Posted by Peter Hyland on June 06, 2014 at 00:40:24 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Arthur's voice posted by Peter Ceresole on June 05, 2014 at 22:53:39:
it would have a substantial middle and upper class, all of whom would have had what we would consider pretty cut-glass accents
No, they wouldn't, not all of them. As with anywhere else, the accent would depend on the surroundings in the formative years. A child who was sent to boarding school and then went to Oxbridge might acquire a 'far back' accent. A child who was educated at a Liverpool school (even a grammar) would retain a Lancashire accent (what we know as a 'scouse' accent was at that time confined to the dock area).
The saying about an Englishman wearing his caste in his mouth is rubbish. The point about the Collingwood girls is that they were brought up in the northern tip of Lancashire and may have had a moderate Lancs accent - this is a very familiar accent and it was prevalent in my own family (short 'a's etc). Roger Wardale’s theory that because the Altounyan children did not have an English regional accent, therefore their mother did not, is rather questionable, bearing in mind that their father obviously would not have such an accent. In any case, I have known dozens of people who had a different accent than their parents (and it includes myself).