How the Queen’s English has changed with the times

LONDON: To speak English correctly you had to speak it like the Queen of England. But even the Queen has now changed the way she speaks the Queen’s English.

Voice experts at Munich University who analysed the monarch’s Christmas speeches over the past 50 years have found that Her Majesty has dropped her cut-glass, clipped pronunciation for a more rounded vowel sound belonging to South East England.

During her first Christmas speech in 1952, the Queen followed the example set by her father King George VI and said, “As he used to do I em speaking to you from own hame, where I em spending Christmas with my femly”. Then she would pronounce words happy as ‘happay’, duty as ‘dutay’ and home as ‘hame’. Now Queen Elizabeth pronounces the same words as ‘happee, dutee, and home’ in an accent known as Thames Estuary English.

The clipped aristocratic accent has been distinctly softened says the study in the latest Journal of Phonetics. Jonathan Harrington who led the study argued that the Queen had not consciously ‘dumbed down’ her accent, like Tony Blair who often lapses into Estuary English to suit his audience.

“The Queen’s accent has not become cockneyfied but it has shifted subtly towards an accent that is more typically spoken in the wider community,” said Harrington. “The changes also reflect the changing class structure over the last 50 years.”

In her 2005 Christmas speech, analysts found that the Queen’s vowels in general are longer and she appears to use the front rather than the back of the mouth to pronounce ‘u’ sounds, more like Cockneys and Australians. But she still continues to pronounce ‘that’ as ‘thet’.