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From: dis2@houxm.UUCP (A.NESTOR)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Americanized and Biritshised English
Message-ID: <823@houxm.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 16:23:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: houxm.823
Posted: Wed Aug  8 16:23:47 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 04:22:15 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 21


  At Oxford in the early fifites, the British English speakers used
  simple test to determine whether another person spoke Non-British
  English. The person was asked to pronounce "Mary", "marry", and
  "merry". If the three were not quite distinct, the person was
  identified as Non-British no matter how British his or her accent
  seemed.
    
  Incidentally, there was then an important and invidious distinction
  made by British English speakers in regard to whether one spoke U or
  Non-U English. Nancy Mitford (definitely U since she is an Hon.) wrote
  an amusing monograph on the subject. I have observed in subsequent
  stays in England that the U and Non-U distinction has been replaced
  by a BBC and Non-BBC distinction.
    
  Until the middle seventies, many council schools had special classes
  for children who spoke with socially undesirable accents (Cockney,
  Tyneside, etc.) where they learned to speak a kind of generalised
  London. I don't know if this continues.
                                          Creighton Clarke
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