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Every word in the English language is a poorly pronounced version of some older word that preceded it. What makes some words as pronounced in the south of Engla

Every word in the English language is a poorly pronounced version of some older word that preceded it. What makes some words as pronounced in the south of England bizarre or wrong?

smcl 7y ago
Well the whole point of this is that someone was suggesting examples of good English, someone balked at the idea that British English should be considered "proper" and I suggested that this wasn't the intended point point and added that even supposedly highly regarded accents of British English might not be considered proper by someone from that same country. I don't think it's helpful in this context to shrug your shoulders and say that English is evolving so there's no good or bad examples of pronunciation. As to why these sound wrong to me, I'm from an area that is looked down on accent-wise and is sort of the subject of ridicule (usually just for fun). Since I moved abroad and mix in pretty multi-cultural circles I've seen first-hand what non-native-English speakers have trouble understanding when they talk to an English-native speaker, and I've often reflected on what caused this. One thing that surprised me was how easily my fellow Scots have been understood and how much difficulty people had understanding the English, since I was always led to believe that we are the ones who talk incorrectly. And it was this that made me realise how their pronunciation can stray far from the supposedly correct one - I gave a couple of examples to demonstrate this. There are plenty more if you listen carefully. The "how do you pronounce..." part of the NY Times British & Irish accent quiz was really quite good at illustrating this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/britis... (door/poor, farm/palm, horse/hoarse from there are nice examples). So yeh sure, nothing is "wrong" in English and all that - there's no central authority that should dictate this. But when it comes to accents and clarity not all is as it might seem at first blush.

Every word in the English language is a poorly pronounced version of some older word that preceded it. What makes some words as pronounced in the south of England bizarre or wrong?

smcl 7y ago

Well the whole point of this is that someone was suggesting examples of good English, someone balked at the idea that British English should be considered "proper" and I suggested that this wasn't the intended point point and added that even supposedly highly regarded accents of British English might not be considered proper by someone from that same country. I don't think it's helpful in this context to shrug your shoulders and say that English is evolving so there's no good or bad examples of pronunciation. As to why these sound wrong to me, I'm from an area that is looked down on accent-wise and is sort of the subject of ridicule (usually just for fun). Since I moved abroad and mix in pretty multi-cultural circles I've seen first-hand what non-native-English speakers have trouble understanding when they talk to an English-native speaker, and I've often reflected on what caused this. One thing that surprised me was how easily my fellow Scots have been understood and how much difficulty people had understanding the English, since I was always led to believe that we are the ones who talk incorrectly. And it was this that made me realise how their pronunciation can stray far from the supposedly correct one - I gave a couple of examples to demonstrate this. There are plenty more if you listen carefully. The "how do you pronounce..." part of the NY Times British & Irish accent quiz was really quite good at illustrating this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/britis... (door/poor, farm/palm, horse/hoarse from there are nice examples). So yeh sure, nothing is "wrong" in English and all that - there's no central authority that should dictate this. But when it comes to accents and clarity not all is as it might seem at first blush.