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
• There is much concentration on the presumed disadvantages of a northern accent. However, more northern accents are heard on TV nowadays. What you never hear is an accent from the south-west, unless Stephen Merchant is speaking. To speak like me outside my local region is to be subjected to endless “ooh arrrrs” and “jokes” about straw and tractors. It’s not just them oop north who get the mickey taken.
Jane Ghosh
Bristol
• Kirsty Major’s article reminded me how I could never lose my northern accent because I didn’t know I had one. Various incidents, therefore, left me puzzled. For example, the woman from Kent who said I might lead a middle-class life, but could not be truly middle class and talk the way I did. Then the snooty person from rural Shropshire who sent us to an awful pub because they didn’t expect that we liked good restaurants. Worst of all, the London taxi driver who said that Londoners assume people who speak like me must be “educationally subnormal”.
Frances Worsley
Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire
• I arrived in the UK in 1968, but people still remark on my Australian accent. Over my decades in London I have been chair of several school and other organisations with a mix of middle- and working-class members. My down under background and accent proved an advantage in that I was regarded as neutral should be there any mutual suspicions between the two groups. I am, therefore, happy to still have an accent despite being told by a cruel friend: “Ian, you’re not classless; as an Aussie you just have no class.”
Ian D Richardson
Ealing, London
• My Birmingham accent paid off. I moved to Buckinghamshire and applied for a teaching job at a posh school. I was interviewed by the governors and head. “Oh dear,” said one governor, “what about her accent?” “Not a problem,” said the head. “She will be fine with the estate children.” I got the job.
Irene Zetie
Streetly, West Midlands
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