In 2012 a survey of 4,000 respondents found that British people rated Scouse,
the accent of Liverpool, as the least intelligent and least trustworthy.
What! How is that possible? Scouse is the accent of The Beatles for god's sake. Now
if you're not familiar with scouse, here's an example: ‘good god! I don't need you,
I've got a room full of books. I know what wine to buy, what clothes to wear, what plays to see,
what papers and books to read and I can do it without you’ Sounds good to me. I'll reveal
more from this survey later in this video today on LetThemTalkTV we're going to look at accent
prejudice or accentism in the UK and I should tell you that I myself have been the subject of
accentism on this channel. Look at this comment on a recent video I made called “why you shouldn't
speak English like a native.” You can check out the video up here if you haven't seen it already.
“he's discussing pronunciation then I cringe when he pronounces however as howeva and a culture as
culcha, terminata.” Yes that's true I have a slight London accent because I'm from London
so I do say “howeva” and not “however” but why do you cringe because I have a mild regional accent?
Why should this be a source of distress and dismay to you, the writer of the comment? Does this
person cringe at all regional pronunciations or just mine? And what about this on a video I made
on Cockney that is strong London accent “worship of the stupid now they hid Cockney with good
reason lowest society is celebrated now just like low-life rappers who only know 50 words total
of English.” or this one “I'm so glad that I grew up educated and didn't learn this disgrace to our
language it makes us sound stupid.” It's ironic because his comment really shows how uneducated
he is, how ignorant he is. The real disgrace is accent prejudice and unfortunately it still exists
in the UK. First of all let's talk about standard British English for a moment sometimes referred to
as RP - received pronunciation. Now I don't like the term RP but I discussed that in another video
here. For the purposes of this video I’ll call standard British English RP. All the dictionaries
and English teaching material use RP as the standard when they're doing British English
and that's fine we need a standard and if you're speaking someone who is not from your region or
one whose first language is not English you will reduce the number of slang words and dialect
expressions that you use that's that's normal so you can all understand each other but keeping your
accent is fine Britain is rich and diverse in its accents there are something like 40 different
accents in the UK and yes it reveals the rich diversity and history of the language and it
should be celebrated. Now there are still those who believe that if you're uneducated you speak
with a regional accent but as you get educated this accent miraculously disappears and you
acquire an RP accent a small number of people do, for one reason or another, actively seek to reduce
their regional accent and for reasons we'll go into in a moment but for the vast majority
that's the accent of the towns and the cities that they grew up in and they're rightly proud of it.
It's part of their identity just because you don't speak the standard version of something
it doesn't mean it's bad in ancient times some speakers of Latin complained of the bastardization
of pure Latin because on the street they were speaking vulgar Latin or popular Latin
and these dialects became Italian and French and other Romance languages accents are like flavors
of ice cream. You may have a preference for one or another but you can't say one is better
I like pistachio but if you prefer strawberry then power to you it's the same with accents
the phonemes are different but they are just sounds you can't say that one sound is better than
another personally I like the Birmingham accent I lived in Birmingham for a while and I always
enjoyed the sing-song rhythm of Brummie that's my pistachio but to ascribe intelligence or trust
or give someone a job or a position of authority or not give them one just based on the accent is
unacceptable is this any better than racism or sexism or any other form of prejudice?
I don't think so. Unfortunately things have changed over time and there have
been improvements in Britain accentism is far less institutionalized as it used to
be. Before the 1960s if you wanted to work in the civil service in the BBC or in a number of
professions it would be a lot easier if you spoke RP and if you watch those old newsreels from the
BBC you would never hear or rarely hear a regional accent you would sound something like this:
“armed thieves hijacked a van in East London and stole four million pounds worth of silver ingots.
The common market summit which was due to open in Brussels next monday has been postponed for
several weeks. A man has been arrested after the explosion which destroyed the Italian
consulate in London.” Thankfully nowadays there are a lot of presenters on the BBC
and elsewhere with regional accents and you can go to Oxford or Cambridge or work in any profession
with a regional accent but this does not mean that prejudice doesn't still exist because it does.
Look at this quote “a degree from an elite university acts as a signal for quality but
other characteristics such as personal style, accents and mannerisms,
adaptability, team working and other soft skills are then interpreted as proxies for talent.” So
accent is still important. So having a regional accent at an elite university is fine
but these graduates can still face prejudice in the job market. Now back in the day what
would you do if you had a regional accent and you wanted to rise the social ranks?
You would try and lose it or rather acquire an RP accent. Margaret Thatcher was from Lincolnshire
but she lost most of the traces of her regional accent when she became Prime Minister or before
she became Prime Minister. listen to this from the musician Sting “I lost my accent because
I didn't want to be judged. At the time regional accents were not accepted at all.
I'd watched the news every night and the news readers didn't speak like Geordies.
I thought I'll develop that and not be identified with the particular region.”
Sting spoke those words in 2013. Exactly 100 years earlier in 1913 George Bernard Shaw wrote in the
preface to his play Pygmalion “it's impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making
some other Englishman despise him.” If you don't know the story of Pygmalion, which was later made
into the movie My Fair Lady, it's the story of a London flower girl with a strong Cockney accent
and she realizes that if she wants to to escape poverty she needs a better accent and Professor
Higgins is charged with the task of teaching her to talk ‘proper’ like a lady.” one country listens
I am and to pay for ‘em too. Make no mistake. - Well I say Pickering shall we ask this object to
sit down or shall we throw her out of the window? I won't be called an object when I've offered to
pay like any lady. - What is it you want my dear? - I want to be a lady in a flower shop
instead of selling in Piccadilly Circus. They won't take me unless I can talk more genteel
what he said he could teach me.” Certainly things have changed since the time of Eliza Doolittle.
Social classes are more fluid now having said that although it's more difficult than in the past
you can often tell someone's class by their accent. Let's go back to the survey I mentioned at
the start. I want to show you some stats that you might find surprising. As we said at the beginning
of the video, according to the survey in the UK the least trusted accent is the Scouse accent
which is from Liverpool. Second bottom of the pile is the West Midlands accent or the brummie accent
and here's an example. “it's just Americans yeah it's Americans love the idea of watching British
people do something objectively silly yeah and celebrating a royal wedding is silly because the
royal family is in at its very essence a very silly thing.” And next from bottom is Cockney
sounds like this “First time you walk into a public place and everybody in that place knows
who you are and you don't know a soul now I can imagine like a lot of people actually think oh
hold up back off and that that is never going to happen to me again and they sort of isolate
themselves well with me it was a question of I've always liked people you know because I didn't know
anybody didn't mean to say I didn't want to know anybody so I was in there like a flash,”
Top of the pile? Yes you guessed it it's RP so let's have a look example “well a first from
oxford and uh and yeah and he he said right you need her Bletchley and it still took her two years
she went in initially as a secretary and it took her two years - even though she'd been brought in
they wouldn't accept that she should be in the room and it took her two years to get in there
and then once she was in the room that she you know should have been in she was paid a fraction
of what the men were paid.” So it's estimated that only 3% of the British population speak a pure RP.
Most people will have a regional accent in one form or another, maybe a mild regional accent
such as me from London or sometimes a very strong regional accent. It's more complicated than you
think also near the top are the Scottish accents here's an example “oh I see um uh not not guilty -
fine off the record the police have told me that the USB drive does have Simon's prints on it
and that in searching the flat they found the mobile that the bank details were sent from”
and the Geordie accent from Newcastle “yeah and that's why we wanted to do it you know 30 years
ago when we started out we were both given an amazing opportunity and that led to this fantastic
career that we've had and we're very very grateful for it but we were two quite normal unremarkable
kids from the West End of Newcastle and we were given an opportunity and we grabbed it with both
hands.” This explains why some companies set up call centers in areas with more trusted accents.
Not everything is so gloomy society has moved on and regional accents are now a source of pride not
shame and most people are wise enough to recognize that a regional accent says nothing about
intelligence or ability or education and a Londoner can understand a Scouser and
a Geordie can understand a West Country accent without any difficulty. I'm from
London but I've lived in Leeds and Birmingham and I've spent time in Scotland as well. I've never
encountered any difficulties understanding or being understood so let's not talk about
good accents and bad accents some people are smart some people are stupid but it's all about
the words you use the words to come out of your mouth and everything else is irrelevant you can
speak good English you can speak bad English but it's all in what you say that counts not which
phonemes which sounds you use. Now that's the situation in the UK but what about in your
country? Does accentism exist there too? And if you are from the UK have you ever been the victim
of accent prejudice? Let us know your thoughts and your comments below see you next time bye.