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 | |  | Heather Taylor
Lives: Coventry, Warwickshire
Time lived in area: All my life
Occupation: Songwriter |
Heather remembers how she was made to pronounce "th" clearly when she was a schoolgirl - and now it's a bugbear of hers when people say "fing".
Language of interview: English
Duration: 01:26 (mins/secs)
The participants were asked to describe how they spoke in their own words.
How do you describe your accent: "Very unmemorable."
Have there been other influences on the way you speak: "Wellingborough, Northants 17/18 years old. Halesowen, Birmingham 1979-86. Father born in Liverpool."
Do you have skills in languages other than English?: Yes
Other languages: French
I think a lot of them seem to be influenced by the TV programmes, and I think EastEnders has got quite a lot to answer for, for the pronunciation of a lot of the words. Erm, tee haitches are particularly thing of mine - it's the tee haitch, and erm it's "fing" isn't it and fing and, and I think why I notice is because when I was at school I'll never forget the teacher pulling three of us out of the class and saying to us "Now look, you do not pronounce your tee haitches, now you will stand in that corner until you say it properly." So he made three of us and there was two boys and myself and I never forget that, being stood, I was most embarrassed stood up the corner, and, cos I didn't know I was saying it wrong. But then he said like "thirty three feathers" and we had to go through all that but I've never forgotten it, it's a lesson I've never forgotten and to this day it's still there, you know, and it's still at the back of your mind consciousness and I always find I notice that when I'm listening to songs and the song words. I cannot stand it when singers drop their haitches.
Jonnie Robinson, Curator, English accents and dialects, British Library Sound Archive, writes TH-fronting - the pronunciation of <th> as a sound in words like thing or as a sound in words like brother - currently receives a great deal of comment. TH-fronting has been a feature of London speech for a long time and interestingly many people share Heather's view that features such as this have spread to other parts of the country due to the popularity of certain radio or television programmes. Clearly television and radio has made us all far more aware than previous generations of a variety of accent features, but most linguistic evidence seems to suggest that individuals and communities adopt new forms of pronunciation in imitation of people they meet in face to face situations. Whatever the origins of TH-fronting, it certainly appears to be on the increase among younger speakers in a number of urban areasthroughout the UK, and rather like H-dropping, it's an extremely stigmatised feature. Although Heather hasn't got a particularly broad accent, it's interesting to hear a number of aspects of her speech that locate her nonetheless in the West Midlands. Listen, for instance, to the way Heather pronounces the vowel in the words answer and class - a pronunciation that is a salient feature of speech throughout the north of England and in large areas of the Midlands. Coventry is in fact very much at the southern boundary of this pronunciation feature. Her pronunciation of the sound in thing of mine, wrong and singer is a feature of a number of accents in the Midlands and north-west. Unlike other localised pronunciations this is considered highly prestigious in this area and thus unites speakers from a very wide range of backgrounds. Finally her pronunciation of the vowel sound in the words quite, mine, why, I, mind and find is typical of many speakers in the West Midlands.
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