Tuesday 17 April 2018

I shall have another try.   Things have certainly gone quite haywire with my computer.   Most of my comments are being returned by bt internet for some reason.   My son says it will help if I tick 'I am not a robot' but I can't find it to tick!   So if anyone has any idea what is happening I would be grateful for any advice.

Once a month we have a meeting where we chat about things.   This morning we chatted about accent and about the way language is evolving so quickly these days.

And I do wonder firstly - does one's accent make any difference to how one is viewed by people one meets?   Is a London/Southern accent more acceptable than a Northern/Geordie/Yorkshire  (the opposite I would say is true up here!)?
Should we accept slang words from children in school or should we be more interested in getting them to talk and express themselves and correct their language later on?    I vividly remember when I first married my farmer his father had already stopped milking but each milking time he would go out and stand in the milking parlour watching as the farmer milked.   They would chat to one another but if I went in it was as if I was listening to a foreign language - I couldn't understand a word they said.    And the same would be true at Friday's Auction Mart over the canteen lunch!!

25 comments:

Simon Douglas Thompson said...

THere's still a lot of comment when someone speaks with a Northern accent on the BBC, or as an MP

Rachel Phillips said...

I doubt you would understand a word spoken around here. We all speak in broad Norfolk dialect.

Jill said...

For your comments it could be the web browser you are using. Sometimes you need to use chrome sometimes instead of explorer. And sometimes Firefox is one I've had to use for certain sites. No idea if this is your issue but I know I have run into it with some sites if my web browser is old and/or not supported.

Bea said...

The amount of time we humans have to convince robots, in essence, that we are not robots is remarkable.

DUTA said...

Type your problem on Google, and you'll get answers, advice, instructions. Choose the clearest and the easiest for your understanding. That's what I usually do when in trouble.

Last week, I incidentally deleted a new comment on my dashboard. I typed the issue on Google, and there came an explanation of exactly how to transfer the 'lost' comment from my email to my comment box.( That's one more reason why comment moderation is such a good thing. The comments come through your email). Problem solved in minutes. Good Luck!

Rachel Phillips said...

Ignore that BT email. I get them all the time but my comments are still published.

Joanne Noragon said...

We don't have such unintelligible dialogues as Rachel speaks of, but so many regional variations! I love it. I told my cousin I'd come to Texas just to hear her say "yonder" and "fixin'". Usually it over yonder or down yonder. Fixin' is feexn'. And so many more.

justjill said...

On the Prom today and I had to tell someone I had just seen a seal. Where are you from? I now have a new friend M from Yorkshire, who recognised my Yorkshire accent. Heaven forfend that dialect is ironed out.

jinxxxygirl said...

My family moved quite a bit up and down the east coast of the US... In school the English teachers would often have me stand up and pronounce words that sounded different depending on where i was at the time.. I'am a person that picks up accents easily.. Moving from NJ to Florida it wasn't long before i spoke with a southern accent.. I think it was just my attempt to fit in as i was a very shy child... and then moving back to NJ my southern accent would disappear after a few weeks... Hugs! deb

susie @ persimmon moon cottage said...

My kids were were born in South Korea and came home to my husband and I when they were only three months old. So they never spoke Korean, only English ( Midwest American style). I always found it interesting when they were in early grade school, when some teachers first met them, the teachers assumed they were hearing a Korean accent, they weren't, it was just an assumption made from my childrens' appearance.

I have always enjoyed listening to accents from all different places. I always try to guess the origin, but am often wrong when it comes to many European accents. I would be hopeless trying to guess not only which country, but which specific area.

Hilary said...

I was born in the US, but my mother was from England and had only been here a year before I was born. So I learned to talk like her. She said I didn't lose it until I went to school, and kids made fun of me.

Pipistrello said...

I love the regional accents and dialects of England and hope they don't vanish. It adds to a much richer social tapestry.

Strangely for such a large geographical spread of people, here in Australia there's really only 2 obvious accents, "city" and "country". (Oh, and any accents broadly classed as "migrant-English", which vanishes with a second generation). I have a pretty good ear for this sort of thing and where some say that different states may have different accents, I can't concur. Another layer on city/country was "cultivated" or not, where until the latter part of the 20th Century, "cultivated" sounded posh-English. Radio and TV presenters now sound Australian not English, so that distinction is dying out. Kids mimic one another so really it is they who are the drivers of how we sound. It only took a couple of decades or less I think before the first British settlers/convicts lost their various accents and developed the Australian.

On a slightly different subject, there is a petition going around protesting about the exclusion of a lot of nature words from the Junior Oxford English Dictionary as they are "irrelevant" to a modern day child. Simplistic words like blog are replacing words like dandelion! So duller language in the next generation could also join the flattening of accents. We'll all end up colourless and featureless before long.

thelma said...

Sometimes when the accent is so strong I cannot understand some Yorkshire people but I have learnt to concentrate. My four grandchildren, the first has still kept his southern accent but the other three are a delight with their Yorkshire accents. Always being picked up by Paul for saying the long drawn 'Bath' and not flat 'a' Bath. This was down to the fact that I had elocution lessons as a child, so I never ended up with a 'Black Country' accent.
Does it matter? I notice RP on the BBC is not so strict now thank goodness.....

Derek Faulkner said...

I love to hear accents from different parts of the country and some of the words that go with them, well, all except the Geordie (Newcastle) accent, that one has always irritated me for some reason. Unfortunately the days of people rarely moving outside of their village or local area have long gone and with people from other areas moving in, local accents have become watered down. I have never lived in London, but always 50 miles away, and yet people still say to me on the phone that I sound "cockney," which grates a bit.

Gwil W said...

I love to hear most accents. The only ones I don't like are the ones that sound pretentious and snobbish. I don't like being lectured to by politicians from Elton and thir ilk.

Alphie Soup said...

You've had lots of suggestion about your computer problem Weaver Pat and by now you may have solved it. I hope so. It is always handy to have some one sit beside you and show you how and where to look for different things.
Are there any computer classes for adults in your town? You might find one that will deal with blogging. It's fine when things work but can be very frustrating when they don't. I know. I'm speaking from experience. :=)

Alphie

Midmarsh John said...

No real idea why you are having problems though I have some when I use the Firefox browser. On some sites, when trying to leave a comment, it doesn't fill in the 'choose an identity' section properly.

When a youngster of primary school age we moved from Lincolnshire to London and places nearby. The local children would make fun of my 'northern' accent. When we eventually moved back to Lincolnshire I was then picked out for having a 'southern' accent.

As a Lincolnshire lass you may be interested in the site http://www.farwelterd.co.uk/index.php which lists and explains the meaning of some Lincolnshire dialect words.

Heather said...

I think correct language is important but that regional accents should be acceptable. After all if we all speak correct(ish!) English we should all be able to understand each other. Having said that I think local dialects are fascinating.
Many years ago I remember being told that I had a London accent and for a moment took it as a compliment. Then I wondered if this person thought I sounded like a Cockney! I grew up in the south east and at school we were all encouraged to have 'round vowels'.
Hope you get your computer gremlins banished soon.

Gwil W said...

I find my blog works best when I use google chrome even though it likes to tell me my computer is too old for updates.

gz said...

Using Firefox or possibly Chrome should sort your problem..I assume you are commenting when logged in to google? some wont accept "anonymous" comments. Initially I always clicked on "I amnot a robot"...until the day I forgot...and it still published. So I don't bother.

I've moved well over thirty times in my life..yes, I've learnt about many different places, have friends everywhere. BUT I've never gained dialect , accent, locality...where is "home". Definitely a loss.

The Weaver of Grass said...

What an interesting and helpful lot of comments. I shall try them all if I haven't fixed it. My son said try always ticking I am not a robot - I have never bothered before - so I did so last night and have had no e mails telling me my comments cannot be sent this morning. So fingers crossed.

Thanks also for the language thoughts - just more or less as we agreed at our meeting yesterday.

Minigranny said...

Coming from Yorkshire I had quite a strong accent when young but we have moved around so much that I've mostly lost it but still have the short A - I wouldn't feel right if I tried to say 'barth' instead of bath. I loved the dales Yorkshire accent which is much softer than some - perhaps that is what your husband had - my Dad often used 'thou' instead of 'you'.

Beryl Ament said...

I’ve been away from England for a while and watching British movies/series etc. takes away some of the nostalgia. It really is amazing how many different accents there are in such a small country. When I was growing up anything except BBC English was frowned upon. Now I love to listen to them all. Am watching Shetland right now which is lovely to listen to, but sometimes a little problematic. In the last episode, a character talked about, “when ma deed dayed”, which I figured out referred to his father’s demise.

Lesley UK said...

When a was a child, my father and brother would talk to each other in 'backslang'. It was usually derogatory comments about the customers to our butcher's shop. I was still only about 8, but I gradually picked it up (without them knowing) and greatly enjoyed it. Now I am 72, and it's been erased from my memory. Does anyone know anything about backslang? I'd love to know. Blessings

cocoya said...

I find my blog works best when I use google chrome even though it likes to tell me my computer is too old for updates.

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