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MLE (multicultural London English)

In defence of Received Pronunciation and I know that’s not fashionable, mine is a mixture of that with a sprinkling of Saffend (being an Essex Boy). I found that when working with students from other countries I was often complimented for the clarity of my spoken English. Conversely some of my colleagues with strong regional accents had issues with students understanding them. It’s a difficult one because I know how your voice comes across can affect how people perceive you and how some may react to you; be it positive or negative.
I get the same comments from foreign colleagues, with my Generic Northern. I think that it may be because the vowel sounds are very distinct. One interesting observation made by linguists is that the Rowwwwnd Vowwwwwellls of the Lancashire accent are the result of people struggling to be heard in noisy cotton mills. They relied on lip reading to a large extent so if you exaggerate your lip movements the vowels naturally become rounder and "U" becomes dramatically different from "a". The Lancashire "thhhhh" in place of "the" is probably the same, and it differs from the rest of the north of England where the rather more lazy "t' " delivered as a glottal stop, which is on course invisible to lipreaders.
 
I'm sure I'm not alone with struggling with full-on Geordie and Glaswegian; I've often wondered why most language schools happen to be located in the southern counties.
That reminds me of a course I was sent on when I was briefly in the Civil Service. About 25-30 of us from all over the UK, including two Glaswegians, were gathered together for a few weeks. One of the chaps from Glasgow was constantly irritated that nobody could understand what he said, and that included the other chap from Glasgow who found his fellow Glaswegians accent incomprehensible.
 
A lot of accents and dialects can be difficult to follow.

Having lived in the north east since I was 8 , I can follow the Geordie accent but, even after 55 years still hear things I'm not sure the meaning of!

Even here, the sound of the accent can change quite markedly with a relatively few miles.

The accent you hear in Sunderland, Newcastle or Ashington are all noticeable distinct, yet are all spoken within 10/15 miles of each other.

Andy
 
I’ve noticed a real change in the last 25 years working in London and the Home Counties. MLE has always been there but it’s spread from working class areas of London across the Home Counties now.

I went to watch my son play football for his team at University of Kent in Canterbury, it was an inter University game. His team is multicultural and they all, to some extent speak MLE. My son tones it down at home but speaks it much more with his Uni mates. The word ‘Fam’ has been part of our household vocabulary for a few years.

Change is inevitable.

Cheers BB
 
I’ve noticed a real change in the last 25 years working in London and the Home Counties. MLE has always been there but it’s spread from working class areas of London across the Home Counties now.

I went to watch my son play football for his team at University of Kent in Canterbury, it was an inter University game. His team is multicultural and they all, to some extent speak MLE. My son tones it down at home but speaks it much more with his Uni mates. The word ‘Fam’ has been part of our household vocabulary for a few years.

Change is inevitable.

Cheers BB

Indeed, our Whatsapp group is called the Fam
 
A lot of accents and dialects can be difficult to follow.

Having lived in the north east since I was 8 , I can follow the Geordie accent but, even after 55 years still hear things I'm not sure the meaning of!

Even here, the sound of the accent can change quite markedly with a relatively few miles.

The accent you hear in Sunderland, Newcastle or Ashington are all noticeable distinct, yet are all spoken within 10/15 miles of each other.

Andy
That's the case with all the urban centres. Sheffield and Barnsley are totally, totally different even though they are only 8 miles apart, and as a Leeds resident I can distinguish between different sides of the city. You do have to be a local to hear it though, and if you aren't exposed to it constantly you lose the familiarity. Some years ago, when I'd spent a lot of time in Leeds and not much elsewhere, I managed to amaze a group of people in a hotel on the south coast. They were there on business. I was at the next table and I could overhear them. I commented that their Yorkshire accents made me feel at home. "Oh really, where are you from?"
"Leeds"
"Oh really, me too"
"Yes, I can hear that. Your colleagues aren't though. One's from further west, I think Bradford, Halifax, that way on, the other further east, towards York, Selby sort of area."
Cue a short silence, and then "Er, yes, I'm from near Halifax as it happens, and so-and-so here...Doncaster."
 
In my younger days I attended lots of away games with Middlesbrough, we often got mistaken for Geordies from about Sheffield down.

Many Londoners can pick different London accents, even after 25 years I can’t although I could probably pick Bermondsey/Rotherhithe if I put my mind to it.

Cheers BB
 
In my younger days I attended lots of away games with Middlesbrough, we often got mistaken for Geordies from about Sheffield down.
Cheers BB
Blimey, that's fighting talk. A friend of mine (born in Doncaster) is an engineer, on one occasion he called 2 colleagues in a Newcastle factory Geordies and never heard the end of it. "Him a Geordie? Him? That Mackem b**ard? Can ye nat heeeah that he's a f**ken Mackem?" Cue said Mackem taking exception to being abused and roundly abusing his Geordie colleague in return, the whole while the three of them freezing to death in a spiral freezer that they were trying to repair.
 
The rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland is really fierce. Football is a way of life in the North East, people dread going to work if a Derby match has gone the wrong way. There’s also a tremendous amount of humour mixed in too.

Cheers BB
 
there was a thing on LBC last night about accentism being a real and growing issue.

I recall when i was working in Hyderabad, talking to someone in the bar of a hotel, and he was there to run accent neutralisation courses for new call centre workers.........
I'm not sure that is necessarily accentism, though. Heavily accented voices in call centres can be a problem, and in particular those from the Indian subcontinent seem to be more difficult to understand if you are a little hard of hearing. My mother, who uses hearing aids, had to abandon a call to her bank recently, even though the call was about an important matter, because she simply couldn't understand what was being said to her by the Indian-sounding person on the other end.
 
I'm not sure that is necessarily accentism, though. Heavily accented voices in call centres can be a problem, and in particular those from the Indian subcontinent seem to be more difficult to understand if you are a little hard of hearing. My mother, who uses hearing aids, had to abandon a call to her bank recently, even though the call was about an important matter, because she simply couldn't understand what was being said to her by the Indian-sounding person on the other end.
Accentism is very definitely a thing. A friend used to work for a bank, they put one call centre in Leeds because the W Yorks accent is well received. Birmingham and the West Mids was a no-go, customers thought they were all thick. Liverpool was worse, they thought they were trying to rip them off. Bizarrely they ended up with one in Thurso, can you believe. The accent was well liked, people understood it, and of course they had the pick of the crop in Thurso because it's an area with little local employment.
 
I hope I'm not too accent-ist* but I'm driven to distraction by a couple of professional ultra-northerners on the wireless at the minute, who seem perpetually to be making trails for Radio 3, so I can't avoid them. I'm very slightly cynical of these presenters owing to an experience I had at the BBC.

Back in the 90s, a well known jockey of the discs from Radio 1 (I think they call it) who had a very distinctive Lancashire accent, came to do some voiceover work for a Current Affairs TV programme I was working on. Up to the point he settled in front of the microphone, his accent was quite mild. Northern, but nothing one might describe as a heavy dialect. Once the old Studer rolled, however, there was an instant transformation worthy of Jon Culshaw. I was astounded. Stopped recording and it was back to normal!

*Nah. I am. :D
 
I’ve moved around the country so much mine has mostly gone. It started as Wirral (think OMD, they lived streets away), but is far less than that now. Just a hint of ‘generic north’ now I guess.
Mine's about the same, though it probably started off stronger than yours, more Lily Savage than OMD. It's so 'generic north' now I've had people (non-Northerners, obvs) asking me which part of Yorkshire I come from.
 
That's the case with all the urban centres. Sheffield and Barnsley are totally, totally different even though they are only 8 miles apart, and as a Leeds resident I can distinguish between different sides of the city. You do have to be a local to hear it though, and if you aren't exposed to it constantly you lose the familiarity. Some years ago, when I'd spent a lot of time in Leeds and not much elsewhere, I managed to amaze a group of people in a hotel on the south coast. They were there on business. I was at the next table and I could overhear them. I commented that their Yorkshire accents made me feel at home. "Oh really, where are you from?"
"Leeds"
"Oh really, me too"
"Yes, I can hear that. Your colleagues aren't though. One's from further west, I think Bradford, Halifax, that way on, the other further east, towards York, Selby sort of area."
Cue a short silence, and then "Er, yes, I'm from near Halifax as it happens, and so-and-so here...Doncaster."
Actors playing Yorkshiremen in BBC programmes always speak like Sean Bean, whether they come from Sheffield, Hull, Settle or Richmond.
 
Heavily accented voices in call centres can be a problem, and in particular those from the Indian subcontinent seem to be more difficult to understand if you are a little hard of hearing. My mother, who uses hearing aids, had to abandon a call to her bank recently, even though the call was about an important matter, because she simply couldn't understand what was being said to her by the Indian-sounding person on the other end.
I had a similar problem a few years back trying to understand some bloke on the Virgin Media helpline. I hung up, and rang back a couple of days later. This time I got put through to a man with the strongest Scouse accent I’d heard in years. Fine for me, as I’m from round there, but I could imagine others struggling with it.

It’s a tricky one. Without being accent-ist or classist or racist, if customers can’t understand what’s being said by the person they’re speaking to, it could be damaging for a business. In the case of, say, a medical emergency, it might even be fatal.
 
About the most counter-intuitive trend re. this thread subject was when large organisations (banks, e.g.) stated outsourcing their call centres (in the early noughties?). Firstly, to Scotland (Glasgow esp.) and then one better, the Indian sub-continent (I think Mumbai was popular here). That's when I, and I'm sure many other senile citizens, started dreading having to phone their banks, e,g. Previously, it was all done on local numbers. For me, that's when banking lost its personal touch; also because of online banking, of course.

As you both mentioned Virgin and Sue his mum, my worst call to them some 2+ years ago, was to a chap from and in the Philippines. His accent was so bad that I went over my hour (and was told I'd be charged for it) and he had to call me back, which took nearly another hour. Pidgin English, eat y' heart out !
 


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