The English Language (Regional Variations

From her hideaway near the summit of mount Adyagoin on the sub tropical island of Lincolnshire, scientist Polly Glott is studying regional accents and dialects, she has spent quite some time recording peoples speech for this study and her years of research are nearly at an end. This government funded project has so far stretched over ten years, this is how long it has taken Ms Glott to travel the length and breadth of England to obtain her samples. Unfortunately Polly was unaware that poor people spoke differently to ordinary folk and anyway in her line of business the closest she ever got to the hoi polloi was when the butler asked if she would like kippers or kedgeree for breakfast. During her research Ms Glott and her travelling companion Sonia Boot, a good looking, tall, Slavic looking woman, spent their time staying at various country estates all over the British Isles. As the two women had never met anybody from the lower social classes they could never spot a true regional accent, whenever they did hear one they found it unintelligible, and concluded that it must be one of those foreign johnnies that they had read about in the “Times”, and promptly had them shot.

I have been privy to the initial results of this study and as far as I can tell the outcome is that variations in accents are few and far between, it appears that only the chaps who went to Harrow had any discernible accent, this was attributed to the fact that they had all watched a film about Nelson Mandela when in the sixth form and as such was not enough to be considered in the study. So there you have it, it’s official, everyone in England speaks exactly the same, so if you are about to embark on a holiday to good old Blighty you can rest assured that there will be absolutely no problems whatsoever in communicating with the natives.