‘Definitely not as plummy’: The Queen making her traditional - PDF document

‘Definitely not as plummy’: The Queen making her traditional Christmas Day broadcast. Her Maj is not as posh, the experts say Down Under Chris Benfield If the Queen’s English is not what it was, it may be the Queen’s fault, it seems. She is not as posh as she was, according to certain Australian academics. Some may ask what they would know about posh, but they do seem to have qualifications not to mention a computer organised to analyse how far the mouth is open and how far forward the tongue is in the formation of vowel sounds. They have found significant changes in the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts between the 1950s and the 1980s. “There has been a drift in the Queen’s accent towards one that is characteristic of speakers who are younger and/or lower in the social hierarchy,” says their report in science magazine Nature. The Queen has moved, they say, from the most exclusive end of the spectrum of what used to be called Received Pronunciation speech patterns passed down rather than picked up towards Standard Southern British, as exemplified by BBC announcers. Although no one is saying she could pass un-noticed selling spuds on the Albert Square market, the researchers do suggest that she has been influenced by the subtle Cockneyfication of the younger aristocracy. The analysts at Macquarie University, Sydney, led by Professor Jonathan Harrington, say: “There was a marked social stratification in Britain in the 1950s. But as class distinctions have become more blurred, so have the boundaries between accents. Although modern received pronunciation has resisted H dropping, it has nevertheless been influenced by cockney for example, the tendency to pronounce the L in milk as a vowel. “Younger members of the population reject received pronunciation because of its association with the Establishment. “Can the traditional accent of older members of the community be preserved against such influences?” They say the answer is No. Clive Upton, a Leeds University specialist, commented that the Queen does speak more “normally” now. “Her immediate ancestors, the Georges and the Edwards, had a much bluffer country squirish or Navy way of speaking. I think the Queen and the Queen Mother felt a pressure to sound ‘royal’. But almost everyone, as they get older, relaxes back to a more natural way of speaking.” Actress Elizabeth Richard, from Durham, who does Queen impersonations, agreed: “She’s definitely not as plummy as she was.”