Dave(TAM) said: "The media have nothing better to do than to trash our Royal Family in this way?"

Well, she's YOUR queen, and you are entitled to what I take to be a protective attitude, but I did not read the article to trash her. They found a speaker whose samples were readily available for a substantial period of time, who didn't have the distracting factor of living in other linguistic areas, and found some minimal progression. Where is that trashing? I didn't remember seeing any negative value judgments of the Queen in the article.

Now, of course one may wonder about the sound quality of early samples, I suppose, or maybe find some other inadequacy in the research done, or judge that the informational value of the results (if valid) is meaningful, but that sort of quibble/observation/criticism can be done of almost any research. It doesn't make the research objectionable on trashing grounds.

Now the title or headline may be something else again. It might be seen as pejorative. I don't know about this publication, but in newspaper usage the headline is written by another person than the author of the piece, intended to give a snappy thumb-nail idea of what the article is about, in a very limited number of words. I think the headline writer here may have thoughtlessly hung a smart-ass hook out there to snag readers. End of report.

Dave Oesterreich