BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'

21 Dec 00 - 10:16 AM (#361031)
Subject: Shock horror!!
From: Steve Parkes

I can hardly bring myself to explain this outrageous suggestion -- I can only refer my fellow Mudcatters to this piece in the New Scientist, and ask you to sit down before reading it. As if it wasn't bad enough that this scandalous piece of so-called "news" has been perpetrated just before Christmas, I find that the people responsible are from that notorious would-be republican province, Australia.

I'm sorry, I can't go on -- I must lie down until the trembling stops!!

Steve (a loyal and trusty subject of HM)

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21 Dec 00 - 10:25 AM (#361037)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Mrrzy

This is a riot! Wonder how somebody like Reagan would fare...

You OK there, Steve?

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21 Dec 00 - 10:33 AM (#361044)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: GUEST,Russ

What a hoot! Is you accent changing apace Steve?

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21 Dec 00 - 10:33 AM (#361045)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: InOBU

I dearly wish someone would record and send me the comercial for the clasical raido station in England, where someone doing a great Prince Charles imitation is at a noisy party and says "ah quiet felt the requium was the best part of the whole memorial..." the room goes silent and he snorts and sais "ah ah ah'll get me coat..." Brilliant! -Larry

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21 Dec 00 - 10:36 AM (#361048)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Michael in Swansea

I read it in today's Telegraph, absolutely disgraceful.

Mike (a Welsh Catholic Royalist)

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21 Dec 00 - 10:36 AM (#361049)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: MMario

"The changes are mostly subtle," says Harrington. Most changes were not audible and could only be picked up by computers.

I would say that if changes in speech are so "subtle" that it requires computer analysis to demonstrate them there can't be much change. And can you really claim a pattern of speech has changed if the result is not audible?

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21 Dec 00 - 10:44 AM (#361054)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Wolfgang

Can you really claim that there are microbes when the eye can't see them?

Wolfgang

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21 Dec 00 - 10:51 AM (#361063)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)

Steve. I agree with you mate...Big Deal Media! Slow news day eh?...My accent has changed with every country and town I have lived it. I am told it is "Mid Atlantic" now; it never was pure Lancashire. My mother is from Brighton,Sussex; and I spent a good part of my life in the south. The media have nothing better to do than to trash our Royal Family in this way? Commonwealth Nations are our family we have ties that go beyond politics. Since our Royal Family is the uniting factor, I too am a loyal subject; and hope that our Australian family will stay with us. Yours, Aye. Dave

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21 Dec 00 - 11:02 AM (#361073)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: MMario

apples and oranges wolfgang.

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21 Dec 00 - 11:22 AM (#361086)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Hollowfox

I wonder if these researchers still have the identical vowel patterns that they had thirty years ago.

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21 Dec 00 - 11:32 AM (#361093)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Jon Freeman

I can't see what the fuss is about but there again, I prefer not to read about or hear HM.

Jon

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21 Dec 00 - 11:35 AM (#361095)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: little john cameron

Och aye,the guid auld Aussie accent is marvellous is it no?Accents are awfy strange,for instance Aussies speak English richt enough but hoo did it manage tae get sae nasal?Actually ah like it,especially the weemin!!!This business o tryin tae get awbody soundin the same rubs me the wrang way awthegither.Here in NFLD the variety o accents is great.A couple o miles apairt an ye're in anither world.
Tae get back tae Lizzie,wha cares hoo she speaks as long as we can mak oot whit she is sayin? ljc

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21 Dec 00 - 11:41 AM (#361099)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Steve Parkes

I'm feeling a bit better now, thanks. I always try to live up to my mother's advice: "keep your vowels open and trust in the Lord". Yo cor say feerer than that, aer kid!

Steve (Ah ay lost mah accent yet, any road!)

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21 Dec 00 - 11:42 AM (#361100)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: catspaw49

And don't you have to ask.......Who pays for this kinda' stuff?

Its cute and kinda' funny, but its obviously a slow news day. News would be if she suddenly started giving her speeches using rhyming slang or something. Is there someone who isn't aware that speech patterns change with age and experience?

So waht's the headline for tomorrow? "Charlie and Camilla Are Two Real Homely People?"

Spaw

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21 Dec 00 - 11:49 AM (#361108)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: little john cameron

Steve auld pal,it wis keep yer "bowels" free. ljc

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21 Dec 00 - 12:26 PM (#361127)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Bert

Gor, bloody blimey, maybe there's 'ope for the ol' gel yet!!

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21 Dec 00 - 12:37 PM (#361132)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Wolfgang

MMario: And can you really claim a pattern of speech has changed if the result is not audible?

Yes, sure, you can and any other argument has not been taken serious in science since about the middle of the 19th century. A change doesn't have to be perceptible (I'm using the superordinate word for both 'audible' and 'visible' to show that apples and oranges have a clear and easy to spot tertium comparationis in this case) in order to be real.

I'm truly sorry, MMario, if I have erroneously mistaken this sentence for cheap science bashing. If you had written something like is it worth studying such tiny differences I wouldn't have reacted with that somewhat harsh one-liner.

The idea behind studying tiny differences in speech patterns is to make automatic voice recognition more reliable. You want to find out which changes belong to the same person (on a different day) and which changes indicate a different speaker. The disabled persons using automatic voice recognition to help them through their daily lifes are extremely thankful that the apparatus most times still recognises their voices even after a bad sleep or with a sore throat.

The Queen is nothing but a perfect subject for such studies for her speeches are preserved and all of them are delivered in a very standard low emotion voice.

Wolfgang

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21 Dec 00 - 12:52 PM (#361146)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: MMario

Wolfgang - I can understand that. And if the article had said what you have, I wouldn't have reacted the way I did.

But to have them go through the list of "changes" and then find that they are not even audible without computer analysis makes me wonder what standards are being applied here and how many samples were taken and what kind of statistical analysis was used? Are the sound samples from the '50s adaquate for the kind of discrimination they are attempting? I do truly wonder whether or not these are real changes or whether they massaged the numbers in order to produce the results they wanted.

And I agree that a change does not have to be perceptible in order to be real; however, under ordinary circumstances I doubt there are many people who would say a vowel shift has occurred unless it CAN be percieved audibly. [Voice recognition software and hardware is a special case scenario.]

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21 Dec 00 - 01:33 PM (#361179)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Morticia

Personally I find it rather refreshing that the "cut-glass" and strangulated vowels are diminishing in the upper classes and on the BBC. All of these people used to think sex was something coal was carried in.What I do regret is the passing of good grammer into the history books.The first time I heard someone on the BBC news say " And from Moira and me,goodnight ", I sobbed like a great girly girl,and if you knew how I had been made to sweat blood in grammer class, you'd know why.

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21 Dec 00 - 01:59 PM (#361197)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: InOBU

Little John Cameron... just about an hour ago, me mum and I were walking up the block here in New York, when one of my band's Scotish fans began to yell to me from about two feet behind. I wished him a good holiday and told him about the two new Scotish style fiddlers in the band, and such, and as he walked off, me mum said, "is yer friend deef?" Och, no mum, I answer, "he's glasweegin" - Cheers, Larry

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21 Dec 00 - 02:13 PM (#361210)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Uncle_DaveO

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

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21 Dec 00 - 03:58 PM (#361287)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Bill D

what we in the US need now is a 50 year analysis of the speeches of Strom Thurmond...perhaps there are societal lessons to be learned...;>)

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21 Dec 00 - 05:48 PM (#361365)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: little john cameron

Whit wis that again Larry? ljc

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21 Dec 00 - 05:55 PM (#361371)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: GUEST,Big Mick

There might be something to this. I have been saying "Bite me" and "Fuck off" for the best part of the last 30 years. Used to be folks would either run like hell or square up for a little of the left jab - right cross action. These days they either laugh, or the girls tweek me cheek and say how cute I am. Maybe I have had an imperceptible bowel shift.............Must swing down to old Doc A.N. Alexam for an exam..............I am very excited at the thought of regaining my lost youth......And to think that aul Lizzie had a hand in it......bad choice of words there Mick

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21 Dec 00 - 06:25 PM (#361382)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: GUEST,Another Scot

In my childhood, in Edinburgh, I was taught to consider all English pronunciations, whether upper or lower class, slovenly. If a consonant is there, it ought ordinarily to be pronounced. The English habit (or worse, childhood training) of pronouncing "butter" as "buttah" and the complete failure of most English and US citizenry to distinguish "loch" from "lock" are clearly a handicap to good communication. For illustration, I distinctly remember a BBC commentator's words telling us that Mr. Churchill would receive from the Queen "the ohdah of the guttah." One needs a good deal of background information to recreate from this the fact that Winston was to become Sir Winston, of the Order of the Garter.

So, no, I'm not nearly as distressed by this as by the drift that would have us believe stuff advertised as "incredible", or in general the illiteracy of business English, whether of the kind that infests the US or the UK.

Nevertheless, Wolfgang is right. It is valid to note a drift in speech, even if it takes a 16-bit microphone to detect it, if the content of the test speeches is as monotonously the same as the Queen's Speeches. It may not be a marker of a general decline however, as the poor old dear has had a difficult life.

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21 Dec 00 - 07:13 PM (#361424)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: The Celtic Bard

My advice is to get rid of the royal family and get presidents instead like we have here in the States. Heck, we go weeks without knowing who our next leader will be. Sounds fun doesn't it?

Rebecca <><

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22 Dec 00 - 07:34 AM (#361655)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Alan of Australia

G'day,
I have a video tape of Don Bradman, a much more revered person in Oz than mere royalty could ever be, (one of our greatest sportsmen and the world's best ever batsman – cricket you know) and his accent and inflections changed markedly from the 1930s & 1940s to the 1990s.

How can we hold up the Queen's English as correct when she pronounces Australia as Orstralia (or Awstralia if you always treat 'r' as a consonant)?????

And the following, taken from my 1971 dictionary is relevant here:-

.... we must recognize one very important characteristic of the human speech mechanism which actively works to prevent our pronunciation from ever achieving a state of complete uniformity. Human beings are not talking machines; our control over our speech organs has not and cannot have machine-like precision. Consequently we do not always succeed in pronouncing a word in exactly the same way on all occasions. At any one moment the variation in sound may be quite small and of a transient nature, passing unnoticed. Over long periods of time, however, and with large numbers of individual speakers involved, this variation may develop into an appreciable, rather more longstanding pronunciational change. Such a change may he discernible in the speech of all speakers of the language in question. It may equally be limited to the speech of certain groups of speakers, while the speech of other groups exhibits a different pronunciational change or no change at all.

Cheers,
Alan

(In Oz where we speak the most perfect English of all.)

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22 Dec 00 - 09:41 AM (#361700)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)

Something for you Republicans to think about.. This is from a student group in Portugal, who Want to restore the Monarchy. I support them. Why you ask? because there never could be a Hitler or Stalin in the UK....Think about it. Its easier to keep what you have than try to re-establish it. Yours, Aye. Dave -------English Version-------------

Dear friends and members, For tecnical reasons we were unable until today, to access our internet services, therefore we have a lot of news for this message. First and foremost however, we wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a very productive new year, either in promoting, or defending your monarchies.

The traditional December events were a success all over the country. The 31st of November dinner in Lisbon went very well, with about 500 people attending. The new Juventude Lusitana t-shirts were a great success, and almost sold out. We only kept a small reserve to send new members. The 1st December (Restoration Day) anual message from HRH to the people was also a success. The full text of the speech will soon be available on our webpage, only in Portuguese though.

A month or two ago we sent you a message warning you about an on-line poll hosted by the Monarchist League to discover which was the best monarchy related website on the Internet. The results can be found at the follwing address: www.monarchy.net/webpoll.htm We were naturall proud to discover that the "Best Site not related to the United Kingdom" was ours! We wish to take this opportunity to thank all of those who sent in their votes for allowing this great opportunity to increase the attention and support for our cause!

Next January there will be presidential elections in Portugal. When we were all preparing for the dullest elections ever, with the more than expected victory of our current president, we were all surprised by the appearance of 9 candidates! 5 of which backed by the main political parties in Portugal, a 6th backed by the miniscule and recent Humanist Party, and 3 independant candidates. Monarchists prepared to lose the argument that, contrary to what the republicans say, only a party or lobby backed candidate can run for election. However, today the Constitutional Court ruled that only 5 candidates were accepted. The Humanist Party candidate and the three independants were said not to have the necessary documentation in order, and were therefore not allowed to participate. So it seems that our argument is now more valid than ever! The fact that the 4 four candidates not backed by any significant party or financial group were unable to gather the conditions to at least be able to run for the presidency, points either to descrimination on the part of the system, or extreme difficulty, ranging on impossibility, for the average person to be able to run... let's not even talk about eventual chances of victory! And that is the way things work in the Republic of Freedom and Equality, where anybody can become Head of State! (as long as they sell out to a party first, of course!)

Best wishes for the new year, do not hesitate to contact us! JL

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22 Dec 00 - 12:42 PM (#361780)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Mrs.Duck

Morty, what is wrong with "from Moira and me,goodnight." Did we attend different grammar classes?
I am horrified at the way our language is degenerating. I have no problems with accents or dialects but loathe what I call lazy speech which seems to miss as many letters as is possible without making it totally incomprehensible(but only just) also using things like "soz" instead or sorry which my children do . In my opinion if they can't take the trouble to say it properly they don't mean it!!!!
ouch! Sorry, just fell off my soapbox!!

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22 Dec 00 - 01:22 PM (#361795)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: McGrath of Harlow

The British Royal Family have never really been top drawer since that lot from Hanover took over the franchise back in 1715.

"My advice is to get rid of the royal family, and get presidents instead like we have here in the States." That makes sense until you get to the comma.

Now if they had their collective head screwed on, they'd have ensured that Charles came back from his spell in Australia all those years ago speaking Strine. Or, with all that time in Balmoral, why not Scottish accents? Why have they picked the one accent that gets up everybody's noses?

Now if I was designing a Royal Family I'd have all of them with different accents. Or change it every year in teh Queen's Sopeech - so that next year "Queen's English" would mean talking Brummie, for example...

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22 Dec 00 - 02:08 PM (#361830)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Uncle_DaveO

I wonder how and when that expression, "The King's (Queen's) English" got started. Anybody know?

Dave Oesterreich

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22 Dec 00 - 05:15 PM (#361913)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: Jim Dixon

Here's a new Mudcat challenge, playwriting division:

Rewrite Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady) with Higgins replaced by a computer! And Liza Doolittle replaced by Queen Elizabeth, trying to get her old accent back! Add a generational switch, and you could have Prince Charles singing "Oi'm Gettin Married in na Moarning!" and ranting about middle-class morality!

OK, you don't have to write the whole play. Just suggest a few plot developments, or a few speeches.

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22 Dec 00 - 08:13 PM (#362004)
Subject: RE: BS: 'Queen no longer speaks Queen's English'
From: McGrath of Harlow

Surely the plot would be Queen Liza Doolittle working on developing a de-poshed acccent to give the firm more street cred.

The idea being she's got to able to do the Christmas Message, or the Queens Speech at the opening of parliament in fluent Cockney or Estuary.

I'd have Ken Livingstone as the Higgins figure, with John Prescott as the Colonel Pickering character. And they'd sneak her into the cast of EastEnders to test her out, where she'd keep on accidentally talking posh.

"I've grown accustomed to Her Grace!"

"All I want is a throne somewhere"

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