Talk of your town

The way we speak still defines who we are and causes others to make assumptions about us. People with distinctive voices reveal how talkin' wiv an accent has shaped their life...

- Michael Segalov

ROB DRUMMOND HAS LOST THE ABILITY TO SIMPLY LISTEN. A professor of socio-linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, he hears far more than what's being said when someone opens their mouth. "I have this particular facial expression that indicates when I've stopped listening to the content of what someone's saying, and am thinking about their accent," he says. "Apparently, I start to quietly recreate the interesting sounds under my breath."

Drummond's fascination with the way we talk began while teaching English as a foreign language in Manchester in the early 2000s - some of his international students would take on a noticeable Manchester accent; others wouldn't. "It led me to my PhD: why some Polish people in Manchester acquired a Mancunian accent, and some did not. The results were fascinating: people who intended to settle acquired a local accent quicker than those here temporarily. I started to see accents as a way of associating, or distancing, yourself from a certain group. At times, it's deep-rooted, trained into your brain. At other times, it can be a performance. Sometimes both."

He soon turned his focus to accent prejudice, a cornerstone of his new book You're All Talk. "I'm a middle-aged, middle-class white man from Hertfordshire; the way I speak has never been an issue for me, unlike for plenty of people. Each of my projects has explored stereotypes associated with accents." 

Given the UK's small size, there's huge accent variation. "So many different groups travelled to these islands historically - first, native Celtic groups, then Germanic and Anglo-Saxon arrivals, Roman, Vikings and Normans." From all these sources, Old English emerged.