Whatever happened to ‘Oxford English’, the much-mocked accent of the British ruling class?

Well, for a start, it lost its name. It had little to do with Oxford anyway, whether town or gown. Some Oxford dons indeed had (and have) an affected accent of their own, in which, notably, the letter R is almost inaudible. But that’s not Oxford English. So linguists renamed the real version “received pronunciation”.

More seriously, “received” it no longer is. In today’s Britain just about any accent is — in theory — deemed as good as any other, and the media make fun of those, like Queen Elizabeth, who pronounce off as orf and class as clahss, rather than rhyming it with mass.

But do not be deceived. Many educated or well-off Britons still speak as such people did 50 or 70 years ago. And not for reasons of snobbery.

I spent my Forties childhood in Scotland, in the home of a Scottish retired army officer and his wife, born in northern England. Neither spoke with the least trace of those regions’ accents. Why not? Simply because he had spent his soldiering life in officers’ messes, where even Scottish accents — one of the few acceptable to Britain’s elite a century ago —were soon ironed out; and she was with him.

So that’s how I speak today. I understand Scottish accents; indeed, in my own, less distinguished, army days, I once had to act as interpreter, literally, between my, mostly English, side of the hut and the other, half of whom came from Aberdeen. But Oxford English is my natural speech.

The short vowel

Nor is it only we oldies who use it. Tony Blair, educated in the Seventies in a Scottish ‘public school’, speaks just as I do.

But don’t be deceived the other way either. Oxford English has altered like any other accent. Watch a Thirties British film, and you will see the hero mumble, “Ei sei, my poppet, will you merry me?” And his poppet will reply, “Thenk you, I will”. Those old films and newsreels sound as odd to my ears as to anyone else’s.

But, above all, Oxford English is slowly losing ground to regional accents — or what passes for them. London-dwelling Scotsmen carefully preserve their native accent, throwing in a few Scotticisms to make their point. The BBC, which used to insist that its on-air staff spoke Oxford English, now eagerly recruits people who don’t. Only its many black or brown-skinned reporters and news-readers seem, so far, to resist the trend. If you want to hear English as it used to be, by 2016, I suspect, your best source will be named Chakrabarti.

But there’s a catch. Some regional accents are more equal than others. The Beeb (like the Blair government or indeed the old British Empire) is stuffed with Scots-speakers. Irish accents are welcome, Welsh or northern accents, Jewish accents, and I expect Asian accents will join them. But the whining speech mocked as Sarf London, or Estuary English, stretching eastward down the Thames?

Well, I too dislike their sound. But I don’t claim to be the voice of the nation. The BBC does. And in its anti-southern zeal it has even fathered a bogus accent of its own. Many of its southern on-screen speakers still use Oxford English — until they come to choice between orf and off, ahfter and affter, clahss and class. Then, suddenly, their voices dash off north into the short vowel rather than the long one.

The result is a dog’s breakfast, a language that no human being spoke until some rootless idiot concocted it. And I’ll bet that even those who use it drop it the moment they’re out of the studio. Frenkly, Ei’d sooner talk like Little Lord Fauntleroy than thet.