I think that one version of the Yorkshire accent lends itself to statements rather than discussion - but Yorkshire is a big place and we have several regional accents within - South Yorkshire has a very different sound, and even within that there are variations.
Sheffield is quite different to Leeds and Barnsley are different to either but all are noticebly Yorkshire.
The ‘no nonsense’ Geoff Boycott type Yorkshire accent is actually seen as a Northern establishment accent - it seems to be from people who imagine themselves to be in charge of things - Mill owners and the like - its not really widespread amongst us lower level oiks.
Ah yes, Yorshiremen and the Northern establishment. ‘Self made’ men never tire of competitive boasting about their struggle to rise above their impoverished background.
The thing that strikes me about the OP’s clip is that the two clerics have more-or-less the same Lanky accent as their parishioners, but given CoE education standards, are likely a class above them and would definitely not be “uneducated and … dumb”.
CoE clerics traditionally can read and write – that’s a class distinction right there – but ‘cleric’ is often outside the normal class distinctions.
Tangent: CoE clerics have never had the group reputation (even in their own minds) of being universally particularly well educated or particularly smart.
These days, a fair few go into the CofE ministry as a second career, if “career” is the right word. Whatever they’ve done before, they have to do a full training programme, sometimes as part of, or alongside, a degree programme. My brother and his wife became ordained as they retired from their previous careers: we’re all RP speakers anyway, so perhaps that doesn’t help the discussion much, but it’s not unusual for clergy to have a regional accent, even if it’s the posher version.
Yeah, I was going to pick up on this; most commonly I see this conversation the other way around; Americans claiming diverse accents, with the mistaken impression that the UK has only one accent (and often professing to be unable to discern, say, John Cleese from Billy Connoly from Russell Howard in terms of accents)
I believe it’s been documented that in general, the closer an accent/dialect/language is to you, the more finely you perceive its nuances (and that makes perfect sense for any form of perception) - so it’s probably the case that people in the UK and the US generally tend to perceive their local speech patterns as more diverse than those further away. At a distance, Lancashire sounds a bit like Yorkshire; Kiwi sounds a bit like Australian; and at a further distance (i.e. perceiving from outside of the actual language), Spanish sounds a bit like Italian; Polish sounds a bit like Russian. These perceived similarities are at least as much about what you haven’t noticed, as they are about what you have noticed
In public speaking there’s a long tradition of speaking at least a bit in the register of your audience. Done badly it can seem horribly patronizing as in Reese Mogg’s “man of the people vox populi” comment :smack:.
But done skillfully it can help reduce social distance and establish rapport. In the case of clerics, as opposed to barnstorming politicians, they are trying to develop a personal relationship with the parishioners. A bit of code-switching is to be expected.
C of E clergy generally were required to have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge to be ordained. That was an educational status that few obtained prior to the 20th century.
I was thinking that there may be regional accents distinctive to areas in the USA, but the ones most pronounced are the ones that come to mind first. The places with the most established history are the most noticeable, but modern media and overall mobility have changed a lot of that.
For example - is there a difference between Texan and Southern? It’s like that Far Side cartoon of the squid outhouses, “only they know the difference”. I recall reading about people trying to shed their southern accents, since the rest of us associate that with Andy of Mayberry, Boss Hawg, or “failure to communicate” Cool Hand Luke. Our media has done little to suggest that a regional accent is indicative of intelligence. (I might perhaps also add the same about the racist attitude toward “ebonics”) The longer a region has been established and has limited mixing - at least, before modern media - the more likely an accent developed. That would explain why there are distinct regional accents in England, whereas you would be hard-pressed to distinguish (I imagine) Davenport Iowa from Helena Montana.
Shedding the accent (or blunting it) was seen as on step toward being taken seriously in northern business careers. I would say something similar applies to Canada - most of Canada west of Quebec was settled around 1900 and has sufficient mobility to mix things up; you are unlikely to find any dominant regional accent (in English).
I assume the same applies to British accents. My dad could turn on his Yorkshire accent if necessary but mostly spoke Oxbridge. (But it allows me to use the Two Ronnies quote - “I’m from the third world - Yorkshire”)
So I guess the comeback to the OP would be - does an accent matter in the USA also?
• indigenous peoples ( time immemorial)
• Upper Canada (established 1791)
• colony of Vancouver island (established 1849)
• colony of British Columbia (established 1858)
• Province of Manitoba ( established 1870)
• North-West Territories (established 1870)
• Province of British Columbia (established 1871)
Most of these are now tiny minorities… indigenous peoples are significant (for example Saskatchewan and Manitoba, approx 10%) and but still vastly outnumbered by the recent arrivals. Plus, it fair to call those whose native tongue is not English as speaking a different dialect/accent of English? It’s more ethnic-derived than regional. I would say the same about the Hutterites, who speak a form of German, or the French in Quebec. The northern territories? The Nunavut local language is not English, although a decent number speak it.
Yes, people were here before 1900, but that’s pedantic. Similarly, the population of all the western provinces is primarily arrivals since the CPR last spike was driven in 1885 and the area was open to invite hordes of newcomers. Saskatchewan, for example, had a population of 91,000 in 1900 and now has 1M people. (yeah, yeah, 1905… I knew a fellow who mentioned explaining to the passport office for his grandmother, that she was born in Fort Qu’appelle, NWT) British Columbia in 1901 had 178,000 and now is 4.6M. These populations are highly mobile and the same media is broadcast everywhere, so there is no great regional accent difference since people mix and match from all over and the same media serves the entire country. I’ve known several people of Manitoba Metis background and generally the only giveaway was their French-Canadian names, not their accent.
Most noticeable is the Maritime area that has been settled much longer and due to economic stagnation has a much less number of inward migrants - especially Newfoundland. If anything, I’ve encountered migrants out from those regions to TROC. (“The Rest Of Canada”) but they’ve been self-contained relatively unchanged communities long enough to develop distinctive voices.
The main settlement of Upper Canada was United Empire loyalists mostly from northern USA. However, people kept coming from England throughout the 1800’s until the land was full.
My point was that the majority of western Canada was filled starting around 1900, with the advent of the railroad. The flood of people had not been there for a century or more relatively isolated and so able to develop a regional accent. So yes, there were original settlements but their regional accent, if any, was drowned out.
The same might be said of Ontario - the majority of people came and went from England and the local areas of the USA from the 1840’s onward and so there was not an isolated insular population developing a regional accent; we speak the proper English much like mobile northern USA inhabitants not from accent pools like Bahstahn or New Yoke.
that’s my main point - the communities are heavily mobile and mix, and share the same media since thw 1920’s, and especially many of the inhabitants are recent from other areas, so these locales did not develop a regional accent. Even Alberta, for example, many ranchers came from the American midwest; that midwest was mainly settled from 1850 onward from a variety of American sources. The accent does not vary as much as for regions settled and mostly retaining their original population - the American south, or Newfoundland, or Canadian Maritimes - because the economy in those areas was not robust enough to attract large numbers of different-speaking strangers… until recently.
Even a curate was a gentleman (although a rector was sometimes no gentleman…), and it does imply something about class. Gentleman, or course, only had to be educated, not well educated.
Technically, the introduction of theological colleges in the early 18th century meant that clergy did not have to have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge. But even for those that did, the standard of university education for clergy was poor in the 18th century until the end of the 19th century. After which it was poor compared to other protestant denominations, and poor compared to university graduates who had obtained a “good” education. Before that, of course the definition ‘cleric’ meant someone who could read and write, and at the time of the reformation, many of the priests could not name 10 commandments.
This, as I wrote, is tangential to the observation that clergymen can sometimes stand outside class distinctions. Perhaps I should have said orthogonal.
Hmm I thought this would be my first post apparently I made one 3 years ago.
To answer your question, yes,. Does it depend on what kind of job and other things? Yes.
In jobs like news reading, sports commentary, etc, years ago you’d have to usually have a fairly generic (queens English) accent, essentially you’d need to not have an accent.
These days it’s considered desirable to have a regional accent in lots of TV presenting jobs.
In the other hand, which I think is more what you are asking, having a very strong regional accent might make it more difficult to be a lawyer, or a receptionist, yes.
Accents vary a lot in the UK, I’m from York and can tell a Hull or Leeds accent straight away. Middlesbrough has a very different, distinct accent despite being pretty much on the Yorkshire border. Even Wakefield and Castleford have different accents, despite being a few miles apart.
A bit of context here, Yorkshire is just one county, albeit subdivided.
York is 34 miles from Leeds centre to centre - suburbs are around 22 miles
Castleford is 12 miles from Leeds and 22 miles from York
Wakefield is 9 miles from Castleford and 10 miles south of Leeds and 35 miles South West of York.
So these towns are all within around 30 mins driving and all very mutually commutable which I am sure has mutually diluted these accents a little to each other.
Hull is off to the east in a bit of a cul-de-sac and somewhat isolated, Middlesborough is even further around 70 miles north from Wakefield and 60ish north miles from Leeds.
I know that in the US these distances are nothing at all but each area is distinctive - certainly to those who live in Yorkshire - and people livinbg elsewhere in the UK would detect the regional accent but would only recognise some variation in the local accent and likely as not would only be able to place Middlesbrough as generic “North East” (which is much closer to a Geordie accent) and they would probably mix up the others with each other to some extent.
I expect that if you went over to Liverpool you’d find a similar story with accents slowly diluting rather than having big changes until you get somewhat further away - maybe the 40-50 miles to Burnley to the east.
