feature Talking diff’rent: why Peter is so – “They were both intellectual, readers, overtly and shamelessly expressed.” Professor Peter Trudgill’s columns on language and accent have thinkers…” – so no wonder both Peter He concluded: “People are at their most become a popular feature of the EDP. As a collection of them is and his brother Stephen (Emeritus Fellow relaxed and articulate and expressive in Geography at Robinson College, when they’re speaking in their own published, TREVOR HEATON meets a passionate advocate of Cambridge) went on to distinguished natural accent. In creating his paintings, academic careers. Dad felt free to express himself as he treasuring the way we speak. But his parents’ influence shows in a wished, in spite of the prejudice that more emotional way too. Peter wrote existed against modern art in the 1940s. movingly in 2014 how his father John, an It’s a pity he couldn’t do the same when immensely talented man both in business he was speaking.” t’s no accident that Peter Trudgill’s His mother, born Hettie Gooch, came (he took Jarrold’s Publication department Powerful stuff, and it is easy to see why new book is called Dialect Matters: from Wiveton and grew up in the villages to a £1 million-plus turnover by the Peter – himself a proud possessor of a Respecting Vernacular Language. around Holt. His father, John, was very mid-1950s) and art (he was a co-founder of rich Norwich accent – is determined to For that, in a nutshell, is exactly much a city boy. They met in Jarrold’s, the Norwich 20 Group), felt awkward speak up for diversity of accent at every what he feels about the subject. where they both worked. because of his strong working-class city opportunity. If you have ever felt self-conscious “She used to relate how the first time he One thing accent. From CNS, Prof Trudgill went to King’s Iabout your Norfolk accent, his message took to see her parents at New Catton Here’s what Peter had to say in that College Cambridge in 1963 to study couldn’t be simpler: don’t be. Prof they laughed at her for the way she that hasn’t article: Modern Languages “…until I discovered Trudgill is here to tell you that it is spoke.” They thought it was strange the “He originally spoken with a real that there was this subject called perfectly all right to speak with a local way she put a ‘t’ at the end of words changed Norwich accent, as his parents did all ‘linguistics’. In those days it was not very accent. In fact, it’s more than ‘all right’. (saying ‘hundrut’ for ‘hundred’, for their lives. He didn’t speak like that in well known.” “When Norfolk people feel embarrassed example). For her part, Hettie took some over the later life, though – you could tell he came After graduating, he continued with the about their dialect and accent [it’s getting used to the way John’s family from Norwich, but he’d modified his subject with a MA at Edinburgh important to realise that] they are taught dropped their ‘h’s. years is accent considerably. University, then on to a doctorate. For his to do that,” he insists. A family trip to Wales opened up his “That modification came at a cost. Dad thesis he didn’t have to look far from There is absolutely no need to do eyes to language still further. “We went his strong knew that some people in business circles home for inspiration: ‘The social ourselves down, “especially when you when I was about 12. I remember being would look down on him if he spoke in differentiation of English in Norwich.’ think about Norwich being the second very interested in the fact that only a few belief that the way that came most naturally to a “The study of urban dialects was very city in the country for so many miles away there was a whole different young man from a terraced house in New new at the time,” he recalled. “I took a centuries.” language that people used in their daily accents Catton, and that opportunities might be random sample of 60 people. I went round It’s a typically forthright opinion from lives.” denied to him. talking to them, and recorded most of the city-born academic, who has provoked But his interest really took off in his are “So throughout his adult life, on them. I discovered that there were very a lively correspondence in the four years second year at CNS grammar school important and formal occasions, he fine-grained correlations between social he has been writing columns for the EDP. when he took German as well as Latin important, suffered the anxiety that goes with having class and area.” In his Monday features he looks at every and French. “German is so obviously and to think, not only about what you’re In those days ‘uptalk’ was a very aspect of the spoken and written word, related to English – I really start saying, but about how you’re pronouncing common part of Norwich speech – that from origins to how place names should wondering about that,” he said. should be it. habit of raising the voices at the end of be pronounced (more on that later), and As well as his inspirational school (no “No one should have to do that. No one sentences so that everything sounds like a from the history of language to dialect. fewer than five of Peter and his treasured. should have to feel, because of the bigotry question (which was a bit baffling to a He is unlikely to run out of subjects in contemporaries became professors), Peter of others, that they can make progress in Lynn boy like me when I first this endlessly-changing field. “People are also pays tribute to Janet Smith, who in life only if they abandon their native encountered it in the late 1970s). fascinated by the subject,” he says. the mid-1950s ran the new library at St dialect. In January 1970 he became a lecturer in “Everybody is interested in language.” William’s Way at Thorpe (“definitely not “We’re doing our best to stamp out the socio-linguistics at Reading University. And that is as true for Peter as it is for Thorpe St Andrew in those days!”). scourge of sexism – we don’t tell women Once again, he was very much a trail- any of his readers. From his earliest days, “I used to borrow language books, it’s their fault if they’re discriminated blazer for the subject. “I was a pioneer he can recall being aware of the subtle things like ‘A Grammar of Burmese’. I against. Equally, if people with truly local without knowing it,” he said. nuances of accent. It all stems from used to take notes. Looking back, I was accents are dismissed as not being His academic career since then has seen having two sets of grandparents where always interested in linguistics but didn’t worthy, we shouldn’t say it’s their fault, numerous books and articles, 13 years one set was from the city, and one from know what it was called.” but do our best to stamp out this living in Switzerland, lectures and posts the county. Another big influence were his parents linguicism – which is even now often all over the world, and much more. He I John Trudgill: Peter’s father felt he had to moderate his Norwich accent in later life. I Hettie Trudgill: Peter’s mother came from North Norfolk. 6 EDP Weekend I July 30, 2016 proud to speak up for Norfolk Column controversies I Prof Peter Trudgill, EDP columnist and language expert. ‘If you want to hear pure Norwich, then go down Picture: The biggest discussion points from to Norwich market,’ he says. DENISE BRADLEY Peter’s columns have tended to fall into three categories: 1 Artificial rules of grammar, for example not using a conjunction [a word like ‘and’ or ‘but’] at the start of sentences. “When I say, ‘why not?’ then the response is usually ‘Because we were always taught like that…’ I think people get upset because they don’t want to thing they things they might have struggled hard to learn at school were actually wrong.” 2 Another bugbear is dialect. “To say ‘I done it’ is not actually wrong. It’s something that is common usage worldwide. In fact it’s more common or ‘tow’. Heigham Street in Norwich is than saying ‘I did it’. It’s not a mistake.” another one. “It should be Hayum or 3 The third is pronunciation of place Ham – but not Hi’um.” names. “People get very aereated!” For Problems are caused mainly caused example, whether the first syllable of by lack of knowledge. “They don’t Sprowston should rhyme with ‘cow’ know that they don’t know…” has held professorships at the Universities Quite the opposite: the very first written of Reading, Essex, Lausanne and word ever found in what was to become Fribourg, and is currently Professor of English was discovered in Caistor St Sociolinguistics at the University of Edmund, scratched on a deer bone and Agder, Kristiansand, Norway, and dating from around AD400. “I think you Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at can make a very good case for saying the UEA. He knows his stuff – REALLY knows English language started in Norfolk,” his stuff. Peter said. “It was one of the earliest and In all his travels, Peter has never lost his heaviest areas of Germanic settlement.” love of his home city, though, introducing So when we talk Norfolk we connect not his American wife Jean Hannah - who just with our village, our town, our city, specialises in copy editing and Plain our ancestors, but also a 1,500-year history.