British Pronunciation of "My"

Factual Questions
1

Watching “Are You Being Served” or “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” I hear the British pronounce the word “my” as either “my” or “me.” As in:

“…a daring and heroic rescue in MY own particular idiom!” (my emphasis)

 or

“…oh ME achin’ back!” (my emphasis)

Two questions:

  1. Are there rules governing when to pronounce it as “me” or “my,” or is it just random? I’ll often hear the same speaker use both pronunciations, so I don’t think it’s a social class thing.

  2. When written, is it spelled m-y, regardless of how it is to be pronounced?

2

When you hear “me” they are saying “me.”

It is dialectual. Several British and some variants of Irish use “me” where Standard English calls for “my.” I suspect that Captain Peacock, for example, never uses that pronunciation while Miss Brahms uses it a lot.

(Think of Long John Silver saying “Come here, me lad.”)

It may actually be a difference in pronunciation rather than a difference in word usage, but it is generally spelled “me” in any case.

Tom~

3

“Me” is spelt “Me”, and in this case is just slang for “My”, nothing fancier than that.

4

Shiver me timbers!

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 1845)