Dialects are a hugely important part of British culture. They do make you sound a bit thick, though

September 26, 2021 at 12:18 pm | Posted in humour, language, rage | 1 Comment
Tags: humour, language, linguistics, satire

By Hugh Rathergood

[Satire. Because I read this, and I wished I hadn’t.]

Everyone loves English dialects. They conjure up images of rolling hills, idyllic weekend breaks, country pubs, and vets with their arms halfway up cows. Dialects give normal people, like me, wonderful insights into cultures vastly removed from ours.

An interesting paper came out this week, saying it’s hard for children to learn Standard English. It’s a completely new topic; no-one’s done any research on this before. I don’t need to read any linguistics books to know all about language, because I was brought up speaking properly.

Sometimes, normal people like me think, ‘Gosh! That person doesn’t know that ‘I were sat next to her’ is incorrect! They can’t have gone to the right school. I wonder how that will affect their prospects of getting that job I’m interviewing for next week?’

Accents are sort of like dialects, but a bit different. Accents involve removing things like ‘h’s and ‘t’s from proper English, or saying ‘z’ when you mean ‘s’. This is lovely, as it reminds us of our holidays. Unless you’re from an inner city, in which case it makes you sound lazy and aggressive.

You can’t get a proper job with an accent, unless the BBC say it’s not that strong and you can have a job in local news. Your best bet is to stay where you were born and run something touristy for us normal people to enjoy on our weekend breaks.

A marvellous place to enjoy English accents

There *are* clever people who don’t speak RP, which is the linguistic term for speaking properly. But they all move to the South, because there are no good universities or jobs anywhere else. They lose their beautiful, historic local accents, and sell out their roots. But they are also living proof that it’s possible to change how you speak, pretend convincingly to be a normal person, like me, and succeed in life.

Accents are just a bit annoying, but grammar is critical. If grammar isn’t completely correct all the time, communication instantly fails. Grammar is difficult, and everyone should be taught it, apart from people like me who are born speaking properly. I’m going to list a few grammar terms just so you know I’m serious about this. I know what they all mean, don’t worry. No child should mix up their qualifiers and their determinants, because this would just prove how poorly educated they are. We can’t be blamed for not giving them a job, now can we?