I fink this is the future – but it’s just not proper
In London, the capital of the English-speaking world, the writing is on the wall for the ‘th’ sound
My 12-year-old son never bothers thinking when he can fink instead. He protests, “I fink you’ll find fousands and fousands of people talk like this, mum. Why does it matter anyway?” It’s a good question. Why am I driven round the twist by my child’s point-blank refusal to have a shot at pronouncing “th” – or what English language experts call “the voiced dental nonsibilant fricative”?
After all, when upper-echelon types like Guy Ritchie and George Osborne (who used voice coach Valerie Savage to sound more man of the people) slip into mockney, who am I to say my son’s best served by RP? Especially when it seems the masses are following suit – or, more likely, leading the way. Language experts at the University of York predict that “th” will have vanished by 2066 due to the melting pot of immigrants and dialects in London (the linguistic capital of the English-speaking world) who find the tongue-against-teef trick hard to pull off. Mother has already become muvva and it’s only a matter of time before feologians abandon Thessalonians.
I suppose the new lingo rankles with me, because my late muvva put such time and effort into making me talk proper. The slightest hint of a flat vowel and my siblings and I would have to sing out “ae i o u” 10 times in the kind of cut-glass tones that made a Mitford sound common. My mother wouldn’t let us watch ITV, for fear we’d be contaminated by cor blimey presenters. When Grange Hill was first screened by the Beeb, she lamented: “Those poor children – such dreadful voices.” My publican parents had a deep-seated belief in the jetpropulsion power of a plummy accent and by the time I was 10, I could work as a voice double for Kirstie Allsopp.
Yet, if I’m honest, my voice has just as often been a hindrance as a ladderclimbing aid. In my teens, streetwise boys would sneer at my tones at parties, saying “Bet your dad drives a Roller” and still expect the drinks to be on me. Girls at the secondary modern would spit at my polished Clark’s shoes when they heard me say “jolly” and “super”.
Meanwhile, true Sloanes had a ciggie-filtered drawl that was inimitable. This was a time (mid 1980s) when BBC English was rapidly becoming unfashionable. Ben Elton, squatting and the poll tax riots were where the cool kids pointed themselves. I could have protested that my dad left school at 14 and once raced greyhounds at White City. But when you sound like Celia Johnson, no one’s inclined to believe you.
There were upsides: I took the role of narrator in eight school plays and chaired the school debating team. And when I briefly secured a job at the upmarket publisher Condé Nast, I heard that the head of human resources had told a friend, “She comes from a good family,” although that’s only true if you translate the sentiment as “trained to pick up litter and carry bags for old ladies”. The rest of the time I hear My Fair Lady’s Henry Higgins at my shoulder: “An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him, the moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.” And how!
I once was on a BBC panel and stumbled across some online comments afterwards, of which the most repeatable was, “that woman sounded like a horse and looked like a horse and if I was a vet I’d put her out of her misery.” Similarly, I occasionally venture into stand-up comedy and can attest there’s nothing like stepping up to the mic with a posh voice in your average pub for a wall of instant loathing. I’d once only uttered half a sentence before a guy at the back shouted: “Bog off back to Surrey Arabella!” At moments like that I long to have been born a Geordie, with a voice so steeped in treacle, tar and mischief that profanities sound like endearments.
As a nation, we often don’t give clipped-voice people credit for significant achievements because we’re too busy obsessing about their social background. David Cameron and Nick Clegg did the UK many services when they put individual party interests second to forming a coalition government – but everyone kicked them for being posh boys. Perhaps Britain will be a fairer place in 50 years’ time when almost everyone will speak what the York linguistic profs call Multicultural London English (MLE): an egalitarian porridge of mangled consonants, glottal stops, online abbreviations, street slang, gamers’ insults, pop lyrics and quotes from the Simpsons. Both my sons are pretty fluent already; my eight-yearold’s patois has recently been augmented by a boy in the park who taught him the invaluable terms, “paedo, rekt, perve” and “toke.”
But I have to admit a large part of me will mourn the mellifluous smoothness of BBC English at its most patrician, if only for its world-class villainy. George Sanders’ voicing of Shere Khan in the 1967 Jungle Book is a benchmark high for cartoon evil. Why else did we all tune into The Night
Manager, if not to see three uppercrust British actors (Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hollander) at their most vocally sinister? Would we have been gripped if Laurie’s amoral arms dealer had said, “I fink you’re an imposter, Pine.” I somehow doubt it.