Brummie is beautiful

Born and bred Brummie, Steve Thorne, defends his native accent.

Ask a British person what their least favourite accent is, and they will more than likely say 'Brummie' - the variety of English spoken in the West Midlands city of Birmingham. Ask them why, and they will more than likely use adjectives such as 'nasal', 'monotonous', 'miserable' and/or 'ugly' to justify their responses. Such views are based on the belief that all other accents are higher in aesthetic value than Brummie, and even those who are prepared to accept that Brummie is not 'wrong' (and many aren't) seem fundamentally opposed to the idea that other accents are not more aesthetically pleasing. But is Brummie really ugly?

The accent associated with Birmingham is undoubtedly more nasalized than many other Englishes, and this often leads to it being criticised as 'dull', 'droney', 'whingey' and 'annoying'. American and French accents of English are also nasalized, but since people generally tend to favour these accents, we can safely discredit the claim that nasality has anything at all to do with aesthetic judgements.

The claim that Brummie is 'monotonous' can be discredited immediately - no accent is intoned on a monotone. Another common misconception about Birmingham intonation, though, is that it 'falls' at the end of sentences, and this leads to criticisms that it is 'dull', 'miserable', 'depressing' and/or 'downbeat': "In Brummie, the lowering suggests despondency and makes it less attractive to the listener . . . the lack of aural variation quickly begins to grate" (www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A496352). But to say that an accent 'lowers' and has a 'lack of aural variation' is a contradiction in terms. An extensive use of rising rather than falling tones, moreover, is typical in Birmingham speech, and other accents which employ rising tones are not stigmatized because of it. In fact, people find Southern Irish attractive because of its rising intonation.

By far the best way to determine whether Brummie is inherently ugly, however, is with the aid of a simple quantitative test. If the Birmingham accent really is universally unappealing, then foreign speakers unaware of the social connotations which Brummie possesses will also respond to it negatively. In May 2002, I recorded short samples of 20 different accents of English, one of which was Brummie. In order to limit the influence of extraneous variables, the speakers chosen were all male, white, aged between 35 and 40, and upper-working to lower-middle class. These recordings were played to 96 native and 109 non-native English speakers who were then asked to briefly describe each accent and rate each one on a scale of 1-10 (1 = very unpleasant, 5 = neutral, 10 = very pleasant).

It was found that native speakers reacted predictably. The French, Southern Irish, Edinburgh Scottish and Geordie (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) accents received the most favourable responses (none, incidentally, described the very nasal French accent as 'nasal'), the American and rural accents such as Cornish and Norfolk also did well, but Welsh, RP (Received Pronunciation), Northern Irish and accents associated with large urban conurbations such as London (Cockney) and Liverpool (Scouse) fared badly. No prizes for guessing which accent came bottom. Black Country. Yes, people often mistake Black Country speech (an accent associated with the South Staffordshire area of the English Midlands) for Brummie, and when given the option obviously prefer the latter. Birmingham did come nineteenth, however, and evaluations were consistently negative - ranging from the slightly more expressive 'unsexy' to the boring 'boring', 'wrong', 'mispronounced', 'irritating', 'grating', 'nasal', etc.

The responses of non-native speakers, on the other hand, were inconsistent - ranging from 'harsh' (for Brummie), through 'nice', to 'melodic', 'lilting' and 'musical', and from 'clear' (for Southern Irish), through 'boring', to 'disgusting'. Although there was no significant difference between the overall scores for each accent, many appeared to prefer the characteristically Brummie 'rising' and 'high tone at the end of sentences', criticising instead the 'cold and unemotional' character of Edinburgh Scottish - one respondent even going so far as to describe the Scottish speaker as 'untrustworthy'. Scouse was also praised on many occasions for its intonational distinctiveness - its clarity, 'pleasant tonality', and dynamic 'rolling of the r', but reactions on the whole were generally mixed, and there was little evidence to suggest that foreign speakers were dipping into the same adjective cluster as their British counterparts - no high occurrence, for example, of the words 'nasal', 'common', 'whingey', or 'wrong' to describe the Birmingham accent. In fact, whenever these or similar adjectives were used, it was often to describe other accents. One respondent, for example, criticised the RP speaker for talking 'with his nose' - a criticism that is usually levelled against the Birmingham accent.

These findings demonstrate that non-native speakers work to a totally different set of criteria when evaluating English accents, and do not discriminate on the same grounds as native English speakers. Judgements of the perceived beauty or ugliness of accents are based almost entirely upon a knowledge of the social connotations which they possess for those familiar with them. Aesthetic judgements of Birmingham English therefore do not appear to be based upon any inherent qualities of unpleasantness. Brummie is not ugly. Far from it, foreign people unaware that it is the working-class accent of a formerly heavily-industrialised area, and who are not bombarded with stereotypical images of Birmingham speakers on a daily basis by the media, find it a very attractive accent indeed.

Find out more about Brummie and Birmingham:
www.virtualbrum.co.uk
www.birmingham.gov.uk
www.birminghamuk.com

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