

    amongst my traits is still grammar when writing I just dont bother very poor me old chinas
     
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  18. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

    Surely 'Saarf London'
     
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  19. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

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  20. Steve Mac

    Steve Mac Very Senior Member

    I’ve worked in London and it’s surrounds for over 30 years. I’ve known and know, a lot of people that grew up in London and from all parts of it, and I can’t say that any two of them speak the same way.

    What I have noticed is that a lot of the rough Londoners speak the way they do partly because they don’t move their jaws, lips or tongues, when speaking. They don’t shape words. Rather, they make harsh noises that emanate from the back of their throats, that grate through their teeth and emerge into the world as would the utterances of a ventriloquist/ventriloquist’s dummy.

    I hear Danny Dyer and/or Ray Winston speak and think, ‘ignorant’.
     

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