Accents at CH Horsham

[William]

I would be most interested to hear if the 21st Century Blues still acquire a public school accent as they did in the mid 20th century. Could someone tell us. Also do all the current teachers have a similar sort of enunciation, or rather many regional and other accents?

A further comment on Messrs R Rae and NT Fryer. The origins of their regional accents were clearly recognisable, although not very marked.

[sejintenej]

Where it does get tricky is the wide range of local words which can bring many a false friend or unfortunate initial mis-understanding. As a general rule, in Andalusia the accent is more like South American Spanish and the same with the Canaries. I have found Columbians, Peruvians and Ecuadorians to be the 'clearest' speakers of Spanish, the most easy to follow.

I have just discovered, some 60 years late (!) that what I learned was actually Llanito which IMHO is close enough to Andaluz as makes no difference. I go along with MrEd as to those South American accents and add in Chile and Argentina. Addressing the hotel receptionist in Las Canarias in Spanish was to have pleasant comeback later in our stay. I had no problem in Florida though during my first stay (Orlando) it was mainly Portuguese!

I would strongly recommend that if you know even a little bit about a local language (or even a foreigner's language in this country) then use it - had great help from a local in Canarias, from my local chemist (Akan) and local school teachers with foreign origins.- Mauritious French and Japanese. They seem to love it.

[rockfreak]

Doing English under Gad (Edward Malins) in about 1958, he took issue with the accent of one of our number for crucifying his vowel sounds, and he further claimed that this was typically a "Col B accent". I don't know whether this was simply a prejudice of his as he was (I think) a previous Col A housemaster but it probably referred to what today would be referred to as Estuary English. Gad himself of course used to do a pretty good stand-in for Noel Coward so perhaps he found all other pronunciations a bit dodgy. Anyway, our house head prefect, one Oxlade, on hearing of this, took it up with him. probably making the point that Col B boys were no different from any others in mangling the Queen's English.