Not sure I want to bookmark this article, nor happy about leaving it lying around in one of my browser tabs, therefore, it’s one for the blawg. From the Daily Telegraph, an article on How Queen’s English has grown more like ours, which has a tewwibly witty line:
A scientific study of Christmas broadcasts to the Commonwealth since 1952 suggests the royal vowel sounds have undergone a subtle evolution since the days when coal was routinely delivered to Buckingham Palace in sex. [emph. in original]
Ok, so maybe I’m easily amused….
Reading on a bit further down, and I can see where John Cleese got all his funny voices (if not his funny walk):
“In 1952 she would have been heard referring to ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’.
“Similarly, she would have spoken of the citay and dutay, rather than citee and dutee, and hame rather than home In the 1950s she would have been lorst, but by the 1970s lost.”
And indeed, the Queen’s first Christmas broadcast was pure Dartington Crystal.
She began: “As he (King George VI) used to do, I em speaking to you from my own hame, where I em spending Christmas with my femly.”
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