Dialects and lazy speech - there is a difference

I notice language more when listening to the radio - which I often do. I find the missing "T" irritating. It does seem to be a recent thing or maybe I find it more so as I'm getting older. Alongside radio presenters pronouncing "been" as "bin". "Bin" in a dialect is fine [Where's tha bin?] but just sounds lazy when the speaker is otherwise speaking fairly middle of the road English [Where have you bin?]
I'll try not to get started on inflection or I shall really get my knickers in a twist. There was an interview yesterday where I couldn't focus on the interviewee's points, as all I could hear was that dreadful sing songy voice that went up at the end of every sentence???
Wonder if I could move on to "inappropriate apostrophes"? Maybe not.

To be fair, we do struggle a bit with dropped consonants.

Daw for instance.

Where has the r gone?

I like the variety of different voices and accents in public television so long as I can understand what is being said. I would not want to go back to the ”cut glass” voices of the earlier BBC.

What I do struggle with are government (and other) call centres where the regional accent is very pronounced and I have difficulty hearing what is being said. I have particular difficulty with strong Merseeyside accents when I need to call the DWP in Bootle. I find actors Stephen Graham and Jodie Comer and comedian John Bishop difficult to understand. I struggle with some strong Scottish accents too.

I'm mentally sharp and my hearing is very good it is to do with the accent. I'm from the south of England and speak RP. My question is, do people from one region find those from another difficult to understand. Would my RP not be clear to a Liverpudlian or a Scot?

As I recently explained to my GCs aged 7 it doesn’t matter how you speak as long as you can be understood. They are always taking the mickey as I have a SE accent. Bath and barth, path and parth etc.?

Can she pronounce T? As in photo, not pho’o?

I work with a girl from 'Ackney (Hackney). She tells me there is no H in their dictionary. I love hearing her accent

In a word, yes.

Germanshepherdsmum

I would enjoy DNA Family Secrets a great deal more if Stacey Dooley wasn’t the presenter. Gluttal stops everywhere. Her speech is atrocious for a television presenter.

Peak snob I think!

The glottal stop is a part of certain dialects.

Too common for you?

Regional speech just means that people from the same region will speak in the same way.

It seems elocution, and all the other things that can be taught, don't teach the understanding of a basic term.

The clue is in the word "regional".

I actually think people like Stacey Dooley do more good by being happy with who they are and where they come from. There is nothing wrong with her own voice

Blimey what a lot of complainers …who cares

Ah, as expected, the screamers.

I used to think the most commonly badly pronounced words on the bbc news bulletins used to be when they referred to the Home Secretary as the “Ome sekkertree” . Don’t tell me that is regional! I wanted to scream and throw things at the tele!!! Never hardly ever watch the news now especially that Biased Broadcasting Corporation - peace is restored!

I would enjoy DNA Family Secrets a great deal more if Stacey Dooley wasn’t the presenter. Gluttal stops everywhere. Her speech is atrocious for a television presenter.

Oh! I forgot. An example of snobbishness in action in relation to speech.

A teacher friend was once marked down for her speech during a lesson observation. For pronouncing film, fil-lum. The local dialect. Which all the students also spoke. By a middle class leader who thought it sounded common.

What an ar*e.

Sparklefizz

^It’s called a ‘glottal stop’ Common in Estuary English^

Yes, Tony Blair adopted it occasionally when he was in office.

Yes, and in Norwich too. No idea how it made its way up there from London, but... I read it in text book, many years ago, no not a new thing.

Accents are a wonderful thing. And it's snobbish to call it lazy speech.

I come from an area that had a strong accent and my mother ensured that I spoke the Queen's English by sending me to elocution classes where I also learned to project my voice and speak clearly [especially useful when I've had to talk in public in a large area]. I do cringe when I hear what I call 'slovenly' speech but I enjoy listening to accents - that's part of life.

The tricky thing about speech in England is that it’s class based, and that makes some people very touchy about it. RP is the same all over the country, whereas local accents are, well, local. I’m not including Scotland or Wales in this, because they are different countries with their own standards.

I like to hear good, clear RP. I just find it pleasing to the ear, and it can be understood by everybody.

AGAA4 elocution lessons wouldn’t have bothered me. Being shamed did.

paddyann54

I have no desire to change how I speak we had more than enough of the wee dictators who tried to alter our language when we were at school.
As long as there are people language will vary ,sometimes from one side of the river to the other .Neither is wrong or bad .
This need to make us all sound the same is ridiculous .
I had an amazing teacher in P6 who was happy to not only let people speak naturally but explined the similarities in mant Europen words to ones we used daily ,wean and watter being two I remember .
There were thousands of young people who were denied the right to speak in their native tongue in Scotland and forced to speak English because that what the master at Westminster thought we should do .Consequently they grew up almost scared to speak it outside their homes.
ANYONE who thinks thats either right or just needs to look at themselves.Keep your idea of whats the RIGHT way to speak to yourselves enough harm has been done

But it is 2022 now!
I like to be able to 1st hear some one on tv or radio speak clearly, and secondly, understand what they say.

I preferred the BBC announcers when they spoke a standardised English. Not like the Queen fifty years ago, just good RP.

My own accent is Scottish filtered with Yorkshire. I have never once felt that it was in any way inferior to RP, I don't need to hear it modelled on TV to feel validated.

There's a lovely line in The Pitman Painters where a miner asks the tutor "D'ye dee art?" eventually it gets translated properly to help him.
I like accents and dialects and some of them involve dropping letters. So actually
Aa diven kna

Blossoming

Practically my first day at Grammar school I had my speech corrected by a teacher in front of the entire class. It was one word and definitely a widely used local pronunciation. I just wanted to curl up and die. I had to remain standing at the front of the class while she gave a mini lecture on how ‘common’ people spoke. Common people like me, as Jarvis Cocker famously said.

Snap I was pulled up for saying me own instead of my own.
If I were to say forty in my dialect it would be foty not forty and yan instead of one.
We were just taught to try and speak good English but as DH comes from the same area we have reverted to talking in dialect .I think an accent is fine but using dialect words that are peculiar to an area is not right on the T.V.

Blossoming
For the first year at grammar school we had elocution lessons. I still remember the poem we had to 'pronounce properly'.
None of us benefited from it and carried on speaking as we always had.

It doesn't bother me
I suppose I am one of those posters now that has come on a thread to say I am not bothered about what the original post is on about. But I also think some people struggle so much with communication and language and indeed speech that I don't believe differences in speech are that important, especially in a multi cultural society.