#3 Dan Saf

This weekend a few friends and I visited Eastbourne for a 21st birthday party. The weekend was wonderful, it included Brighton Pier, cupcakes and tattoo parlours. It also included A LOT of southerners. As a supporter of accents and dialects I was in my element listening to people talk in their wierd and wonderful ways. However, as a Midlandser I stuck out like a sore thumb.

There was one particular incident with a southern gentleman, we'll call him Humphrey.

At a party on Friday evening Humphrey asked me to dance, or should I say "darnce". He has the long /a/ sound as I later found out, he is from London.  I took Humphrey's offer and we danced, or rather he taught me the routine to Alexandra Burke's "Bad Boys" and I mimicked his body popping. It was fun, no denying that, but then I got tired and decided to sit down. Humphrey found me later on and asked me why I wasn't dancing anymore. I replied, "I'll dance in a minute, I'm just having a drink."

Humphrey then repeated "dance". So did I. Then he said, "It's not dancing it's darncing."

Now, I will interject here and confirm that I have a BA English Language and am currently studying for my MA English Language, therefore, Humphrey was on thin ice.

"There's no correct way of pronouncing dancing, we all say it differently," I said.

"But you should say darncing," he said.

"Says who?" I asked.

He went quiet and then smiled while raising his eyebrows as if to say "oh sweetie, your silly little Midlands brain can't comprehend that us Southerners are so much more intelligent than you could ever be."

"I guess there's no incorrect way of saying it," he said.

This incident was quite painless.  He agreed with me, albeit whilst patronising me, but nevertheless he didn't push the subject further.  However, a similar incident occured a few months ago with a girl from Milton Keynes.  Not only did she think I was stupid because of my accent but also because she was a newly qualified doctor and English Language is a Mickey Mouse subject, suited only for those girls who aren't intelligent enough to study Science and aren't creative enough to study Literature, Art or Philosophy. (In her opinion). I won't go into details but basically she laughed at me and called me stupid because I said "bath" not "barth".

Now, whilst I understand some accents may sound more intelligent than others and some accents come with negative connotations (Liverpool Scouse for example, which I happen to love), no one accent is more correct or incorrect than another.

You wouldn't say someone should tie their laces in the way the Southerners do, or part their hair in the centre because then you will look less Scottish. So, we shouldn't tell people how to pronounce words. Our accents and dialects make us as individual as our hair colour and our finger prints and because of this we should celebrate them and enjoy the fact that we are all slightly different.