I FOUND Robert McNeil’s column about the plethora of accents in Britain informative and entertaining (“Understand this, the accent is firmly on the positive”, The Herald, June 16).
His reference to the diversity of how words are expressed in our country reminded me of the circumstances in which more than two million young men were thrown together, after the Second World War, to to do their National Service in our armed forces.
These young men came from many different backgrounds: some were from schools of various kinds while others were from employment and some from university.
The experience illustrated to many for the first time the extensive range of people who lived in this country.
Many of them would say that, in the midst of so many accents, the most difficult to understand were the Scottish, particularly the Glaswegian and the Geordie.
Often the Geordies and the Scots were asked to speak more slowly to make it easier to understand their accents.
Robert McNeil referred in his column to the Cockney accent, among others.
The story is told of a driver approaching the duty officer in the army and asking in Cockney: “Permission to go to the station and get the pipers, sir.”
The officer replied: “Pipers? What pipers?”
“You know, sir, the pipers what we get regular, like.”
“I wasn’t informed that the regimental band was coming,” the officer retorted.
Even after a year or so of National Service, the officer had still not managed to understand how how some of his men spoke and that this particular Cockney was talking about permission to go to the newsagent.
Long may Received Pronunciation not be universal throughout the land and the British be rich in their spoken diversity.
Ian W Thomson,
38 Kirkintilloch Road,
Lenzie.
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