George Bernard Shaw probably got it right when he said,
“As soon as an Englishman opens his mouth, he makes another Englishman despise him”.
If we look closer to home as a Brummie myself how do the rest of the British society view us. Jasper Carrott has thrived on the comedic value of the drooping monotonic Brummie sound that us Brummies share, but company directors and politicians, people of the British Isles probably find it a tougher ride.
Why do we attach so much on language?
If we look at our accents they have always been as integral a part of our identity as our face and our clothes, and it's not all that surprising that animals pick up the sounds of their home environment just as we do.
Darwin's grand idea of evolution by natural selection is relatively simple but often misunderstood.
Natural selection according to accent probably isn't so strange either: According to surveys of which sounds we like best, Sean Connery’s Scottish lilt is the nation's favourite, while least popular are accents from Glasgow, Liverpool, and Birmingham. As people do you think we attach such value to language, pride and prejudice are often strange bedfellows when it comes to accent. So do you think our accents invite mockery from outsiders?
For example the Birmingham accent is often associated with intellect as people may think Brummies are a bit ”thick”.
Would such crude thinking drive people’s attitudes and behaviours to how people would view another?
What do you think?
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