Kirsty Major asks whether you can really lose an accent (Opinion, 3 November). Well, I have certainly lost mine. I grew up in Devon and had a strong West Country accent throughout my childhood and teenage years. I had pretty much lost it by my mid-20s, following five years of higher education. At no point did I try to lose it – it just went. This happens to a lot of people, but not everyone. I have a long-held theory about this, which I have never attempted to test and which probably would not stand up to scrutiny, but here it is: when they move away from the area in which they grew up, extroverts retain their accent; introverts lose it.
Adrian Pritchard
Leeds, West Yorkshire
• Re your report (Bias against working-class and regional accents has not gone away, report finds, 3 November), as a northern student at the University of Nottingham nearly three decades ago, I attended the late Prof Ron Carter’s lectures. His “socks on the fourth floor” lecture sticks in my mind as an example of how people used features of accent to decide whether others were “like us” or not. In the socks example (a quote from a lift operator in Bloomingdale’s), research by Michael Halliday showed how wealthy New Yorkers had a kinship with people from Cornwall, having listened to recordings of conversations as both pronounced their Rs in those words. Encouraging me to retain my Merseyside accent, Prof Carter said: “As long as you are articulate, that’s all that matters.” He was right – my accent has never been a problem.
Thomas Ryder
Nottingham
