It's the end of the frog and toad for regional slang, says report

Friday, September 30, 2016

Will the Queen's English of today vanish?

Some linguists report that multiculturalism and "talking to machines and listening to Americans" will change accents and how the British speak the Queen's English. In a recent report, the linguists say that by 2066, English in Great Britain will feature shortened words and simplified pronunciation as, among other things, American technology uses a "relaxed and unpretentious approach" to the language.

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The Guardian (London)

It's the end of the frog and toad for regional slang, says report

Sounds of 2066 report says ‘talking to machines and listening to Americans’ will kill off British accents and slang in the future

t’s not just Cockney that’s brown bread: a new report on the homogenisation of spoken English predicts that by the year 2066 the distinctive Brummie G – as in Birmin-gam – will have followed it down the apples and pears, along with dialect words and regional pronunciations such as Glasgow’s bampot, slarty and stooshie, and Newcastle’s neet out on the toon.

The report, The Sounds of 2066, suggests that “talking to machines and listening to Americans” will soon kill off cherished regional accents and phrases and lead to a more universally informal spoken English. It cites the probability that keyboards will soon be as dead as a dog and bone landline, replaced by voice recognition technology, as among the key drivers behind a less diverse English.

Shortened words and simplified pronunciation will bring more changes: the authors suggest that within 50 years any proud owner of a new vehicle in London may be greeted with: “Hey bruv, I totes fink that car is a booty.”

Dominic Watt, a lecturer in forensic speech science at the University of York, said: “In future, our voices will become ever more crucial and we’ll use them to interact with the majority of machines and devices in our daily lives. Keyboards will have become obsolete and we will become completely comfortable speaking to our cars, washing machines, fridges, taxi apps and online banking services.”

The report sees “a preference for informal, chatty and jokey language in the technological and scientific domains” as a recent phenomenon, but one likely to become more important in changing both vocabulary and pronunciation.

“The fact that so many innovations in computing come from California is undoubtedly linked to this relaxed and unpretentious approach,” it says.

Watt and his co-author, dialogue and dialect coach Brendan Gunn, have a bouquet of regional accents between them. Watt’s university degrees came from Edinburgh and Newcastle and he has lectured in Aberdeen. Gunn, who has coached stars including Robert de Niro, Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt, has worked as a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Ulster.

Age is more important than class in driving the change, they say: “The Queen’s English spoken by Prince George as he grows up is not going to be the same as the Queen’s English spoken by the Queen.”

Standard English and received pronunciation - “the Queen’s English” - have largely lost their power. “Where once it was more or less obligatory to speak these for anyone wishing to enter the professions, the clergy, the upper ranks of the military, acting or broadcasting, these days non-standard accents and dialects are much more widely accepted. We’ve come to realise that speaking in such and such a way isn’t necessarily a sure sign of someone’s intelligence, or competence. This improves opportunities for people from a wider variety of social and educational backgrounds.”

The authors suggest that pronunciations perceived as attempts to sound less grand, or yoof-speak, which saw Tony Blair mocked for his appeal to vo’ers instead of voters, Jonathan Ross and Roy Hodgson’s much parodied problems with the letters R and W, or consonants dropped by television personalities including Jamie Oliver, may become universal. We will all give thanks to our muvvers, while red and wed, Paul and paw, fin and thin, will become indistinguishable.

“People in 2066 will be mystified as to why Tony Blair, Ed Miliband and George Osborne were slammed so mercilessly by the press for having been caught saying voters without using a ‘proper t’ in the middle.”

In London, the estuary English - recognisably south-east but hard to place the speaker within the region - which has almost replaced Cockney, is itself under threat from “multicultural London English”, which incorporates pronunciations from the Caribbean, west African and the Asian communities.

“Given this mix, and the status of London as the linguistically most influential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see significant changes between now and the middle of the century,” the report finds.

Among the evolving pronunciations, dook for duke and nooze for news are already firmly established, while coot for cute and booty for beauty will follow. “We may also see consonant +/r/ clusters mushing together into sounds more like ‘ch’ or ‘j’, so treese and cheese, or dress and Jess, sound more alike.”

One surprising change they have spotted is the gradual restoration of the letter H, after generations of Londoners heading for a walk on ‘ampstead ‘eath. It seems latter-day Eliza Dolittles will again have to struggle with hurricanes hardly ever happening in Hereford.

The authors interviewed three generations of an east-end family, the Ellises from Stratford, grandfather Frank, his daughter Stacey, and grandson Tommie. Frank thinks Cockney is almost dead, Stacey says nobody round there understands it any longer, and Tommie says disapprovingly: “Grandad comes out with some weird stuff, like dog and bone and that.”

The report, The Sound of Britain in 2066, was commissioned by HSBC bank, to mark the launch of their voice biometrics security technology.

Words now, and how they’re likely to sound in 2066

London:

Think - Fink

Mother - Muvver

Beauty - Booty

Red - Wed

Newcastle:

Mee-uhk (make) - Mehk

Boo’ttah (butter) - buhtuh

Toast - terst

Birmingham:

Yow (you) - yoo

Sin-guh (singer) - singuh

Proice (price) - praayce

Glasgow:

Stane - stone

Gless - glass

Fit - foot

It's the end of the frog and toad for regional slang, says report

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