Flattening in England, resurgent in Scotland: accents still shape our island life | Ian Jack
Accents might be seen as the failure of speech to match some imaginary norm. What's odd in Glasgow seems ordinary in Essex, and vice versa; and what was ordinary yesterday seems extraordinary now. In Ma'am Darling, Craig Brown's recently published (and very entertaining) biographical study of Princess Margaret, the author devotes a chapter to the princess's stilted encounter in 1981 with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs. "Ma'am, have you a big collection of records?" the presenter begins reverentially. "Ears, quate," says the princess. "Have you kept your old 78s?" Plomley ploughs on. "Oh, ears," the princess replies, "they're all velly carefully preserved."
The "ears" is baffling until Brown discloses that that's how she says "yes", just as she says "nyair" for "no" and "velly" for "very"; and of course the short "a" now commonly rendered as an "e" in comic transcriptions of Brief Encounter: "Eh hev them up in the ettic, eckshleh," HRH says when Plomley wonders where her 78rpms are kept. Or rather, that's what Craig Brown hears. When I find the recording of that episode in the BBC archive, I hear something different. "Yes" sounds more or less like "yes". No matter how often I say "ears" aloud, I can't hear a "yes" lurking inside it.
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