UK Riots (with the exception of Manchester which has its own thread)

SteveJ said:
I appreciate the above is probably the worst, and least illuminating example in the history of language, :lol: but it's accurate regarding my experiences. Many people, particularly males, are fearful of expressing themselves in any way which could be perceived as a less-than-macho manner.
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It's a bit unfair to pick you up on what's an off-hand comment on a football site, but yeah, I agree it's a pretty terrible bit of data!

Your theory that men speak more succinctly because that seems more manly isn't implausible, but before even getting to it you'd need to convince us that they do in fact do that. Plus the idea that they're doing it more and more sounds like a classic combination of the Recency Illusion and the Frequency Illusion.
 
How dare you correctly highlight the fact that I'm totally wrong and also too stupid to know about the Recency Illusion! :D:D

I've a good mind to join Sneijdercafe in protest! :D
 
SteveJ said:
I've worked in factories for most of my working life and, over the years, I've heard numerous conversations which were once like this:

"Did you watch the football last night?"

"Yeah, not a bad game, was it?"


...turn to this (in recent years):


"See football las' night?"

"Yeah, well good."


I appreciate the above is probably the worst, and least illuminating example in the history of language, :lol: but it's accurate regarding my experiences. Many people, particularly males, are fearful of expressing themselves in any way which could be perceived as a less-than-macho manner.
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I don't think people are any more or less telegraphic dependent on context. There are at least as many gobshites and motor mouths as ever.
 
SteveJ said:
How dare you correctly highlight the fact that I'm totally wrong and also too stupid to know about the Recency Illusion! :D:D
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I'm a knob for doing it because if those standards were applied to every general statement about modern life, no pub conversations could ever take place... it's just when it's about language it tends to, in pete's lovely phrase, grip my shit.

And anyway, you might be right! It's a testable hypothesis...
 
Before Plech conspires to achieve his dream of turning every thread on RedCafe into a discussion on language, back to the thing we were chattin bout init.

evra said:
You don't think that a lot of white kids act like they're black? It's ludicrous to deny it. I'm not going to comment on the conclusions he draws but he's right in one sense.
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I don't think that many people would deny there are many Ali Gs in this world who try to act in a way they'd consider black...I'd agree there's probably a certain amount of deliberate liberal obtuseness about that and not trying to seem as though we're making any unfair assumptions. The attitude and lingo of Hip Hop, the Caribbean patois and many other affectations and manerisms that are part of a part (a part) of Black culture have clearly been picked up and aped by white kids, some simply through immersion and some deliberately. That isn't all that controversial tbf, any more than mockney accents are. Starkey does seem to concede this on a couple of occasions, mainly after being brow beaten, but his comments on Lammy seem to show he doesn't actually mean it.

However the "conclusions he draws" are precisely the problem and controversy here, because he's bringing this up in a discussion about the causes of the London riots, as if to say that were it not for this perceived blackification of white chavs, there wouldn't have been these riots...It's a hugely inflamatory statement..Which he then goes on to qualify by reading out this text as if there's any correlation between the way it's written and the motivation behind it.

It's a bizarre and rather unfounded paralel to draw, because it implies a spirit of behaviour and unrulyness thats being aped beyond the mere use of language and also ignores all the glorification of violent "white gangstersim" that's been going on for decades, right up to Guy Richie and anything starring Danny fecking Dyer. He seems to be saying "White kids are being violent because they're pretending to be black kids"...because if he was merely trying to say "some white kids are pretending to be like some black kids" why is he talking about it at all in this discussion, let alone giving it so much prominence and saying it's a fundamentally important thing.
 
My very last language-related point, possibly... the widely-held view that the accent called Multicultural London English is simply white kids 'trying to sound black' is completely wrong. There's a linguist called Paul Kerswill who's done a lot of work on the evolution of working-class London accents and the many influences on the process. If anyone's interested (yeah I know) you can download some of the PowerPoints of his lectures to lay audiences here.

If you don't know what accent (actually a continuum of lots of accents) I mean, watch Dizzy Rascal taking the piss out of Jeremy Paxman.
 
Plechazunga said:
My very last language-related point, possibly... the widely-held view that the accent called Multicultural London English is simply white kids 'trying to sound black' is completely wrong. There's a linguist called Paul Kerswill who's done a lot of work on the evolution of working-class London accents and the many influences on the process. If anyone's interested (yeah I know) you can download some of the PowerPoints of his lectures to lay audiences here.

If you don't know what accent (actually a continuum of lots of accents) I mean, watch Dizzy Rascal taking the piss out of Jeremy Paxman.
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That isn't really language related as much as it's accent related. Though there's obviously a big overlap. Language has certainly been affected in a far more deliberate way. Though both are probably more products of immersion than copying IMO. Accents are a strange thing anyway. I change mine ever so slightly depending on who I'm talking to as it is. And I'd imagine most people have a phone voice.
 
Starkey's (apparent) implication that spoken eloquence is the hallmark of respectability seems to me to be outdated, wrong-headed. Ironically, it's much the same as stating that people who live in palaces are morally superior, while those in slums are by definition 'scum'. Also, he apparently believes that the niceties of etiquette are not simply the shallow arts of the clever courtier but instead completely artless and natural (to some), and ripe for imitation/mimicry by those lesser beings who aspire to an assumed greatness. And yet, in truth...'one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.'
 
Plus there's a difference between 'spoken eloquence' and having a southern, upper-middle-class RP or BBC accent - as can be seen with Dizzy Rascal, or Mohammed Ali, or Neville G :devil:.

Mockers, you're right that accents are partly subject to conscious control. Like yours, mine is malleable - I semi-consciously code-switch along a continuum between RP when talking to posh people, and a vaguely mocknified North London when talking to mechanics who I think will otherwise slap another 100 quid on my bill (this obviously doesn't work). A lot of black MLE speakers can switch effortlessly into either Cockney or proper West Indian. And yes I do know some middle-class North London kids who have drifted towards MLE probably cos that's how the cool kids speak. That element of in-group status is surely always a part of how accents change.

But that's different from saying a whole class of people have deliberately adopted an accent because they're trying to be black, which is just wrong not just sociologically but phonetically. It sounds 'black' to David Starkey because it's clearly influenced by Caribbean accents, but to a West Indian it would sound just as far towards Cockney or Estuary. In reality white working- and middle-class whites, West-Indian-origin blacks, subcontinental-origin Asians and a whole load of other groups have coalesced into a rough accent group that spreads far beyond black areas and far beyond London. If you actually analyse MLE, some of its vowels are closer to RP than either to Cockney or any Caribbean accent.
 
Does anyone ever do that? Just decide one morning to change their accent?

My Mum did when my parents retired back to Wales. Her Oxfordshire accent went out the window over night.
 
My mum's the same when she goes back up North for a few days. I don't think it's a matter of making a decision, it's mostly subconscious.

It's much more ridiculous when it's not your underlying accent. I had a mate from North London who went to Manchester for a week and came back sounding like Sean Ryder after 25 temazepams.
 
:lol: right

I have a theory that your degree of accent change is linked to how good you are at languages, how well you 'hear' different sounds. So someone who says "Pahlay vooz Arnglayz?" is unlikely to lose their English accent quickly if they move to the States, say.

It's almost certainly bollocks though, as evidenced by my mate who went to Manchester, and who is also not the best at foreign languages.
 
Yeah, that is definitely bollocks.

What I find odd is I know a couple of people who say 'I hate my accent'. I've got one friend who's been living in London for 6 years and she still speaks with a strong Hull accent and complains about it. I don't understand why she doesn't just change it if she hates it?
 
It's just not that easy for some people to change their accent, in the same way that a lot of people can't imitate accents.

Also, have some empathy. If you had an accent in which 'toad in the hole' was pronounced 'turd in the hurl', you'd be ashamed too.
 
Plechazunga said:
It's just not that easy for some people to change their accent, in the same way that a lot of people can't imitate accents.

Also, have some empathy. If you had an accent in which 'toad in the hole' was pronounced 'turd in the hurl', you'd be ashamed too.
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:lol:

Have you seen this before?

yJUpA.jpg
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Does anyone ever do that? Just decide one morning to change their accent?

My Mum did when my parents retired back to Wales. Her Oxfordshire accent went out the window over night.
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A complete accent change's bit of a stretch but we do change the way we speak depending on our enviroment/people we're mixing with, I think it's about trying our best to fit in.

And I bought a fantastic Italian coffee maker, it cost £15 but it's a shedload better than the shite Baby Gagia I bought a few years back. Note to everyone, go cheaper...it's better. This one makes brilliant coffee, all you need is a cooker and some coffee.
 
My mate Hannah changed her accent. She's from Macclesfield but very noticeably changed her accent to an amalgamated southern one, right down to bath & laugh, when she moved down here...She's completely unapologetic about it too and just says she doesn't want to sound northern.

MikeUpNorth said:
:lol:

Have you seen this before?

yJUpA.jpg
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Aside from almost certainly being fake, I can't work out what it is he's supposed to be saying?

"I have to watch him, feckin A man (as in fecking Awesome) tonight is gonna suck"? - Doesn't work

"I have to watch him fecking, a man tonight is gonna suck"? - Hardly better. Possibly worse.

Some amount of fecking and sucking is going on there regardless.

Am I being dense?
 
"At the hospital and my grandpa is still sick and I have to watch him. fecking A. Man, tonight is gonna suck!"
 
:lol: at feckin a man tonite

Spoony Youngblood said:
And I bought a fantastic Italian coffee maker, it cost £15 but it's a shedload better than the shite Baby Gagia I bought a few years back. Note to everyone, go cheaper...it's better. This one makes brilliant coffee, all you need is a cooker and some coffee.
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feck. I just bought a Baby Gaggia for a wedding present. I'll have to bank on you being too much of a Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime to operate it properly.
 
Plechazunga said:
:lol: at feckin a man tonite



feck. I just bought a Baby Gagia for a wedding present. II'll have to bank on you being too much of a Ihni binni dimi diniwiny anitaime to operate it properly.
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Nah, it's good, the thing is if you want a regular cup of coffee then it's best to get one of these.

espresso_coffee_maker.jpg
 
:lol:
 
When I was younger, I had a very strong southern drawl. I eventually dropped it and now have a fairly neutral American accent. I didn't want people to think I was a dumb hick just because I sounded like one.
 
Yeah me too to an extent, I had a North London accent, you wouldn't call it Cockney cos that's quite specific to the East End, but dropped aitches, dark l's tending towards w, and more glottal stops than I have now. Also some non-standard grammatical forms like negative concord (so-called "double negatives"), and "I never!". My parents, despite being from the North, deprecated it, which had no effect, but then eventually I moved schools and poshed up.

It's a shame though... it would be better if the people who actually are ignorant - i.e. those who think non-prestige accents = ignorance - could change, rather than everyone else having to.
 
Have to admit the Bristolian accent cracks me up. It's just so simple and, for want of a better word, farmerish. Where I work I'm surrounded by people who drive flash cars, wear flash suits and generally look the part. And then they open their mouths and the country yokel inflection that comes out is totally at odds to their white-collar big-shot image. I do struggle to take some of those with stronger accents seriously, and I do fall into the trap of assuming those whose accent sounds a tad obtuse are a tad obtuse themselves.

Having said that, I'm from the South West and have a horrifically Hugh Grantesque English accent.
 
SmashedHombre said:
Have to admit the Bristolian accent cracks me up. It's just so simple and, for want of a better word, farmerish. Where I work I'm surrounded by people who drive flash cars, wear flash suits and generally look the part. And then they open their mouths and the country yokel inflection that comes out is totally at odds to their white-collar big-shot image. I do struggle to take some of those with stronger accents seriously, and I do fall into the trap of assuming those whose accent sounds a tad obtuse are a tad obtuse themselves.

Having said that, I'm from the South West and have a horrifically Hugh Grantesque English accent.
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Did you know that the name 'Bristol' itself results from a mistaken attempt to correct the local accent?

The name was Bristow. But people assumed the 'w' was an 'l' that had been labialised, as in 'tunn'w' for 'tunnel'. So they put the 'l' back. Bristolians (or Cockneys or Glaswegians or Snoop Dogg) who now say 'Bristow' are actually saying it right.

Or something like that. I promise to STFU.
 
On the topical of accents, I switch between a London accent and a more polished version and eloquent version. I tend to use the former around friends although there are so many middle-class non-Londoners at uni that I tend to use the latter a lot more than I used to but it's not quite flawless since I've gotten flak for not pronouncing "th" sounds properly (stupid teacher actually implied it might harm my university chances).
I also have a very weird vocabulary which I purely picked up from school which is essentially onomatopoeia-heavy which ties in with the London accent. I don't see how Starkey

The London accent is very infectious though. I've imparted some of my slang on mates at uni. Also my mate who goes to uni in London tells me that one of his posh friends who came down to London for uni was reprimanded once when phoning home for dropping her "t"s which I find quite funny.

If Starkey's at my college again this year I'm definitely going and I will speak to him in mock patois.
 
Eugenius said:
I also have a very weird vocabulary which I purely picked up from school which is essentially onomatopoeia-heavy which ties in with the London accent.
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Must...not...get...drawn...in... nopecan'thelpit... er, what? You mean you say things like "beep" and "boing" a lot?

Also my mate who goes to uni in London tells me that one of his posh friends who came down to London for uni was reprimanded once when phoning home for dropping her "t"s which I find quite funny.
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It is quite funny as even the poshest people have glottal stops instead of 't' in lots of words, they just don't realise it (and can't be convinced of it).
 
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