Accentuate the positive

People sometimes think I come from Birmingham as they hear traces of my West Midlands accent from time to time – when I am tired, emotional, drunk or all 3. But I am not Brummie, indeed to suggest I am is a bit of an insult (well a lot actually), even though my maternal grand father was a Brummie. I hail from Kidderminster a small town in Worcestershire. However, when I hear a Brummie accent or hear a Wolverhampton accent or Coventry I feel at home! And I can distinguish between these accents and mine and West Worcestershire too.

At school one of my Latin teachers (yes that was 1960s Grammar School for you!) referred to the local accent we all used as being a ‘linguistic cesspool’. Thankfully my other Latin teacher was fascinated by it and talked composing a book of Kidderminster-ese.

So for example I (along with other denizens from Kidderminster) find I don’t distinguish in my speech between ‘pint’ as in pint of beer and ‘point’ as in Aston Villa just won 3 points for a victory over Man U (in my dreams). I also pronounce ‘bus’ in a strange way rather like ‘buzz’ I think, so my eldest son born on the York/Lancs border did not understand me when i said 'Bus'. I also use ‘borrow’ when I mean ‘lend’ as in ‘borrow me a quid’. What I don’t do that Brummies do do is end sentences with just – as in ‘I’ll see you just’ I love that.

I have learnt to speak more posh especially with policemen and other authority figures and know the research that says you are less likely to get a job with a Brummie accent and since most people can’t distinguish my accent from Brummie…. But this dropping of my accent was part of getting educated and part of leaving my small home town behind which was warm and smothering. So I love my freer life and I miss that damn community. So you can take this boy out of a small town but you can't take the small town out of this boy! And of course the bit of Msnchetser I live in kind of functions as a small town. Almost.