h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I first noticed it some ten years ago... there was this silly shampoo advertisement on TV, in which a girl says to her brother:
"The point isssss, you only get one chansssse to make a firsssssst impressssssion".
Since then, more and more American women (I think especially those from the southern states) seem to have this impediment: they pronounce the letter 's' in a high-pitched, lengthy way that reminds an angry snake, ready to attack. It gives me the same sensation as the scraping of a blunt knife on a machine-washed dish: creeps all over.

The last few years, this impediment seems to affect British women too.
I've never heard a man doing this.

WHY???

Is that like saying 'tiss-you' instead of 'tish-you'?

Yes.

(Two weeks waiting for a reply and all I get is 'yes'! )
According to people who speak 'correct English' or received pronunciation, this is the proper way to say it and 'tishyou' is slovenly.
To this I say, "But you also tell us there is an 'r' in Newcastle, and we cannot say 'To boldly go'." Then I stab them.
In fact, all received pronunciation makes my skin crawl.

"Two weeks waiting for a reply and all I get is 'yes'!"

Oh Mandragora, such self-restraint, and then you spoil it by talking about stabbing people...

Sorry. I've never actually done it, but I've imagined it.

I've just remembered a film poster from the 70s, maybe for a bad horror film called "Squirm".

"If this film doesn't make your skin crawl, you've got it on too tight."

Hoho.

If you are here in Britain, you'll no doubt be familiar with the ravages of the 'BBC accent' (telling, eh?) and how the people who speak it are very sneery of what they call 'regional accents' (forgetting of course that RP began as one.) and those who speak them. Which of course is everyone.
Sorry for going on, but I really LOATHE it.

Join CARP- Campaign Against Received Pronunciation!

How many people know what received pronunciation is? And is it still there (devil's advocate mode moving in here)?

I was brought up in Lancashire and Yorkshire, but in a middle class family listening to Radio 4. My own description of my accent was "northern news-reader", but when I went to college in London somebody accused me of a west-country accent (!).

Three years in London and then ten in the Thames Valley had less impact on the accent than the pervasive US culture. And now I've been (back) in Manchester for more than a decade I'm still a northern news-reader.

Wherever I go there are accents, but I try not to do them down. What makes my intellectual skin crawl is "stupid talking". Not people who really don't know much, but people who think it's cool to talk as if they know nothing, who insult and often assault those who value knowledge and life and communication.

This got a little long...

I don't think RP is a natural accent anymore, in that people may start off with some elements of it but they have to adapt their speech to do it properly. Some people think I 'speak posh' because I pronounce most letters in a word. To me, speaking posh means making a point of lengthening A's, using outmoded constructions and always sounding like you're making an effort. I don't equate posh with correct speech.
I'm in the Midlands, right on the frontiers between North and Sarf. (This gets overlooked in discussions about the 'north-south divide'.) It's not a particularly interesting dialect- the sloppy version sounds really grim ('ay, ah Steve, av yoos gorreny?' for example). The only unique features I can think of are the word 'mardy' and the pronunciation of 'bus' as 'buzz'. I do that. I also tend to emphasise long vowel sounds in words like 'boots' and 'father', saying them in a deliberate way- making them sound slightly dullened and lasting longer than normal. When I encounter South-East people, they say I sound Brummie, which is bizarre...
I have a dislike of South-Eastern speech- I just don't like the way it sounds. When I visit our Glorious Capital, it always seems far too worried and rushed- plus there's all those snotty 'wry looks' at 'life in the North' by Londoners which appear in the dailies, and the idea that Nuneaton (o glorious homeland ) is in the North. Eh? I haven't met enough real people from there to form a valid opinion, though.
I had a Lancashire/Cheshire friend who no matter what he said made it amusing simply by how he said it. It had character.

Basic stupidity- there's something that should definately be stopped. There's quite a lot of it here (i.e. 'cos I did well at school and didn't speak Scumbag, I was posh).

Some Brit Bird wrote:

"Basic stupidity- there's something that should definately be stopped."

I can only add that ...

Basic misspelling is something that should *definitely* be stopped!

An American.

...in reply to Some Numerican,
Noah Webster should have been stopped.

On the subject of spelling, why take a perfectly good language and ruin it. How do you spell colour again, can you say veeeehickel for me one more time, and by the way when a burglar has robbed you you have been burgled not burglarized, why suffix ized onto every thing, oh by the way somebody please tell mr president its pronounced nuclear just as its written - not newcolor.

Sorry dont want to start a war here, (I'll leave that to uncle sam) I am pedant intolerant.