let's go native....

A friend once asked me where I was born.
"Northampton" I replied.
"Ah yes.  You've got a Northampton accent."

This remark mystified me somewhat.  I've never really considered myself to have any kind of an accent - does anyone? - but given that I only spent the first 18 months of my life in Northampton and have spent almost no time there since, it seemed highly unlikely that the accent had somehow rubbed off on me.

My dad is from Plymouth and my mother is from Essex.  I was at a boarding school between the ages of 7 and 18 and then I went to University, first in Warwick for three years and then in York.  I lived in York for a year after completing my Masters degree and then moved down to Nottingham, where I've been ever since.  I don't even know what a Northampton accent sounds like.  It seems inconceivable to me that I have somehow got one.

Many years later, after I had been living in Nottingham for a few years, someone else asked me where I was born.
"Northampton"
"Ah, that makes sense.  You have an accent that sounds like it straddles the great vowel divide"

I didn't know what that was, but apparently it's an imaginary line drawn across the country between Bristol and the Wash and it acts as a sort of linguistic tipping point.  You know, "sconn" on one side and "scone" on the other.

"I asked the maid in dulcet tone
To order me a buttered scone
The silly girl has been and gone
And ordered me a buttered scone."

For reference, I say "sconn".  But I also say "barth", and "H" is an aitch and not a haitch.  And, for my American friends, it's also definitely ALUMINIUM.  There's a whole extra syllable, you know.

Anyway.  I mention this because I think I am largely without accent.  Received pronunciation.  I realise that this is likely what everyone thinks, but in my case I think it's true.  English, for sure, but other than that, rather more difficult to pin down to any specific location.

....except that this evening, I warmly greeted someone with a broad "'EY OOP".  I didn't add the "me duck" onto the end of the sentence, but I might just as well have done.  I've lived in Nottingham now for 15 years, longer than I've ever lived anywhere else in my life and it appears the accent is finally rubbing off on me.

Hmm.  I'm not at all sure how I feel about that.

A good introduction to the dialect can be found here.  Sample quote:

"To the outsider, the Nottingham accent might make the person speaking it sound thicker than Barry White's shit on Boxing Day morning, but don't kid yersen; it’s actually the most complex dialect in the UK., drawing in and absorbing speech patterns and slang from Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the South before spitting them back out in a concentrated stream of inflection, tone, tempo and swearing."

Perhaps I should just relax into my fate.

Or move.

Yer get meh, me ode fookin dookeh?

tender age in bloom....

When I left work this evening, I needed to get a bit of a wriggle on if I was going to make it to my appointment with the osteopath on time.  Naturally, because I was in a bit of a rush, my usual route home along the ring road was completely backed up, and when I went the other way, I found that the Embankment had been closed to traffic and I would have to take a detour through the Meadows.

For those of you not familiar with the geography of Nottingham, the Meadows is an inner city area just south of the city centre and alongside the river Trent.  I think it's probably fair to also say that it also has something of a reputation as being one of the less salubrious parts of town.  In common with lots of similar areas in similar towns, the Meadows was originally built at the turn of the century to house the workers from the factories and railways in the city.  The oldest buildings are quite handsome Victorian terraces, but at some point during the 1970s, some genius decided to bulldoze loads of those buildings and to engage in a bit of modern town-planning, sticking up newer buildings in precincts.  If the intention was to spruce the area up, then it didn't work: the newer buildings have aged far less well than their Victorian predecessors, and the precincts and the underpasses around them quickly became no-go areas. 

I'd hesitate to call the area a ghetto, but it is one of the poorest areas of the city and apparently has some of the lowest rates of educational attainment in Nottingham.  I used to walk through the central precinct when I worked in the town centre and walked to work in the morning, but I would never walk back through it at night.  It was that kind of a neighbourhood.

Recently, it seems that things are starting to change though, and one of the bonuses of being forced to take a detour to drive through the area is that you get a good look at some of the improvements.  I suppose it doesn't sound like much, but as I rushed through on my way to make my appointment, I really do like to look down some of the streets of old Victorian terraces and see all the flowers.  The locals, it seems, are keen to take back the streets, and you'll often find that every single house has a box of flowers outside, all the way down to the end of the road.  It's a lovely sight, and one for which the residents regularly win awards.  It's nice to see people taking a pride in their neighbourhood.

I still wouldn't drink in some of those pubs, mind.....