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So for those of us who didn't go to oxbridge and didn't acquire this valuable skill, how do we acquire it as adults?
by nagrom 15y ago
So for those of us who didn't go to oxbridge and didn't acquire this valuable skill, how do we acquire it as adults?
- corin_ 15y agoI'm pretty sure that if you put on an upper class accent (think Hugh Laurie) that would be enough to make the author of this article assume that you have the skill.
- nagrom 15y agoTragically, I'm from Liverpool. He'd more than likely suspect me of pinching his hubcaps.
- wyclif 15y agoYou mean RP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
- corin_ 15y agoI've never actually heard that term before, though I am familiar with it being called the Queen's English, and BBC and Oxford English. But commonly it would be considered "upper class" within England, and probably considered "English" outside the UK.
- wyclif 15y agoYeah, I've heard it called that, but my Brit friends usually call it "posh." Incidentally, we have our own version of RP in the States, it's called the "Mid-Atlantic accent", many talking heads on news and radio are encouraged to imitate it if they come from the South of the US or New England.
- mdda 15y agoFWIW : Oxford English and RP are different. Not to mention 'upper class English', which is a whole other ballgame. That is, of course, if you're English, when you can tell them apart within 5 seconds (yes, actually). Personally, I have a 'perfect' RP accent (according to the Cambridge linguistics people who recorded me). But I find the whole class-antenna thing really irritating. So much so that I live in New York, where people just know I'm foreign, or putting on a fake accent.
- arethuza 15y agoRP is usually associated with the upper middle class, not the upper class: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_Kingdom#Upper_middle_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_...
- patkai 15y agoRead FT