Re: speaking english NJC

[sl . m]

Wally, it's become fashionable in England to speak that way, as a way of sticking two fingers up to our class system. The dialect is called Thames Estuary, and it's a sort of mix between BBC English and East End English (where "Dave" sounds like "dive"). A lot of the people surrounding Tony Blair speak that way (and even Blair does sometimes) and those that don't, pretend to. And the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has that accent too. A Scottish accent is regarded as the really cool thing to have (at the moment), and apparently more people vote for Scottish (in polls) as being the most honest-sounding of all the British accents than any other, so advertisers are always on the lookout for Scots to do their voiceovers. It's amazing how many accents are crammed into such a small island. Here in Canada - which is I don't know how many times the size of the UK - we have basically two accents: Newfoundland and everywhere else, eh.

Sarah


From: "Wally Kairuz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
i feel the opposite when i hear british speakers, especially londoners. even
very educated speakers seem to have adopted a lot of cockney sounds.
london's *dave* rhymes with america's *dive*, for example. i thought all
that had been cleared up in my fair lady. don't people in london feel it is
vulgar to sound that way? you hear it even on the bbc.