The Political Dominance Of The South East English Accent

It’s a strange thing, the accent of south east England. It’s the indigineous twang of an area from roughly 400 miles squared and yet right now there are 25 million Chinese people leaning to speak English that way. By 2016, 70 per cent of the world’s population will speak English, and a lot of them will sound like they come from Guilford, because that’s how people speak on those Linguaphone tapes.

It’s an odd one – the “a” sound “can” and “can’t” don’t sound the same round here and no one can explain why. This is how I talk and I pronounce “store key” exactly the same as “stalky”. Admittedly unless you run a badly lit houseplant shop, this isn’t going to cause much confusion, but it’s still wierd.