Mr. Steed, if you please!

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pelmut
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

Post by pelmut »

Sinned wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 4:31 pm There used to be the concept of BBC English which all BBC newsreaders and broadcasters though it's largely gone by the board now.
It's been standardised on Glaswegian -- if you don't believe me, listen to any current affairs or news programme on Radio 4.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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I think it's becoming regionalised. In my region, Yorkshire, the accent tends to the familiar Tyke but tamed down. I recall that when we were associated with the North-East rather than the current Humberside and Lincolnshire the accents were definitely regional.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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I'll be honest here in that I actively miss the RP of the Beeb's World Service on short-wave. Of course, short-wave broadcasting has been entirely obsolete since the late 1980s leaving the entire spectrum to be a morass of evangelical bible-thumpers.

I have a sweet little short-wave receiver in my garage that used to grace my night-stand back in the '80s right up to 2015. Based on my experience with the fare on the wavelengths in the teenies I haven't had the strength to go through a restoration on the device. I can't imagine that the situation has improved any.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

Post by Ray »

pelmut wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 11:05 pm
Sinned wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2020 4:31 pm There used to be the concept of BBC English which all BBC newsreaders and broadcasters though it's largely gone by the board now.
It's been standardised on Glaswegian -- if you don't believe me, listen to any current affairs or news programme on Radio 4.
About time too!

Ps the Mr Steed poem was easy!
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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Ray wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:04 pmPs the Mr Steed poem was easy!
Of course it was. Any grammar-school kid should be able to get it right on the first try.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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Ray wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:04 pm About time too!
As much as I love the Beeb, for many years it was just too white and middle class, with a very London-centric outlook in many respects. In recent years they have made a lot of effort to have more programming to cater for different demographics, but they were still too London focused for my mind. I thought it was a really great idea to move a chunk of their output to Media City in Manchester.

This video is a few years out of date, but I doubt it has changed much. Most speak in a region-neutral RP, with the exceptions of Kathy Clugson (who, by the way, is one of the voices on the original TomTom SatNav system), Susan Rae, Viji Alles and the most splendid Neil Nunes. He has a strong, deep, Caribbean accent and when people describe it they often use the word melliferous. I could listen to him all day reading a phone book, but his delivery splits opinion - some people hate it.

Ray, I don't know why but I have in mind that you live in Little Aston or Four Oaks, or maybe Sutton Coldfield - so maybe what I'm about to say doesn't apply to you. I have a *very* strong West Midlands accent and it hasn't been blunted a jot with 5 years of living in the US. (I went to the same school as this guy - gives you an idea of how I sound :-) ). I feel that I have been negatively judged (and mocked) for my accent, particularly when working in London. I'm quite sensitive to the fact that the Midlands / Brummie accent is often parodied on tv (if you want to portray a slightly thick guy, give him a Brummie accent. Paul Henry and Timothy Spall have a lot to answer for).

There aren't that many Brummies who made it in British media - I think the accent has been a barrier. Cat Deeley, Adrian Chiles, Frank Skinner as presenters spring to mind. If we go a bit wider to include comedians, musicians, presenters, actors, we could throw in Lenny Henry, Julie Walters and, for the Americans on here, Roberts Holford and Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, John Oliver.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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Scottish accents vastly outnumber any of the other regional accents on Radio 4 and West Country accents are nowhere to be found.  I don't think replacing one monopoly with another one is the way to diversity.  

If you think having a Brummie accent makes you the butt of jokes, you should see what Brummies make of a Somerset accent -- I found out when I worked in a Birmingham factory!
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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pelmut wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 5:23 pm If you think having a Brummie accent makes you the butt of jokes, you should see what Brummies make of a Somerset accent -- I found out when I worked in a Birmingham factory!
My comments were more at an institutional level rather than a personal level. At factories, offices, schools, colleges you are always going to get those idiots who make peoples lives hell with what they think of as harmless fun but other people see as bullying - colour, religion, accent, those who wear glasses or have a 'lazy eye' or who stammer.

I realise that the media relies upon tropes, caricatures and stereotypes. I'm sensitive to thick Brummie portrayals as well as overweight people being used when portraying a person in a negative light (particularly in advertising). See the Nationwide adverts as a prime example.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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pelmut wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 5:23 pm Scottish accents vastly outnumber any of the other regional accents on Radio 4 and West Country accents are nowhere to be found.  I don't think replacing one monopoly with another one is the way to diversity.  
What about the wonderfully delectable Alice Roberts? Stephen Merchant, James May. For our American readers we have Darth Vader, Basil Fawlty, JK Rowling and Cary Grant :-)

Like Pebble Mill, I thought that BBC Bristol was responsible for a lot of BBC output that didn't come from London?
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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Fran,

I like the Birmingham accent. Like it’s inhabitants, it’s warm, non-judgemental, mellifluous (as you suggested) and honest. It’s authentic.

Yes, you can take the p155 out of it, but that applies to every accent around. I am a fan, and have met too many intellectual Brummies to associate the accent in a pejorative manner.

So wear your accent with pride!

(Btw - wrong on all counts on my location, but I’m humbled that you think I live somewhere posh!)
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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Ah, dialects. They're part of the spice of life that's slowly but surely eroding into nothingness.

When I met FranTastic444 for a fabulous luncheon several months ago, I did not find his "accent" off-putting in the least -- at least he has one. To his ear, I must've sounded like a US television talking head. (Nobody has ever been able to nail down where I'm from based on the way I speak. It's that bland.)

Interestingly, my father recalled to me once whilst he was still alive, travelling to the midwest in the US to visit relatives when he was a child in the late 1940s and starting to find local accents getting difficult to understand by the time they'd reached western New York state. That's mostly gone now. Some regions try to keep the local dialects alive deliberately. I think the deep south is one of those, and I can frequently nail down where a person is from if he's "above a certain age"; the youngsters are another matter entirely, but the deep south twang/drawl lives on to this day.

The longest year of my life I elapsed over seven weeks of computer "training" (I could have taught the thing from start to finish) in Huntsville, Alabama in the summer of 1983. I returned home from that with a very pronounced suth'n accent that took me months to get rid of. Trying to get rid of that I literally had my choice of what to replace it with and ultimately picked what I call "Network American" simply so I wouldn't be instantly identifiable (think Douglas Rain's voicing for the HAL-9000 computer in 2001, A Space Odyssey). I could just as easily come out of that exercise speaking perfect RP (which would have annoyed the bejezus out of everybody around, but which would have been a whole lot of fun).

Nevertheless, any time I start speaking or use the keyboard at work (or anywhere else) it's pretty much instantly recognisable to anyone who knows me. And I rather like that.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

Post by beachlion »

I was born in The Hague, a town of about 400 000 inhabitants at the time. We have very different accents in that little town. People of the better off circles, many working at high levels in the government, have a way of speaking over-correct Dutch, sometimes combined with a condescending tone in it when they speak to the commoners. On the other hand there is a form of speech of the lower class. The vowels are very distinct but that is impossible to explain to somebody not familiar with the Dutch language. For a time I was tuned to hear even differences between the lower class accents from the various parts of the city. I like to hear that low class accent from my city, especially now I'm in the USA, but you better leave that at home when you have an interview for a job. It is not helping you on the corporate ladder. Those two accents can be compared to the Queens English and cockney.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

Post by Shilo »

My father always told me not to be ashamed of my accent but to always ensure I used correct grammar.
This is something I passed on in turn Nevertheless , living in the Deep South ( London) has changed my daughter’s accent as it did for my brother. I’m certain the latter accentuates this to irritate me.
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Re: Mr. Steed, if you please!

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crfriend wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:18 pm When I met FranTastic444 for a fabulous luncheon several months ago, I did not find his "accent" off-putting in the least -- at least he has one. To his ear, I must've sounded like a US television talking head. (Nobody has ever been able to nail down where I'm from based on the way I speak. It's that bland.)
Why thank you, kind sir. I found your conversation (and accent) most engaging (most certainly not bland) and I'd very much like to meet up with you again at some time in the future (maybe in Foley's, for old times sake) to continue our discussions. As an aside, I was back at the same restaurant on Saturday night for a takeout (due to that dratted Covid-19) and the wife and I enjoyed our meal greatly.
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