changing one's accent from posh to a little less posh

[Paul Johnston]

Interesting.  His father, Edward VII (1842-1910), was transcribed by
Hallam in the 1870s, and would have sounded even more Mid-Atlantic in
some ways--he was variably rhotic, for instance.  This would have
been an arch-conservative feature for that generation.

Paul Johnston
On Dec 5, 2006, at 5:39 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: changing one's accent from posh to a little less
> posh
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>
> A few years ago I heard a recording of George V (1865-1936), made,
> IIRC, about 1920. FWIW, his accent sounded to me, quite
> surprisingly, far more "mid-Atlantic" than that of his granddaughter.
>
>   Just a factoid for consideration.
>
>   JL
> RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
> Subject: changing one's accent from posh to a little less posh
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> By the way, no one has yet taken notice of the article in the press
> today
> about the phonetics professor in Munich who has been studying the
> accent of the
> present Queen of England (the one who is not bald) by looking at
> recordings of
> her formal speeches made over the past 50 years. It appears that Queen
> Elizabeth II has become much more demotic in her accent over the
> years.
>
> This reminds me of an observation that I received from a famous and
> brilliant
> English professor of forensic linguistics this summer whilst
> watching (in his
> living room) a rerun of one of the old "I Claudius" series (made in
> the early
> 1980s, I believe, if not the later 1970s). My friend indicated that
> the
> accents sounded old-fashioned and quaintly hyper-posh (lest I be
> accused of being a
> liar for paraphrasing, those are NOT his EXACT words, but rather my
> sense of
> his exact words, sorta like the difference between ''prejudice'' and
> ''bias'').
>
> How much attention is being given to the deposhing of England,
> accentwise? Do
> all those sexy princes sound different from their homely dad?
>
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