Other Voices

So, Bonnie has been evicted from The Big Brother House and whilst, on a personal level, she was not exactly the most offensive of housemates, I'm so pleased she has gone - if only so I no longer have to listen to that dreadful voice! Whilst I have nothing against regional accents per se - I don't exactly speak in Received Pronunciation myself - the Leicestershire accent (Bonnie is from Loughborough) has to be one of the worst the UK has to offer.

I'm not sure why I find the local accent so grating. I think perhaps it's beacause it sounds so lazy - almost like the speaker can't be bothered to finish off his words properly - for instance, replacing the ie or y at the end of a word with an 'eh' sound whilst er becomes 'ah'. An' if ya thought Bonneh wah bad, ya shoulda 'eard 'er sistah! Having seen Bonnie's sister, Lara, on Big Brother's Little Brother Yesterday, Bonnie's accent began to sound positively mild.

Living in Leicestershire, it was perhaps not a good idea to name my daughter Daisy - she's destined to get called Daiseh! So far my children have avoided developing a Leicester accent and long may that continue. Cam went to school in Leicester and managed to escape with his vowels intact but Cam's youngest brother has lived in Leicester all his life and has a noticeable Leicester twang.

I spent the first few years of my life in Portsmouth, moving up to my mum's home town of Barnsley at the age of around four. During my time at primary school, no one ever commented on the way I spoke but it certainly became an issue once I got to secondary school. Not having the regulation broad South Yorkshire accent, I was considered 'posh' and consequently began to modify my accent to fit in. Ironically, as soon as I moved away, a Yorkshire accent was the last thing I wanted and I set about losing it again.

The nature of my current job, involving a lot of time on the telephone, means that I'm exposed to the whole range of UK accents and, in more bored moments, I play a little game of guessing where people are from before I've located their details. I'm often woefully wrong but if someone from Barnsley has a 2 in their account number, I'll pinpoint them every time! There are some regional accents I could listen to all day - Geordie, Irish (both Northern and Southern), West Country; some I find irrationally amusing - Liverpool, Manchester and (rarely) some that are downright unintelligible!

I'm not sure what kind of accent I have these days - vaguely Northern/Midlands, I guess. Funnily enough, though, when I'm speaking to old schoolfriends or my family, I subconsciously lapse into broad Yorkshire. I've observed this chameleon quality in other people too. Cam works in Birmingham and when speaking to work colleagues on the phone, he definitely develops a slight Brummie accent!


Other Voices - The Cure (Staring At The Sea, 1986)