This is Not a Festive Post

But the brain wants what the brain wants.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

I was going to finish the year with a nice thematic overview of everything we have covered in 2024, but it appears the real-life prompts have blown me off course and instead, I’m writing about accents which is I understand a niche topic on 22^nd December. Sometimes too many synchronous things happen in the space of seven days and I just have to write about it or else my head will burst, and it’ll be absorbed into the ether.

Apologies for the interlude, I’m swimming in Celebrations and Advocaat and unsurprisingly finding it harder than usual to laser in on the fucking point. So. This week some content went up online which featured my voice. I’ve started speaking more on social media because that’s doing algorithmically well right now and in response, I received a flurry of messages reviewing both my voice and accent. This week alone it has been described as ‘royal’, ‘proper English,’ and ‘classy’. Since I read my audio book back in 2018, I’ve been aware that people find my timbre soothing (apparently it sends them to sleep, which is actually sub-optimal for an audio book). But it’s been a while since I’ve had much feedback on my speaking voice outside of my girlfriend Henni who regularly serves up a spot-on impression of my intonation.

Adding to the digital appraisal, I’m also surrounded by my family right now… which means I’m immersed in a cacophony of different accents. Between my dad with his sharp Estuary brogue (‘a cut tee un a chis rowl,’ aka ‘a cup of tea and a cheese roll’) to my stepdad and his golf club English via Johannesburg, my mum with her softer sarf east, my husband with his geezah blend of Midlands and cockney and my boys who are London born, bred and sound it, there’s a lot going on in vocal sonics RN.

I changed how I spoke in my teens which is why I sound so very unlike my family. It was something I was aware of from such a young age that I can’t even remember a time when I spoke unconsciously. Both my parents were very attentive and sensitive to my accent and endlessly corrected me, especially whenever I dropped my ts or said phrases picked up from my grandparents, like ‘ta’ for thank you or ‘tea’ for my evening meal. In fact, the focus on it was so intense that I overegged it and ended up developing a stutter whenever I encountered double plosive consonants. From the age of 8, I went to speech and drama classes, geeking it up with the theatre kids and I was given a line to practice to try and master without stuttering: ‘Can I have a little bit of butter with my supper.’ It’s still a struggle to say it correctly even now as there are four potential stumbles for me.