1970s vs. 2020s Southeastern English Speech

[@outfitmadeofawesome]

Re: obsolete speech from your childhood. I was thinking about this recently! When I was growing up (early 2000s, born 1991), I remember adults complaining about my generation's use of the word 'like'. I recently listened back to an old recording and realized that adults at the time used the verb 'to go' to mark dialogue and the phrase 'to be all' before dialogue that wasn't meant literally (to express emotion or reaction, but not to actually quote). We used 'like' for both, and I can see now why that was confusing to people who distinguished between these two kinds of dialogue overtly rather than just by context/tone like we did. I had completely forgotten this, and I haven't heard that usage in years! E.g., "Jason and I were talking and he went 'do you still like me?' and I'm shocked so I'm all 'of course!'" vs. "Jason and I were talking and he was like 'do you still like me?' and I'm shocked so I'm like 'of course!'"

[@ottz2506]

I always say "and I'm all like" so a bit of it all really haha

[@michaelaaylott1686]

When Mrs Wilkins lists the months, she isn’t really talking about the passing of time, she’s listing all the supposedly promised dates for the wedding, meaning that at one point it has been spoken about as going to happen in January, then June etc, so the “it’s been” sounds fairly natural to me - mind you, I’m old enough to remember watching this when it was on tv when I was a child

[@EdwardLindon]

Agreed. And the reason for the sing-song quality is that she's needling him.

[@HweolRidda]

Agreed #2. The meaning was "(the wedding date) has been (in) January", "it has been (in) June" ,etc. As someone raised in eastern Canada the wording and intonation sounded competely normal. (Wrong vowels of course.)

[@rhysepoos]

Yes and I think the intonation isn't necessarily how she would normally read a list, but in this case, she unconsciously elongates the list with her intonation (to make the point that he has been dithering)

[@overlordnat]

I’d probably phrase it so it was a list with the months not being preceded by any repeated set of words - something like “You’ve promised to marry her several times already: January, June …”.. It’s obviously a list of promised dated though, I don’t think that’s in doubt at all.

[@MrVorpalsword]

absolutely. Hey, message to academics .... don't over analyse and don't assume forms of English speech have died, just because you don't go in the right pubs, the right houses in the right towns!

[@GreatGreebo]

I’m from S.E. Alaska (very close proximity to British Columbia, Canada) and the phrase “don’t get me wrong” was extremely common in our daily speech and still is for anyone over 20 years old (FYI: I was born in the 70’s). Also, the “well” and “I mean” discourse markers are used constantly too; also-also at the end of statements we say “and all that” (instead of Mrs. Wilkin’s “and that”) as a discourse marker. It’s interesting to hear people so far away and so long ago using the exact, same speech patterns. Thank you for this fascinating video essay.

[@ThomasWangenheim]

I think it's just, that it switched from daily speech to written word, whereas the higher language in 1974 didn't accept such things written.

[@helenahandkart1857]

Those you mention are common in Australia, also.

[@alfiegrove7233]

Interesting

[@AXE668]

I was raised near Reading and I remember this series. One of the her sons was a bus conductor on the bus I used to take to school. When I worked in Reading in the early 80's, the landlord of a pub near where I worked had a very strong Reading accent which was quite different from the Berkshire accent. If he were to say, "I'm going downtown to buy some brown trousers", it would have sounded like "I'm goin' dane tane to buy some brain traisers"

[@531c]

Its not just time that determines how we speak its very much a class thing.

[@ajs41]

Although it's Reading, in many ways it doesn't sound that much different to the central Midlands where I live, apart from a few words.

[@BIGT537]

It would be the same in Hampshire

[@StevieB1231000]

That’s spot on. We moved from Slough to just outside Reading in the mid 1970s, and that accent change from just 25 miles between Slough and Reading was really striking to me. Trayzers for trousers and Kays for cows. I don’t know if people still speak like that in Reading, probably not.

[@supergran1000]

That's interesting. My husband's aunt, born 1919 in Portsmouth, would speak similarly. House was "haise".

[@kira6149]

It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the way young people speak today will one day be considered old fashioned. I imagine people 80 years ago would have felt the same, but it just seems like such an alien concept imagining an 80 year old speak the way my generation speaks.

[@YesYouAreAbsolutelyCorrect]

Why is it so hard to wrap your head around? The change will not be as drastic with the internet, because the slang spreads more universally but dies much faster so we can expect a universal medium to stay in the same place longer because of the old media availability.

[@brain_snakes]

Same with names and style of dress. One day, a guy named Ethan wearing a hoodie and vans will be a stereotypical old guy.

[@RandomGuyyy]

Just imagine a Gen Z pensioner in 2090 saying, "Skibidi rizz! Staight bussin, no cap!'"

[@oliverbanter1865]

in my gym there's a few people in their late 40s who speak in London roadman language. So weird to see

[@zappababe8577]

My daughter already tells me off for saying "yeet"! I think it's a very useful word, it's the opposite of yoink!

[@TheStarBlack]

Regarding her tone when listing the months - she is quizzing him here about the planned wedding and why it has been delayed so many times. This may be why she uses those tones, to emphasise that she is suspicious of his story and questioning his truthfulness.

[@zak3744]

Yeah, that was my understanding of what she meant too.

[@jointgib]

Yep

[@zivkovicable]

Im 59, I grew up 5 miles east of Reading, and this accent is so familiar to me. It reminds me of my old school dinner lady Mrs Lewis, & my neighbours Fred & Olive. According to my horified parents I had a rural Berkshire accent until i was around seven years old, when it was ironed out of me.

[@clerigocarriedo]

Thanks a million for yet another great video. Btw I thought Reading was "rhotic", as Ricky Gervais is from Reading and often slips into rhoticism . I thought it was a West Country feature present in Reading but Mrs Wilkinson has no rhoticity... Any ideas?

[@ablestringer9063]

In the early 70s as kids we used to greet each other with "Whatcha!" which I think was a contraction of what are you doing. I still use it when I subconsciously recognise I'm talking to someone of my background and age.

[@GtGlem]

That's really funny...you've reminded me of a word/phrase that everyone said back then (I was born in Woking) but I haven't heard for decades.

[@annettestephens534]

thanks for this. I always wondered what this meant.

[@francissquire9910]

As a youth in Southend, "wotcha" was the most common greeting. On hearing that people didn't say it anymore, I asked a younger relative from Southend whether people still said "wotcha" and she said she'd never heard of it. I wonder whether its origins are in the Shakespearean greeting "what cheer?"

[@fueyo2229]

My English teacher once told us that "Whatcha doing" is an informal way of saying "What are you doing" in English, idk if it's true. She also taught "don't get me wrong" as a normal phrase, I didn't know it was dialectal.

[@markavis7232]

@@francissquire9910 I grew up in (South) Essex too. As well as 'wotcha' we'd use 'alright' (it had one syllable, really, more or less a dipthong!) which could be a greeting...but could also mean a whole load of things depending on the inflection. I wonder if people still use that one.

[@Fredreegz]

The way she talks really reminds me of whenever Eric Idle played an old woman in Monty Python sketches. Always used to put on a hammed up version of this accent.

[@andrewhaywood3853]

I wonder if his Gran was from the Reading area?

[@Fredreegz]

@@andrewhaywood3853 He must've been channelling his gran for sure

[@MichelediMuratore]

I'm currently studying for a master's level phonology exam. This video is dead interesting!

[@pauls8456]

He could do a video on your use of 'dead interesting' !

[@digitaurus]

@@pauls8456 Very British English. Northern?

[@pauls8456]

@@digitaurus mmm not sure but in London / SE you would hear ‘dead good’ for very good but it’s a looong time since I lived there….

[@digitaurus]

@@pauls8456 Interesting. I am from South East but brought up in 70s/80s so think “dead interesting” might just be later rather than elsewhere.

[@terrycunningham8118]

@@digitaurus "I'm dead serious!" was our more common phrase.

[@enta_nae_mere7590]

I noticed the SouthEastern rural accent very early on, lots of elderly speakers in East anglia that aren't speaking Broad Norfolk tend to have that same quality

[@ablestringer9063]

Blast bor the' hent nutn wrarng wi norfuk is thee?

[@EdtheGardener]

Is it still common? I've been gone a while, but I used to find it difficult to understand some of the older gents as a child.

[@stevetravis9480]

My grandmother born Essex 1890s had it

[@trenchantinsight]

There is/was no such thing as Southeastern rural accent (though all accents are getting blander and more tepid now). Someone from the north of Norfolk had an accent completely different from someone from the south of Kent, certainly 40 years ago

[@louiseoliver3990]

​@@ablestringer9063 I like the fact that KZbin put below your comment "translate into English!" Greetings from Suffolk

[@wulfgreyhame6857]

Chrissie Hynde, lead singer, founder and principal songwriter for The Pretenders, wrote their hit "Don't Get Me Wrong" for their 1986 album "Get Close". Hynde is American, though with a long presence in England (I recall reading Chrissie Hynde articles in NME around 1974). I've never thought of the expression as recent in any way. There was a British movie of the name released in 1937.

[@digitaurus]

Perhaps the Google data reflects American usage more heavily? I speak British English (South East), born in the 1960s, and "don't get me wrong" feels normal.

[@joshuannachi_6]

First time hearing "Probabilistically" in actually discourse. Meanwhile, kudos to you, Simon, on the great deal of efforts you put in to make these good videos!

[@digitaurus]

Computational linguist here. i use it a lot. He used '"diachronic" several times, and "synchronic" once as well, which I doubt crops up often down the pub.

[@chanchito4401]

It was today I found out that I am older than Simon Roper

[@AdDewaard-hu3xk]

Just a kid.

[@altralinguamusica]

My jaw dropped when he said 1998. I am *not* a whole ten years older than him! I refuse to believe it lol

[@elbiggus]

Context: I grew up between Southampton and Winchester, and was born in 1973. Quite a few of Mrs Wilkins' accent/pronunciation/dialect/etc. things are present in my speech to a greater or lesser extent. I might go back and rewatch it later and make some notes...

[@angelachicken4141]

From Southampton/Romsey area same era the twang was evident. An older bloke used to come into the shop for 'ailf aince owld Hoeborn' and if I ordered whisky and soda in the Midlands it was often mistaken for whisky and Cider

[@diamondjr2584]

I was gonna say, heard a lot of similar growing up in pompey

[@squeezyjohn1]

When I used to go to the old Oxford United ground to watch the matches, I couldn't believe the accents of some of the proper old Oxford boys who went. Their pronunciation of the word "No" was definitely "Nay" but with a sightly more rounded mouth and the vocal gymnastics with pitch they would do while saying it was incredible to witness ... almost like Kenneth Williams! They were probably born in the 1940s. That accent is still there with a few of the most working class families among people like me born in the 70s or 80s ... but the majority have switched to a form of estuary or RP.

[@MrOtistetrax]

Those old boys likely grew up in areas of Oxford that were originally satellite villages, but were incorporated into the city as it grew after the war - places such as Headington (where the Manor ground was) or Cowley or Marston would have been pretty much fully rural when they were kids. My own Grandparents experienced this expansion, and despite living in the city by the time I was born, both had accents that you would definitely associate with country folk.

[@seanhenry2921]

Fascinating, as always. Thank you!

[@squeezyjohn1]

I normally lap up your content ... but I find it hard to do here because this is basically the accent I grew up hearing and so I know it's very specifically Reading/Berkshire. I've lived in Oxfordshire / near Oxford for most of my life and we used to joke about the Reading accent a lot in the 80s. You're getting so very precise with your analysis of the accent here under the banner of "Southeastern English" that you miss the differences with the way it would have been spoken in Oxfordshire (more midlandsy and nasal) or Hampshire (flatter and more cut) ... who knows what they would have said in Kent (not me!) ... I like the way you have identified the creep of London pronunciation with the mouth vowel, but this lady's accent is totally Reading, and I have no doubt that the way she pronounced about is the old way she learnt to do it.

[@tressel2489]

not sure about Kent in the 70s, but my grandmother (same age as Mrs Wilkins) moved there from London in the 40s and said that the people there seemed like these absolute yokels to them, speaking with a comically rural accent and quite hard to understand.

[@jillp1840]

Ha ha! I was born and raised in Kent (in the 1960s) so I have commented also. I found the 'Southeastern England' jarring as Kent, Sussex and maybe Surrey are South East to me. Where I live now (Surrey / Hants borders) and ergo Reading I always consider to be Southern. And I thought, "She sounds nothing like me".

[@alor4049]

Yes I’m from rye , Sussex , and I find it strange that reading is considered a south eastern accent , I can hear a difference between Sussex and Kent , so reading is several accents north and west from the southeast to my mind . Lovely content though, very interesting .

[@danielr4774]

Funny this popped up in my recommendations. I'm an Irish TEFL teacher and I love The Family series! It makes everyday life in the 70s feel so real instead of the disco/hippy image I had. My mam was 16 when it was filmed. Crazy to think about

[@smeaden8947]

You're hired! Amazing analysis!

[@Spamhard]

Absolutely wild how true it is that accents and dialects change so heavily even after just 30mins to an hour drive. I'm Norfolk area and listening to my grandparents when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s sounds totally different from these guys. Don't hear the Norfolk accent as much these days, but if you sit around Norwich or move around jobs enough, you'll still hear she's alive and well.

[@sheilam4964]

Great observations, insightful and thought provoking.

[@jmckenzie962]

I'm from New Zealand, and the thing regarding how Mrs Wilkins uses tones when listing things - I've noticed a similar thing in how my grandparents speak as well. My paternal grandmother in particular, who was born in Christchurch in the 1940's, has that same rising tone whenever she lists things, which always sounded so flowery and archaic to me. People in NZ used to hold Received Pronunciation in very high esteem and as such features of RP often rubbed off on the way many kiwis spoke in those days. There's a clip from the early 70's I must try and find again where a woman who was born and raised in my hometown of Wellington is being interviewed and they sound extraordinarily similar to a posh English person. In contrast, my paternal grandfather, who is sadly no longer with us, was raised in Dunedin and spoke with a much thicker "Southern Man" kind of kiwi accent, a kind of accent that today is often stereotyped as how rural "salt-of-the-earth" white men talk in NZ.

[@katrinabee9846]

I was just about to compare to the NZ accent. I'm also a Kiwi, born and raised in Wellington. Simon does a great video on the change of London accent - there's a certain year where it sounds very very New Zealand. Look it up, it's fascinating.

[@katrinabee9846]

Found it! kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZ27p2aKqZmraJIsi=YjpuyYtsZLdaXQ5h&t=640

[@jmckenzie962]

Update: I did in fact find the clip I was referencing, it's from a documentary called "Notes on a City" from 1971 about the changing urban landscape of Wellington and how the city was becoming more car-dominant with the construction of the motorway at that time. The whole film actually features a lot of these very RP-influenced NZ accents that you'll never hear today except from _very_ old people - the particularly extreme example I was thinking of can be found at about 18 minutes in. New Zealand English has changed a _lot_ in the past 50 years.

[@aldozilli1293]

She's not speaking with an RP accent. She has a Reading accent which is not the same at all and sounds slightly west country/rural but as you are from NZ you probably won't be aware of a difference.

[@jmckenzie962]

@@aldozilli1293 Oh I'm aware of the difference, and the NZ accents were always different from RP itself, but what I'm saying is that NZ accents used to borrow a lot from RP which in turn included features that other southeastern British accents may have had as well.

[@piynubbunyip]

I'm thinking of all the occasions I heard near lost accents in Australia leap out at me, ripping through time to the present.

[@antonfredrick]

Thanks for the video! Fascinating as always. I didn’t realize you were a half decade younger than me!

[@debbief9861]

How interesting! Right up my street. Subscribed. I'm delighted there are modern-day Professor Higgins-type scholars around. I'd feared that no one studied all this anymore.

[@cathyquinn9820]

This is the old Reading accent which is dying out - it's become a more general Estuary accent but retaining a bit of the rustic vowels. If you hear any of the Wilsons interviewed more recently you can hear their own accent isn't as broad as it was in the 70s. The series was on when I was a 7 year old in Reading and I saw it when it was repeated about 1980. Tom is definitely from the north east - he sounds very like James Bolam in the Likely Lads. The 'and that' is a kind of prevarication or imprecision.

[@capitalb5889]

I also thought it was the north east and thought straight away of the Likely Lads when I heard him talk. On your point about the Reading accent, I think Ricky Gervais is from Reading, and he definitely has an estuary accent.

[@bretrohde7300]

You’re rocking it, Simon!

[@daveharris2001]

Brilliant! You have fed my head!

[@markwilson7788]

Totally fascinating, as always. Stuff that I would fail to register myself, I can see because of your explanation. As someone alive at that time, I can absolutely recognise people talking in that way, but the change totally passes me by without you pointing it out.

[@TheCharlesFr]

Wonderful analysis and very interesting

[@adrianparker-e9f]

My late aunt went to live near Maidstone, Kent, just after the war. She came from Hull, but i always thought that she was from Kent because she spoke with the accent of that area. I have travelled to various parts of the country, and dialects once associated with those parts are/have all but disappeared in some places. Sometimes it's only older people with the local accent. Also, anywhere neat to London now seems to have the same speech style.

[@erfelgamazig]

This is an amazing explanation of Southeastern English. I'm not familiar with these phonetic characters. Thanks for all this work. We don't use "and that" in the part of the USA where I live. We are more likely to end a non-committal sentence with "or whatever." I am 64 years old, so the first sentence I remember was at a significant event. My Aunt and Uncle were talking about the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. "I hated it that JFK was shot and killed by that butcher. He was so cute." (Yeah, the last part was totally unnecessary, and not even related to the senseless assassination) Thank you so much, Simon.

[@ajs41]

Southeastern English is a bit of a broad term though. It's more like Reading and the surrounding area.

[@jillybrooke29]

I was born in London and had a rather posh accent till I was 7, we then immigrated to New Zealand and had their accent for 4 years, Came back to London and I developed a cockney accent speaking very fast. Now I have been in East Sussex for 22 years and I have slowed down my speech and now speak much more clearly and slowly, same as my friends and acquaintances here. I loved this programme when I was 16, it was fascinating to me. At that time I had been working for a year.

[@03kitleh]

Fascinating, as usual, thank you

[@DeanMorrison]

I really enjoyed that Simon, thanks. I'm 64 from Barnstaple in Devon but have lived in Hastings in Sussex since 1988. When I first moved here I noticed older country people had elements of speech similar to mine. What I'd call a Sussex accent seems to have almost dissapeared now..I knew an old farmer called Nelson Russell from near Crowborough. He wou ld hav e been birn around 1910. There are some old KZbin videos of him from around 1995 - they'd make an interesting case study for you. Will post a link in a reply to this post.

[@DeanMorrison]

Nelson talking about hedgelaying tools kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnbal3SPirqHrbMsi=7orLR_7U3wHKKnrb

[@DeanMorrison]

Nelson talking about making cider - his voice was weakening a little at that age. kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXO4i4GlirOsosUsi=CnFCzGcUVENWKZjP

[@DeanMorrison]

Anoher one about his marrow tree. He was a natural born raconteur - was national veteran hedgelaying champion and the last farmer in Sussex to plough with horses. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gqvCq56Yi72HeLssi=GHlIZLa7Lt9qFig6

[@supergran1000]

I was born 1955 in Brighton. When I was young, I knew older ones who spoke with quite a country "burr".

[@ynysmones3816]

What brilliant clips. A moment in time.

[@CarolineFord1]

Everything changes all the time, we only notice when we look back.

[@Jon867]

What's interesting about the perception of time to me, someone in their 40s, is how analogue my childhood was in the 80s and early 90s compared to today. Things which were culturally dominant for decades in the pre-digital age - like department stores, print media and linear broadcast TV - have largely lost their relevance over the last 20 years.

[@eveclark1541]

I suspect the lady really meant " a really long time" when she used the phrase "so long". I'm in my 70s and it fascinates me how much language and dialects have changed over the years.

[@smadaf]

Simon, I am and am not "a lot" older than you: I was born in 1980. I think we're close enough in age that I can add one more factor in perhaps both your and my ideas of "how old people talk". It's not accent and dialect and pitch and such, but certain environmental influences on the voice. We both have lived in the one period when there were many, many old people alive in the Western world who had been smokers (or spent a ton of time taking in second-hand smoke): the rate of smoking peaked in the twentieth century. Decades of heavy smoking change the voice a lot, in many people. We can say similar things about wider air-pollution, whether it's living near a smoky factory or power-plant, or going to work five days a week for decades in a job in which you inhale a pollutant. There also was more malnutrition in the past, which may have affected the vocal apparatus. When I was growing up, in the '80s and '90s, many old people sounded old to me not so much because of their accents or dialects as because of their voices-smokers' voices, quavering voices, whispy voices, &c. These "old" people were in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. Nowadays I meet people in that age-range, and some of them do have those "old" vocal qualities (quavering, weakness, smoky tightness, &c.)-but most of them do not, or they start to exhibit them at 80 instead of 60. There used to be on KZbin a short documentary sound movie shot in the late 1920s or very early 1930s, of a woman who now would be about two hundred years old: she was at least a hundred years old when she spoke on camera. She's close to the microphone, and you can hear her well-and she happens to have a quality of _voice_ more like that of a fifty-year-old than of somebody twice that age-and her particular accent is amazingly similar to General American accents still very commonly heard in the 2020s. I saw this in the 2010s and was amazed. Here's a woman who, if you went just by her speech, you might think was born in 1960 and was talking in 2020-but she was born about 140 years before 1960, and was recorded about 90 years before 2020. The seeming anachronism is partly her accent and dialect, and partly the relative youth of her voice. Maybe the same good physical condition that kept her alive and sharp past one hundred also kept her voice sounding young.

[@smadaf]

I disagree that Mrs. Wilkins's "so" in "put her off for so long" means "an unspecified amount of time". Yes, it's not an intensifier; but, no, it's not unspecific: it is precise, meaning "the amount of time that we've been talking about", "the aforesaid/aforementioned period". Say we're talking about how long to make a line that we're painting on a wall, and you suggest a length of six feet. I can say "Well, if you make it so long, then . . . " with a tone that shows that I don't mean "so" for emphasis, with tone and context that show that "so" is a synonym of the demonstrative adverb "that" (or even "this")-"that long" ("this long"), meaning precisely, in this case, "six feet long". Demonstratives are specific. In such constructions (there we have a demonstrative adjective, "such"), "so" has to be specific: it has a meaning, and it's demonstrative. You can't have a demonstrative without specificity: if I say "Hand me that pencil" or "Do you want this apple?", I am specificying _that_ pencil (as opposed to others), _this_ apple (as opposed to others)-demonstrating, being specific.

[@belstar1128]

its quite strange how some languages change faster than others like British English has changed a lot in a short time American English hasn't as changed much. i am a native Dutch speaker and i found a news video from 1985 and i was really surprised how old it sounds but this was only a few years before i was born. i also sometimes get called out for using outdated spelling they changed it in the 90s

[@MaoRatto]

That's how it feels to be raised in the South in the USA. When one of my works first came into my state, he noticed how obsolete we sounded. My younger co-workers often struggle to understand what I am saying due to... When growing up, we weakened a lot of sounds. Often not allowing TR, DR being Africanized at all, but the T,K,P lose their aspiration, but the vowels are strong in the first word of a sentence. Doesn't help I do speak quick and noticing a slow acceptance of tolerating repeated front vowels for a "regularized" past-tense, while that never happened as I believe it's due to a vowel change, while here, it would KEEP it irregular or make regular words IRREGULAR to avoid a repeated -it, -ed, or -at situation, though noticed a pattern where we say "and" closer to the woman in the video, but /ɶnd/ at times, or glottalize then nasalize the n or unintentional adding a vowel at And when the word starts with a consonant.

[@untitled9229]

22:54 I'm about the same age as you and something I like doing is going on google street view and looking at the places I grew up in, and setting the dates to as early as they go. Usually this is around 2008-2010, and my memories of that time are like you said, just like the modern day, but looking back on how things looked then - the cars, the clothes people are wearing, etc - it can be really jarring just how old it looks

[@alisonbrowning9620]

i was born 1967, South East working class background, women looked old at 39 years old.

[@BsktImp]

Presumably, you take into account the context: Mrs. Wilkins having a slightly heated exchange fuelled by concern for her daughter will display different speech characteristics from, say, reminiscing about the past with her hubby, or reading a bedtime story to a toddler.

[@Lily-Bravo]

"Don't get me wrong" was a song by the Pretenders in the 1980s, but the phrase was well known before that.

[@RandomNonsense1985]

And written by an American!

[@cbettles]

Although used more literally there than here, which I think is often used to make a criticism sound less harsh.

[@Lily-Bravo]

@@RandomNonsense1985 Who spent a lot of time in the UK!

[@davenewton9652]

I'm not UK born, though two of my grandparents were from greater London. And I lived in the UK in my 20s/30s. I'm going to have to rewatch the main part of the vid to think about further. The last part, with Simon's address to us is interesting - that we grow up thinking something is "old peoples" language, but it is really just the way that an old person spoke when they were young. There's a saying that "I'm a 20 year old stuck in a 70 year old's body" or some such. When I think about it, my written and spoken language is still definitely influenced by the people who were my seniors in my first office jobs or university, and family. Some of whom were close to retirement when I was in my late teens/early 20s. Things that you pick up just as part of the general surroundings to you. As opposed to the [semi]conscious changing of an accent because, for instance, you are going to University. We carry SOME of that forward into our own ideolect. But only some. And a small fraction of THAT might carry forward to the 20-somethings that I work with today. And so on. Some gets left behind, some carries on.

[@thetek2006]

Escellent. A fascinating and oddly enjoyable video. I'm 49, I grew up and have spent all my life in the Bromley area of SE London. Within the last 20 years I've noticed a distinct change in the way young adults are talking, both those of a better spoken kind and those of a more "common" sounding kind though in outwardly different directions. An example would be my sister's children (late teens) who are somehow quite well spoken yet they and others I have heard exhibit a speech cadence which I find mildly irritating, being very up and down in pitch, sometimes to an almost comedic degree and sometimes what I hear as the dreaded questioning intonation at the end of sentences.

[@rungus24]

Her voice sounds pretty similar to modern Norfolk to me, or like a watered down version of Norfolk. You know, I love it when I hear Americans say the word 'roof' with a short vowel, like I used to hear in Norfolk, where I grew up.

[@Urlocallordandsavior]

It's basically the accent imitated in the movie Spinal Tap.

[@7arboreal]

This series, The Family, is riveting. I think it's all on KZbin.

[@hasname4885]

As someone who grew up pretty close to Reading, a lot of these features were still very common in the 00s. There were plenty of people speaking in a similar way then! One interesting feature was pasta and plastic with the American "taco" a vowel. There is a definite mixing of more London sounds and more rural/agricultural sounds, sometimes self-consciously, which makes that West Berkshire accent an interesting mix of urban/rural which matches the geography/social mix of the region.

[@GoTellTheSpartans24]

I grew up around slough which was the boundary for the London accent, having taken over the local country dialect post war through industry and rehousing Londoners. Any further west they all had the local Berkshire twang as of Maidenhead and further on Reading. I was always fascinated that there actually was a line drawn geographically. later on as a travelling chelsea fan it interested me how northern towns and cities, though in quite close proximity had strikingly different accents. I suspect that the massive influx of Irish immigrants post war had a big influence on accents such as Birmingham and Liverpool. Any thoughts?……. p.s. I’m going to watch that documentary now, which was brilliant! Also the theme tune. Thanks for reminding me 👍

[@SteveLoughran]

Some towns in Northumbria have Scottish accent influence from the miners who moved down there.

[@iac4357]

Fascinating. Thank You.

[@ellpeetee2069]

I'm from Reading and to me the old Reading accent has a definite hint of West Country

[@ajs41]

Has that disappeared now?

[@ellpeetee2069]

@@ajs41 hard to say, I used to work with people who sounded like that who would be in their 70s or 80s now... but I think you can still hear traces of it in the speech of some older/middle aged people from Reading (Ricky Gervais' accent is a good example imo), less so in younger people

[@capitalb5889]

I agree- and Reading isn’t really that far from the West Country.

[@SteveLoughran]

Well, even in Bristol, inner North/North West Bristol has moved to “middle class London”, primarily because of people like me moving in and people from the EU coming to work in the tech industry-and finalising their English accent from their friends and colleagues (us). Classic Bristol is now being pushed to the fringes of the city as gentrification brings in “modern middle class southern”. The fact my son grew up without a Brizzle accent really documents the change

[@matthewbrady5305]

A few of my former teachers in Reading had this 'burr'.

[@IndraSinha]

Thank you, Simon, for these thoughtful talks. They always leave me with something useful. My entire life is writing and bringing characters to life. Finding their voices is a fundamental part of this and for me is the most satisying part of the work. Your point that certain aspects of an elderly person's speech could be generational rather than a restult of ageing is very interesting to me and opens up all sorts of possibilities. Thanks again, I look forward to your nexr film.

[@alanwyatt]

I'm sure you'll be familiar with the recordings of English speakers made by a German researcher just before WW1. I was surprised when hearing it the first time, how 'countrified' they sounded. I was born in 1964 and grew up in Surrey/Hants and spent time near Reading. I do recall hearing tinges in accents occasionally although many spoke with a sort of RP or a more southern (London) generic accent. Moved to Devon half a lifetime ago and have heard many more accents since. But rural England had much in common in the way they spoke. When you mentioned older people you heard, Simon, it reminded me of 'the oldest person I ever met' meaning not in age, but earliest born. As a child I remember seeing an old chap and his wife who lived near us. I would have been about 4 and the old man had fought in the Boer wars. So I think he was born around 1880.

[@MS-ho9wq]

To me, the "and that" means "and all the complications and responsibilities that go along with that"

[@benjaminwilson2945]

It's interesting that you said Tom sounded Irish to you because to me he clearly sounds like someone from the northeast of England. I'm from the northwest though so maybe it's easier for people from the north to identify non southern accents.

[@overlordnat]

I agree, I was astonished that Simon suggested Tom was from Sheffield as he sounds more like he’s from the Sunderland/Middlesborough region just South of Newcastle. I’m from the West Midlands btw just to add context to my non-expert opinion.

[@M_Bamboozled]

I was born in Surrey 1972 and remember my older relatives having a more 'rural' accent and some of these sounds. I still have fragments of these in my speech I think. I moved away from Surrey over 25 years ago and recently went back. People no longer sound like my remembered relatives.

[@chrisroberts1919]

I used to walk various portions of the Thames Path between Oxford and Reading. The variation of accent is significant. Perhaps there are the two main groups. The (to my ear) "London" (commuter) type and... "Pam Ayres". (An enthusiast for accent, if ever!). But a lot of external influences... Didcot with its Railway... The Science Campuses around Harwell... the Proximity of Oxford etc. As a 70 y.o. "Shropshire Lad", who spent his formative years in Cheshire, I use many of the older "Family" constructs? But we Brits do tend to adopt accents and mimic... "Fit in" with (at) the local community (Pub!)... :P

[@freddiefox.]

Have you seen the videos (from film) of Bertrand Russell speaking? He was born in 1872, but the recordings are from 1959, so a fascinating record of how people from the late 19th century spoke, probably. You'd have to listen and judge for yourself.

[@amandachapman4708]

I'm fascinated by the spectrum of accents from Cornwall, through Devon, Dorset, Somerset, into Wiltshire, then Berkshire. I get the impression that there is an underlying similarity/continuity with local variations. Something along the lines of the Cumberland/Westmorland/ Lancashire / Yorkshire spectrum. I suppose local speakers in any of the counties I mention will be up in arms that I am suggesting such a thing 😉 Also, I was interested in the "mouth" discussion, which reminded me of the Canadian pronunciation of similar words. My Sony headphones tell me that its battery level is "about x percent" using that pronunciation. Oddly enough, in various east Lancs towns, the "ou" sound is rather similar to this.

[@chriscurt89]

I live in Sheffield but I’m not from here. I did think the guy sounded like he was from here. The area has a bewildering array of accents so it wouldn’t surprise me if your friends don’t sound like that.

[@kulturfreund6631]

Very interesting. Thanks for your insights. As a non-native English speaker with some international experience I can distinguish only roughly where English speaking people are from. Much of the minor differences though are unknown to me. I notice them, sure, but then never know to tell whether these are regional, local or even personal ways to speak, or if it‘s English from the recent past, from like 50 years ago.

[@mikedavidson1970]

Great work

[@richardwright9292]

Generational speech is fascinating. A few days ago, I found out 'humongous' was surfer slang as not - as I had assumed - the long form of 'huge'. I heard it so much when I was little, and from people who I did not expect to speak in slang, that I thought it was the more formal version. My family being immigrants and older than average, I didn't have a great gauge on what was or wasn't modern speech (I didn't know the words 'hi' or 'kids' or any contractions until the late 90s)... except when I spoke to my cousins in their languages, and they laughed because I sounded like an old person or 'a farmer'.

[@davem9204]

A while ago I listened to a recording of my father speaking in the 1960s (he was into making cine-film recordings - predating youTubers by 50 years!). His accent and phrasing was very similar to what it is now. The only differences being the quality of his voice, as we get croakier as we age; and that he was probably "poshing" up his voice for the recording to make himself clearer.

[@GrilloTheFlightless]

The South East used to have a rich variety of accents. A lot of them are dead or dying and have given way to ‘standard southerner’. A lot of people thing Pam Ayres has a West Country accent, but it actually comes from Berkshire. She was bin and grew up in Stanford In The Vale (now Oxfordshire but was then in Berkshire). Reading, where the lady in this clip is from, is also in Berkshire, and had its own accent. The Reading accent has sometimes been called ‘cockney farmer’ because it shares some characteristics with West Country accents, but also some similar characteristics as the East End. ‘I’ would sometimes come out as ‘oi’ and some ‘ou’ or “ow” sounds come out differently. (“I’m going down town to spend a pound” becoming “Oim going dayne tayneto spend a paynde”) I was born there in 1977, but we moved away in 1979. My mother tells me I had a Reading accent when I was a toddler - although I don’t really remember having it, and haven’t had it for most of my life. Then I lived in Farnborough until the early 2000s. One of my college friends in the mid 90s (from the much posher Ash) once asked me why sometimes I sound really posh, and at other times sound like a Londoner. I suspect it may be fragments of my old Reading accent creeping in. Regional accents in the South East are dying at a pace. I went back to Reading for university in 1995 and I barely heard the accent. I’ve always suspected it may be a combination of urban conurbation wiping out the old accents in rural areas, migration of people to other towns and mass media. Professor Jayne Setter, a phoenetics professor working at Reading University, has attributed the death of the Reading accent to increases and improvements in the rail networks, other improvements in transport and the rise in local industry. She says: “It’s largely because Reading has become a bit of a sleeper town for London and also we’ve got Thames Valley park with all the tech companies - the silicon valley of the UK in some ways.” She goes on to say ““I think that means that we’ve had a lot of people migrate to Reading, largely from the southeast and London but we’ll get people coming to Reading from all over the country that want to work in its industries.” and ““The accent has turned into to one of those Thames Valley, you-could-be-from-anywhere kind of accents. It’s very interesting the way this has happened””. Interestingly, she also suggests that the Berkshire/Reading accent is probably closer to the way English was spoken in Shakespeares time (at least in the South) It’s something called accent levelling. Sooner or later our own way of speaking will ‘level out’ due to influences elsewhere. And the internet and social media will cause more international influences than ever before to creep in. It’s already happening. I heard some teenage girls talking in a bus a while ago and I couldn’t understand a damn word. Except for when they briefly slowed dow and said “then her brother and her sister” but the way drawn-out way she said “brother” had a sort of dipthonged “bruv-er-ah” sound. Similarly “sist-er-ah!”. Effectively getting an extra syllable out of each word. The English language is changing. It’s natural. And it’s always happened. After all, people think of Shakespeare as writing in “oldie worldie” English. It is, in fact, Modern English (as opposed as Old or Middle). It’s essentially our own language before it changed and evolved over years to lose some words and gain others. But as natural as it is, I mourn the loss of Southern regional accents. The counties of the North seem to have a strong linguistic identity. But in the South it seems to be working class, posh or big-standard southerner. All the varieties in between have gone. And what he have is largely informed by the accents in London. Even in Devon and Cornwall, which had their own very rich dialects, we see things dying out. My grandmothers family all had strong Devonshire accents. But the last time I went to Devon and Cornwall all I heard was ‘generic southerner’. It’s sad. For anyone interested, Professor Setter discusses the Reading accent in an interview with The Reading Chronicle, 09/09/22.

[@TonyWhitley]

Same is true of The Midlands where I was born (before migrating to "Silicon Ditch" 40 years ago). I used to be able to hear which town people came from, now Brummie yowling is spreading its deadening effect. Of course, my accent was already very different from my 19th century grandparents, in some part due to the migrants (Irish, Scots and later West Indian and then Indian) that flooded to the Coventry factories back then.

[@Tobberz]

This is very interesting - my mother moved to Reading as a child in the 60s, and would say that she would hear much older people speaking with a rhotic accent, but that it was fast dying out

[@NoirL.A.]

i'm yankee and here in the states due to modern tech regional accents are dying out fast it's sad but inevitable.

[@marsy1480]

Yes, Mrs W sounds a lot like my home accent in the Romford (Essex) area during the 70’s.

[@taxus750]

I haven't got the chops you have Simon, but Mrs. Wilkins accent reminds me very much of a Hampshire accent (see John Arlott for a distinct example). I was born 64 years ago in Pompey (Mum and Dad were from London) and we moved to (what was then) rural Hampshire. South-eastern English speech back then was quite varied: Kent was distinct from Essex, Hants from Sussex and so on. For all that I've lived in Australia for most of my life, I still remember Dorset and east Somerset dialects and I still unconsciously do glottal stops.

[@FiveLiver]

This was one of the first fly on the wall documentaries. I remember it - first time I heard of Reading.

[@Lincolnshire_Gills]

My nan (born in Rural Kent in 1904) used the mouth vowel in the way that you describe as now normally only heard in the South West. Her son, my dad (born in 1932) occasionally slipped into that too but not all the time

[@andrewwoodgate3769]

When you travel(led) west from London, into Oxon, Hants, Berks, you quickly hit a speech pattern which I think IS a remnant of Wessex speech.

[@bluesnowbelle7625]

I remember watching this in the 1970s and remarking at the time how the working-class Wilkins family sounded exactly the same as my middle-class cousins in Somerset, 80 miles west of the Wilkins’ in Reading 😂

[@BillDavies-ej6ye]

I remember, as a teenager in the 1960s, my older relatives from Chalfont St Peter (north of Slough, NW of London) speaking in what we normally think of as a West Country accent. Similar to the East Anglian accent, I would guess the whole rural south of England had similar accents at one time. I use "well" and "I mean". Thanks, Simon, very interesting video. Regarding sound change, I pronounce "our" like "hour", increasingly I hear it pronounced as "R" or "ah" - e.g., "that's ah car."

[@Sylkis89]

The generational vs just "old people" thing is a bit more complex. In case of native speakers of rural or otherwise less prestigious dialects (even urban working class), it is common for people to adopt (at least to some extend) more mainstream-like, more prestigious pronunciations, be it consciously by masking, or unconsciously/naturally by just mirroring other speakers they come in contact with (even limited contact, e.g. listening to them on TV). But as approaching the pensioner age, then whether by conscious choice, or involuntarily just as a result of changes happening to the brain at some stages in life, at least some features of one's native dialect from childhood start resurfacing, and the person's pronunciation reverts back (at least partially) to a state closer to the original one. And this greatly contributes to the perception of certain ways to speaking to be an "old person" thing in the eyes of a younger generation, because they do notice that, in fact, their parents or aunts, etc., speak "normally" in their childhood (of the younger generation), and later on when these children become adults and their parents(, etc.) retire, their way of speaking changes. This might not be applicable to the lady in the video you reviewed, but just noting it that you having this "old people type of speech" assumption as a child was a result of a far more complex phenomenon with a lot of different aspects to it and ways in which it shows than you had assumed, or how you explained it now in the video to be just an generational thing. There's many simultaneous components to it, generational, neurological, regional, class-related, and probably yet far more that I didn't think of when writing this.

[@Bacterx1]

For my family (Ohio, Midwest USA, mom’s side says it, English extraction) “don’t get me wrong” is so common I didn’t even think about it as idiomatic until this video, but we’ve never said “and that”, but my wife’s family (Irish/Scottish) do say it all the time. It sounded “appalachian” to me

[@melissarybb]

I'm from northern NJ just outside NYC and I've lived on Cape Cod, MA for 33 years. Born in '58. "Well" and "I mean" are both things I say all the time. "You see" (y'see) means I just explained, will explain, and do you understand. Also, it's used for emphasis. I mean is similar, but can also express exasperation or annoyance with the listener. (What else was she supposed to do, I mean. [Emphasis on supposed] )

[@robmcrob2091]

I can definitely think of things which have changed in South Esstern speech since 2004. One thing i notice is the influence of MLE. People certainly had MLE accents in 2004 but my perception is it was limited to central London. Now you can commonly hear MLE spoken by kids in places like Surrey. If you go back to the late 80s the change in speech is quite pronounced. Regional accents were still frowned on in broadcasting for example, so broadcasters then in their 30s and now in their 70s spoke with high RP accents. Alot of the slang has changed too. Describing something as 'wicked' meaning amazing is sonething I remember well.

[@kevingriffin1376]

I’m a native speaker of Boston English (New England USA). The speakers in your video sound British to me but I have no difficulty understanding them. “Don’t get me wrong,” is a common expression in especially older speakers of my “dialect.”

[@Ibnfunk]

I know (youngish) people today with a similar accent. They grew up around reading and oxford. My Northern ear interprets it as the stereotypical/pantomine working class southern accent, but I dont come across it from other SE english regions.

[@masonwillis708]

The point you make about elderly people saying things in the early 2000s that are now lost (as they have passed) is something I was talking to my mum about just the other day. My Granddad (who died aged 88 in 2016) used to say ‘Wotcha’ instead of ‘Hello’ to people that were very close to him. I heard a few of his friends and brothers say it too. To my knowledge, I’ve not heard it in nearly a decade. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Three other examples my mum and I thought of are: ‘Gor’ Bennet’ ‘Ain’t ‘Alf’ and ‘hanky’. For example: ‘Gor’ Bennet it ain’t ‘alf cold! Glad I brought me hanky’.

[@overlordnat]

I haven’t heard “ain’t half” for yonks, or even “Gor lumme” and “Gordon Bennett” (never encountered “Gor Bennett” though). Certain phrases seem to to currently only used by the very elderly and will probably disappear in 10 years or so such as “wireless” for “radio” and “outdoors” for “off licence”.

[@MrOtistetrax]

My Dad said “wotcha” to me just yesterday!

[@masonwillis708]

@@MrOtistetrax Oh lovely! How old is your dad?

[@MrOtistetrax]

@@masonwillis708 He’s 75. Some of my friends and I (in our 40s) will still use it occasionally too. But usually with a sense of kitsch irony.

[@masonwillis708]

@@MrOtistetrax I love that! You've inspired me to do likewise!

[@jwsuicides8095]

Having lived near enough to their region at the time no one talked like them.

[@MaoRatto]

14:59 I notice this phonetic realization despite not even close to England mainly in where normally /u/ originally got fronted in the south at times as /ʏy̯/, but lowered into /ø/, but also in indefinite articles like "an" before words with /e, ɪ, or ɛ/ when in high stress environments. Also, having the all of the front round vowels vs. unrounded . Like in " and " becoming a nasal œ, but D being reduced. with a high tongue position. Anytime t or d are reduced, it often rounds the lips due to the N or M in the world or just doing a German convience thing where in a base word form. It stays as "o", but shifts to "ö", but here it applies to historical /ɪ/ being backed to /ʌ/ as I notice the /ʌ/ is more fronted, the schwa sometimes in certain environments becomes /ɜ/ while /ɐ/ shows up when a word like " what " changes verbs after it. I notice some have deleted N's or M's or merged.

[@op-fb2cm]

Great video as always. Just curious as to where you got your intonation notation from as I haven't seen it before. Where can I learn more about it?

[@IAmRobertPersson]

Forgive me if this is already addressed later in the video than I have got to now, but have you taken into fact that Reading is a considerable distance west of London? The way Mrs Wilkins says “find” doesn’t sound southeastern to me at all. If anything, it sounds Borsetshire. Is that a remnant of a dialect spoken in that part of Berkshire before London-style speech took over?

[@SiLeNtLyFaMoUs80sSynth]

I found originally coming from Reading there were 2 types of accent. The Reading town accent which sounds like a London area accent and then the Berkshire accent which sounds more like a West country accent such as the Wiltshire area. Although when me and my Dad had a drink with 2 Bolton Wanderers fans, they said they loved our cockney accents, which to us was funny as our accents were more a rural Berkshire accent. But even to me Mrs Wilkins accent was slightly unusual compared to older speakers of a Berkshire accent I heard such as my Grandfather and great uncles who were Native Reading town folk. Ricky Javais has a Reading accent which has mixes of a London area and Berkshire accent with similarities to a West country a cent in certain words.

[@clerigocarriedo]

Very interesting!! I was wondering why Mrs. Wilkins is not rhotic at all, whereas Ricky Gervais is a bit.

[@SiLeNtLyFaMoUs80sSynth]

@@clerigocarriedo Yes Ricky does have a slight rhoetic sound funnily enough some Reading folk do have a soft rhoetic sound, and these were folk born in the 1930's and 40's. But other Reading town people have a London area accent. I suppose it's where Berkshire is positioned especially Reading around 30 miles West of West London and West Berkshire which has more of a Rhoetic sound more akin to a Wiltshire accent as the 2 counties border one another at the Western edge. East Berkshires border with Middlesex touches around the Langley and Slough areas which would have a London area accent a mere stones throw away from Brentford and Hounslow. Yet my friends who are from Reading have more of a London area accent as their parent or parents were originally from London. Bracknell is a good example with the overspill population from London and only around 8 miles East of Reading they sound like Londoners and refered to me as a farmer Lol, As my Reading accent sounded more rural similar to a West Berkshire accent. Simon would know far more than I do but mines just on listening to people talking and accents which I find fascinating. But a great observation that Ricky has a slight Rhoetic sound but Steven Marchant who's from Bristol who worked a lot with Ricky in his various Television programmes might have rubbed off on Ricky's accent. As Steven Marchant has a strong Bristolian Rhoetic accent. Also Reading had quite a big Irish community one of the biggest in the south outside of London as my maternal grandmothers parents came from Longford and Kildare plus a big Afro Carribbean community so the town became a melting pot but I think the Rhoetic element was naturally there long before newcomers arrived in the town.

[@RandomNonsense1985]

I keep seeing “Berkshire” and have to remind myself OP isn’t referring to Western Massachusetts.

[@Daytona2]

Fascinating stuff, for an interested layman like me. I'd be careful with Ngram. I've seen a lot of historically long used words soaring in frequency around 2000. It may be showing a digital bias in favour of book data easily uploaded because they were written on computers. Perhaps there need to be some regression processing.

[@theoryismypraxis3538]

to me the /w/ sound in "don't" ( 0:26 ) is not very prominent to my ear really. I would have probably tried to reflect it in the vowel when transcribing. Good ear on your part. the glottal stop after the /n/ is also very subtle

[@capo3645]

As someone who grew up with people who spoke with a similar accent to the woman in this video let me give my perspective on the passing of time/list. Her tone is actually very specific and this is exactly how my grandmother would express herself in this instance - she is not simply listing, she is mocking him. In your example of your own accent your intonation gives the impression complaining about being "messed about," so the emphasis is on how long the list is, how arduous it is etc. While her intonation is, ironically, more lighthearted and mocking. I think this also makes contextual sense as she then jokes with him about the "an' that" in the same conversation.

[@capo3645]

Also, sorry to add again, but the variance in her pitch and intonation is also very deliberate. It actually distinguishes what she's saying from a list on purpose to express the "back and forth" nature of his supposed marriage dates, which would be lost if it was simply vocalized as a traditional list. Would be very interested to hear her list other things verbally in a different context though

[@TheTedder]

How much of this can be attributed to differences between male and female speech?

[@Volorai]

There are entirely negligible gendered differences in spoken language. The only differences are related to the differences in vocal projection between AGABs. But those are hardly strict enough to result in linguistic differences, considering how easy voice training is.

[@AmyThePuddytat]

​@@VoloraiThere are considerable differences in intonation. And it's across the sexes/genders. “AGAB” shouldn't automatically used as synonym of that since we're not talking about what anyone is _assigned._

[@Volorai]

@@AmyThePuddytat There isn't any other universally inclusive terminology to refer to "biological sex". All existing terminology is gendered. If there ever is universal, un-gendered terminology to refer to it, I'll probably start using that since its what I want to use. I'm extremely skeptical that there are considerable differences in intonation, considering my own and others experience with vocal intonation. AFAIK, there is no significant physiological differences in vocal cords across "sex" that would result in linguistic differentiation.

[@f0rm0r]

​@@VoloraiWhen people talk about male and female speech, they mean in people who are filling the social roles of male and female, and there are a ton of differences there, but it depends on which language is being spoken. It's not always super noticeable in English, but word choice is a major area where masculine and feminine speech differ.

[@ThePrinceofParthia]

I would say that "Well" 4:45 is more than just a start of response marker, it's very much a rebuttal or confrontational marker: it's much more like "On the other hand" or "I disagree" in WIlkins' response. Compare 8:11: a response vs 8:24, a rebuttal.

[@smadaf]

I think you mistake what she means when she says "It's been January" and the like. I don't take this to mean "January has come and gone." I take it to mean "The date that my daughter said would be the date of your marriage has been January": i.e., "I've been told the wedding would be in January, then I was told it would be in June, &c." She's not marking the passage of time, but listing a series of failed predictions that she has been given. The "it" here has a specific antecedent, particular to the topic of the conversation: "the date of your future wedding".

[@lindybeige]

I was more interested by the RP at the start, which sounded like 1970s RP, not modern RP.

[@xrimn9294]

I found it interesting that you addressed rhoticity a minute after I noticed your - to me surprising - pronounciation of the R in a few cases of "here" and "further". The rules when native speakers pronounce their r's in a non-rhotic accent are complex indeed. Also, in the same way one might find it jarring to see young people use old-timey speech, it is jarring to me that your earliest memories are post 2000. Not that I would have thought you were much older if I had stopped to think about it. It's just weird realizing, from adult to adult, that there is a big chunk of history lived that we don't share. As you age, your frame of reference doesn't necessarily adapt I guess. I love these super detailed videos on niche subjects of yours!

[@rogerkearns8094]

Amazing that, as tiny children, we pick all this up, seemingly with hardly a thought.

[@DadgeCity]

I thought Tom sounded like he was from Newcastle!

[@BiTurbo228]

Me too! I was thinking 'he sounds like a Georgie to me...'

[@forthrightgambitia1032]

Interesting discussion. My earliest memories are of the 90s, stronger towards the end of the 90s, as in the early 90s I was a small child. It is intriguing how my memory of that time is slightly garbled. I mean I didn't have a smartphone until early 2015, and yet the experience of using an old style mobile phone from about 1999-2015 hasn't really left much of a trace in my memory, except the early years playing snake. I don't distinctly remember the TV being of worse quality and yet when I watch TV from the late 90s and early 2000s it manifestly was. As for 'South Eastern' - I always assumed this meant Kent to me. At least if people in Kent say the South East they mean Kent and maybe Sussex, Surrey and at a stretch Essex. Calling Reading the South East is a little strange to me. It would be interesting to see speech patterns in Kent at that time - I know from speaking to my parents that in the 70s there were still people who spoke with an older dialect and accent from Kent. It was considered a slight rural burr, a softer version of say the he accents in the West Country or East Anglia. Even at that time though the cities and towns in the north of Kent such as Chatham, Maidstone, Sittingbourne and Faversham had already being increasingly influenced by London accents, especially given the naval presence in the era (which was still a thing then) and the hop pickers who came down from London. Also, your discussion of the model of English and how it works I think becomes more alien the further back we go. I think this is one of the reasons people struggle to understand Shakespeare at school whilst people who read it a lot of out of interest become quite attached to the modes of speech. It is not the unusual vocabulary which can be glossed, or the conceptal understanding of the world, which again can be explained as historical phenomena. We can be trained to understand the classical rhetorical techniques that complicate much of the sentence construction such as the florid anthimeria, the usage of nouns as verbs for example, that anyway has elements of things we do in a more controlled way in the modern world. We're very consciously aware of these facts or can be trained in them. It is instead because the patterns of speech, the filler words and the ways of constructing sentences that make the whole thing seem so alien to us and almost ritualistic. Discourse markers such as "an't" and "marry" seem almost comical to us, or sacred, depending on one's context of exposure to such language. I think this in part explains why say Catholicism traditionally used Latin for religious services, or even today Muslims are expected to read the Quran in Classical Arabic. The distance of time and the jarring nature of the expressions creates a separateness that can then be closely connected with ideas or concepts of a different world.

[@brendanjackman3600]

Really cool to see analysis of intonation! Would love to see more of that. Do we lose most of that for periods of history before audio recording?

[@marshallodom1388]

I hope you're doing well. I find myself enthralled by all of your videos. What's really amazing to me is you, and other British people, can tell what neighborhood someone is from by their subtle accent differences. If I study your videos enough I hope during my next to England that I'll be able to understand what everyone is saying. One question I have is why isn't school and schedule pronounced the same way?

[@capitalb5889]

I was puzzled by your question at first, and then realised you’re talking about the “sch”. Actually, in American English it has the same pronunciation in both words, and that has slowly been creeping into British English, so I think it’s fairly common now.

[@24eu]

Skeh-dule is how I pronounce it. Which is actually a mix of the two. US- sked-ule UK- sheh-dule If that even makes sense to anyone, I have no experience in writing out the sounds of words!

[@SteveLoughran]

There’s class differences within a city too: middle class accents are less different across cities because of schooling (especially private schooling) and travel to study as university students then moving round the country. Working class households have less regional mobility and so stronger regional accents. Which means there’s a risk of those accents hindering their owners getting jobs in “professional” industries. That is : we in those industries must take care when interviewing not to discriminate against people with strong accents.

[@dessertstorm7476]

"and that" is very mancunian and still in usage currently, its used frequently at the end of sentences with no real meaning, but kind of means "etc". A southerner might find that odd and question what it means

[@abody499]

nah it's much wider than mancunian. i'd guess it was commonly used in british working class variants, maybe not all - i really dont know, but certainly common. i agree it sort of means etc. In the first example it was "at work and that" which I interpret as saying not only at work but other places he's not sure of enough to define at the time of speaking. or maybe to avoid listing all the places she might have to tell people.

[@dessertstorm7476]

@@abody499 i would definitely say its broadly a northern thing if not specifically manc. I grew up in the south east and never heard it until I moved to manchester. You wouldn't hear it on eastenders, but you would definitely hear it on coronation street.

[@abody499]

ok interesting. that begins to answer my next idea that there was a certain starting point in terms of latitude from where it began and was commonly used north of this starting point. The evidence for this is that it was common across Scotland in working class speech communities. [edit: in the same generation of speakers as on the video]

[@joebees21]

​@@dessertstorm7476You hear it in Birmingham too.