The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain

Not only am I a Yorkshireman, I am a proud Yorkshireman. I drink beer not cider, I eat cheese with my Christmas cake, and I’ll always choose a white rose over a red one. One of the most distinctive features of this identity is my accent. While it isn’t that strong, it is still recognisable; and my vocabulary is liberally dotted with the odd region specific word here and there.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m very pleased that Amy shares my accent. But sometimes it goes a bit too far. For some time now she has been pronouncing the word “baby” as “berbi”. I don’t know where she got it from, we assume it was nursery, but it really irritates me. Similarly she has just started missing the H’s off a lot of words. Yesterday while walking the dog we had the following conversation.

“ ’olly, ‘olly, come back ‘olly.”

“No Amy, its Holly. H… H… Holly.”

“Yes daddy, but sometimes she’s called ‘olly isn’t she.”

I’m not sure how to handle this. The liberal in me says that every form of language is valid; English is a continually evolving creation that belongs only to those who speak it. Any attempt to create elite standards or rules to contain it is like building sandcastles to hold back the tide. However the class snob in me thinks that when she speaks like that she sounds like a chav.

Which is awful. I truly believe that the word chav is a horrendously prejudiced term; it dehumanises and alienates the socially excluded underclass. But that doesn’t mean I want Amy to be one. My hypocrisy knows no bounds on topics like this. I am a strong believer in state schools, and would never consider paying for private education for my children. Yet when we moved we deliberately chose a middle class area with good schools to live in, therefore indirectly paying for a better quality education via the inflated house price. Steve reports similar dilemmas on his blog.

I don’t know what the answer is. They say a liberal is just a conservative that hasn’t been mugged yet; perhaps there’s some truth to that.

Anyway, here’s a nice picture of Amy and Holly.