The Lemon Fool

Bregzit's all very well, innit, but wo' abou' all the glo'al stops, then? They seem to be spreading fast, which wasn't such an issue when it was just happening in "authentic" soaps and adverts, but they're now turning up in documentary voice-overs. Especially in the arts, it seems. And on the BBC too. Whatever would Lord Reith have said?

There was a time when only Londoners dropped their Ts, but it's also a characteristic of many Caribbean communities. Fair enough, that's fine too, as far as it goes. Dammit, we English are getting adept at handling the Belfast and Glaswegian patois as well, so why not?

The thing is, I'm noticing that the missing glottals are being selectively applied. You'll often hear an announcer coping perfectly with a T-word like literary or qualitative or even quantitative, only to drop the middle consonants in "little" or "better" in the very same sentence. Which does seem to suggest that the narrator is just trying to be cool and down wid da kids, but can't be bothered to do it consistently.

Believe me, one of these days this issue is going to go nucular. in the meantime, Bregzi' has a certain ring to it, don't you think?

BJ

Legzit.

Exit from language as we knew it. I expect complaining of it comes naturally as we age, and that with which we grew up recedes into archaism.