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   goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Sep-2024 06:58:47 JST goatsarah

   As a child, I grew up speaking the East Midlands dialect of English.

   But I was led to believe that were I to “get on in life”, I would need to speak Standard Southern British English.

   As I believed this, I willingly embraced it and now I mostly do speak SSBE.

   But I’m somewhat bitter about needing to, even if I did willingly embrace it at the time because, as I was taught, I thought my own dialect was “unsophisticated”.

   It wasn’t; it was just different, but in the 70s and 80s even local celebrities who made it big on the national stage were encouraged to drift linguistically towards London, and if they didn’t, that acted as a barrier.

   It’s less the case now, but with the benefit of hindsight I do feel a bit resentful about it.

   As times have changed, and as I don’t feel that I have anything to prove, I increasingly find myself drifting back towards the way I used to speak as a child.

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     pkboi (pkboi@venera.social)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Sep-2024 07:39:31 JST pkboi

     in reply to
     @goatsarah We can see that even in the other side of the world. Once upon a time we heard only SSBE on Radio New Zealand and I was taught it. Now we hear many variations of English pronunciation, including Asian variations and local variations—Māori and Pacific. Our English D-I-L is a case in point. Still has remnants of her childhood London accent—certainly not SSBE—and welcome presenting on RNZ. I love it. It represents our changing society.
     goatsarah likes this.