I hate

Love that show!

Flippancy aside, what’s the root of the tendency for people with RP accents to believe they don’t have an accent? The BBC?

I assumed it was because the whole point of RP was to try to create a standardised English accent that could be understood by anyone across the whole country/empire/world

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/128277/

Yeah, and I guess the whole idea of RP (or whatever you want to call it) is that it's a non-regional accent. Although arguably it's an accent associated with the south of England.

It feels like the UK is, while probably not the only one, definitely one of few countries where there isn't just the common regional and ethnic dimension when it comes to accents, but a 'poshness' one as well. RP or whatever version of that we'd now see as 'posh English' is something I have never heard any 'non-posh' person speak, no matter where in the UK they came from. You're definitely correct in that it's associated with the south of England, but to my knowledge it doesn't actually exist as a regional accent there either, right?

Did any of you guys watch Fiona Hill testify in the US impeachment enquiry?

She's from County Durham originally and has a thick as pig shit Northern accent. She spoke quite eloquently about how she feels that in the UK, people with a background like hers (coal mining family) and with a thick regional accent don't get the same opportunities that are on offer in the USA. Basically called out the UK establishment for being an accent snob.

I think she's probably right.

I used to know a chap who grew up in a deprived setting in Merseyside who eventually went on to own a bank. He had voice coaching lessons when he was in his 20s because he noticed that people in London didn't take him seriously in interviews. He reckoned the difference in treatment was immediate as soon as he started to lose the Scouse twang.

Its a sad state of affairs.

Its a sad state of affairs.

True dat! I wonder how much of that is the historical requirement of having to have attended one of the "right" schools.

That said, it's important to be able to speak eloquently in whatever accent you have. If you can't frame your ideas well people are left not knowing whether the problem is that your ideas are rubbish or that you just can't articulate them.

Pretty sure when I was at uni I read some research that showed that a Birmingham accent had the most negative associations in relation to employment prospects.

IDK if it controlled for the fake NI accent they use when speaking to outsiders.

As csb bit of antidata, when my Grandad with a broad regional accent enlisted, he initially tried to become an officer and the officer interviewing him said they'd have to do something about his accent. His retort was that was the sort of reason he was volunteering to fight the Nazis. He didn't get a second interview.

Just had a debate in my office, everyone is proper Essex (myself included) around the pronunciation of 'bagel'
They all say 'bay-gul' and I say 'Bye-gul'

How do you say railway?

Railway.

People who literally stop anywhere and have a fucking meeting

In the toilet? Yup
Behind my chair? Yup
Right where you need to stand to get your coffee? Yup
In front of the fucking lift? Yup
Stairs? Yup

See also: I'm a lazy cunt, I'll just leave my empty coffee cup on this person's (mine) desk

Cunts!

2 RP's and a Croatian who lived in the US, all say 'bay-gul'

I was watching John Grant at Brixton Academy last year and was standing fairly near the back of the room with Mrs Wrongcog. He was absolutely killing it on stage and a phalanx of industry types mobbed out of the AAA area and stood right beside us and basically had a really noisy strategy powwow. They were banging on for ages, looking at a laptop, bleating about this and that - meanwhile Grant is deep into a confessional piano thing.

Eventually I just turned around and said "for christ's sake! He's absolutely pouring his heart out up there, you're supposed to be in the fucking business - have some respect! Take your agm to a pub or something".

To be fair they fucked straight off out of there post haste. But why is it the fucking insiders who always act like the biggest pricks at gigs?

So... sorry if you were having a quiet pint in Brixton and they had a meeting right by your table.

I've no idea how much it holds people back but my experience of working in film/TV/media wanker land in London's famous London has been of a lot of public school boys/girls assuming you're thick as pig shit because you're northern. I know a lot of people who have 'poshed up' their accent too, unfortunately you seem to get away with being a stiff idiot as long as the nonsense comes out eloquently.

Dom Littlewood. How the fuck did this man get on telly?

Just found this quote from Fiona Hill.

"I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from Billy Elliot: people were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life."

EDIT: And some more info about English accents and Hill's challenges. https://www.ft.com/content/caf26e06-10a4-11ea-a225-db2f231cfeae

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZGYpd7cPg

pronunciation of 'bagel'... They all say 'bay-gul' and I say 'Bye-gul'

Aren't they saying 'bagel' while you are actually saying 'beigel', which is the Yiddish/Polish version?

https://youtu.be/OMS1XetXy2c:
00:30-00:45

A beigel?

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I think professions where the assessment of labour quality has a subjective and/or uncertainty element are more prone to this type of nonsense where accent and connections play a big role. Also those professions with high ‘entry costs’ eg where the way to get a job is through first doing an unpaid apprenticeship or internship (which rules out people from poor backgrounds), and where the starting salary is low (as above, because you need daddy to subsidise you initially). That’s why you’ll never get the best talent in the economy choosing to become barristers, and also why barristers basically all come from the same hugely privileged background.

40 ish years later on...

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london-state-school-rivals-top-independents-with-51-students-offered-oxbridge-places-a4336316.html

That is great - judging by their 'Oxbridge Progression' wooden board they've been making this a focus for a few years now. Not that that is wrong of course, on the contrary: from what I've heard, the problem for a lot of underprivileged pupils is that they go to a school which doesn't provide any proper support for an Oxbridge application. So the thought barely comes up, and if it does, there might not be anyone with direct experience or at least useful knowledge to help them along with it. This school on the other hand puts it up there as an aspirational goal, which I'm sure helps a lot.

Yes, some schools really go for it. My old (state) 6th form college was usually #3 in the list of Oxbridge entrants behind Westminster and Eton.

There was a big push within to get people to go for it and I resisted successfully. (Out of the 15 people in my Further Maths class 12 went to Oxbridge to do Medicine, one went to King's College London to do Medicine and me and one other did Comp Sci [Sheffield and Leeds respectively].)