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.
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