Is anyone else disappointed by declining standards in spoken English in Britain?

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I agree- when it's an uneducated chav speaking, no-one is really bothered- but it really irritates me when educated, professional people speak in this way.

Yes, the UK has many accents, but that should not affect people speaking in such a dumbed-down way.
This sort of speech is actually immature or lazy speech.

A good example is the serious decline in adults pronouncing 'th' correctly. It is not a lisp, it is immature, lazy speech, and it makes you sound a little bit 'fick'.
It can also lead to misunderstandings- for example; I once pulled over to let a van pass my car, the driver said 'fank you'. Now when you lip read (as you cant hear him in the car) you only see certain letter sounds- I saw 'f....k y...oo' from what he said- guess what i thought he said............

A lot of southern people do speak in this Jamaican patois as you said, which is really irritating to listen to. Another annoying feature of some (southern) people's speech is putting a long, drawn out 'arrrr' on the end of words- using your example- 'Layba' or worse 'Laybaaaar' 'Evaaaaar'

Ugh- drives me mad listening to people like this speak. No-one will take you seriously if you speak in this way.
Rant over lol

Reply 261

iammeyouareyou

Original post by Foo.mp3

True, and it's fair to say I'd also be disappointed in the beeb if they brought in thick NE/Glaswegian accents on the national news!

"I seen ur blog m8. Da English is well shady, innit!?"

I weren't, but thanks for the insight :borat:

I don't appreciate that first comment -_-

Tbh I only included the last part because you wrote 'would be handy to state your own standard of English/cultural background in posting, for context', in the OP.

Reply 262

Marco1

I hate the way the pronunciation of Contribute has changed. It has now become the norm among BBC newsreaders, even well spoken ones like Sian Williams, to say it as CON-tra-bute instead of the correct and more eloquent way, con-TRI-bute. Why dumb it down and make it sound so ugly? I can only assume the heads of the Beeb feel the right way may sound posh and therefore offend the masses. This sort of patronising dumbing down attitude is wrong and quite frankly very worrying. Why take standards down when standards should always aim to be high and raised if necessary. The English language is not something that should change because a bunch of people don't want to learn to speak it properly. Yes language is always evolving and new words entering the English vocabulary but why make the mispronunciation of a word the norm just because it's commonly mispronounced. The BBC has no British backbone. Who's running it? They are getting paid aren't they? How about making some principled, intelligent decisions for a change instead of playing God with a beautiful language.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 263

Tony McG

I'm white working class (but with a degree in Engineering and 22 years sa teacher). I too despair off the Londonese/ Americanese promulgated by the London Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). If something needs sorting out, it's a