Accent on control

I read every paragraph of 
Andrew HN Gray’s rambling 
letter (9 March) on accent and comprehension several times, but nowhere did I find any evidence that he understood mine of 4 March even a little bit.

I objected to the shaming tradition of Scots “on the make” adopting what I called “the grotesque vowels of the English ruling class” – which he ingenuously claims to know nought of – to slough off their Scotchness and be more acceptable to that class, for social or career advancement.

I cited Sir Malcolm Rifkind
as a caricature of this sort of 
behaviour.

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Mr Gray calls this “sour grapes” and advocates the “Queen’s English” for all. Really? We should aspire to speak like the Buck House gang?

I rejoice in regional accents – though slovenly, uneducated speech is ugly whatever its source, whether that be estuarial Essex-whine, Scouse or Glesca –but so-called “educated”, posh accents, when affected to try to be superior, are such a British thing and so pathetic.

For hundreds of years, the masters of Scotland, the owners of the land, have overwhelmingly sounded like that.

It has been a very effective badge of colonial control. With luck, it should die out in time.

David Roche

Hill House

Coupar Angus

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