English Accents Are For the Retarded

Ok, I feel this needs to be said. There are way too many people who have bought into the idea that English accents are sexy and/or intellectual.

I will start by qualifying my argument. I have no issue with the Queen’s English. The woman understands the rules of English correctly, follows them, is very polite, and is terminally dull. These are all things that a woman in her position should be. She uses her English very professionally and sounds highly educated, even if she rarely seems to have anything especially interesting to say. She uses English well, and many of us could take a lesson from her. (How many people noticed that this paragraph says almost exactly the same simple thing three times, in three different ways? I’m taking a lesson from royalty.)

On the other hand, there is the side of my argument that I will not qualify. The Queen represents a decidedly small portion of the population of England. Most of her citizens sound like retards. I know this because they keep seeking me out and sharing that with me for some reason.

I, like so many of you, adore websites like Facebook and MySpace. They are an amazing way to learn more about your friends and keep in touch. They also allow strangers to find you. Several aspects of my profiles seem to attract the attention of strangers. I’m not going to bother to list these aspects, but they’re like honey to flies.

Lately, I have been attracting a lot of British strangers.

Let me take a quick poll here. How many of you are fans of the cultural relevance of the American dialect which, in the nineties, was given the name of “Ebonics”? The theory was that a subset of our population which was more “ebonic” than the rest of us were doing badly in school because they didn’t know proper English and were lost causes. Thus, their grades would improve if we assumed that they were incapable of learning in school and just graded them on what they knew anyway. If I recall correctly, this was the most racist thing anyone proposed in the entire decade.

My guess is that not many hands went up. Now let me ask how many people think British slang is cool. I see we have a lots of hands up this time.

Most British slang is just like Ebonics, but much more hideously incorrect. Ebonics was strikingly similar to English, but with a smaller subset of words. For example, in Ebonics, the same word is used as a noun, adjective, and adverb in places where grammar dictates there should be three distinct forms. Pronunciation may be altered slightly, but all in all, speakers of English have little trouble figuring out what an Ebonics speaker is getting at.

Not so with British slang. One of my favorite exchanges took place when a freak sent me a picture to something inappropriate as a way of saying hello. Then I was told that my pictures were horny. This confused me. I asked how, exactly, my pictures were horny. I honestly had no clue WTF was being discussed. I was told that, “your pics are really horny. you know.” I insisted that I didn’t. Several minutes later, I asked if the gist of the message was that my pictures were inspiring horniness in others. This caused equal confusion on the other end, but eventually turned out to be more or less the gist of things.

I am sad to say that this is not an isolated incident. I’ll be the first to admit that my circle of friends includes only a small number of born and raised Brits. We’ll toss the Queen in there for good measure, just to be fair and balanced (and inaccurate). Even with her factored in, the amount of outright incorrectness in the speech of the British is much higher (on average) than that of the average American, from my limited point of view.

In conclusion, an American trying to sound “cool,” by emulating the slang and accent of the British… No. Let’s be blunt. English accents are for the retarded.