I can't say that I've ever come across that, but I'd think that that was what Ros Lilley did - she'd have stuck out like a sore thumb if she was the only person in Meadowfield talking with a RP accent. I suppose you can say that Joan was true to herself because she didn't change the way she spoke to try to fit in at the CS, but I think most people would have done what Ros did -= some kids like to be the odd one out at school, but most would find it very difficult.

_________________
We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/

Code-switching, in other words. I used to do it, I got bullied at school for my 'posh' accent, having moved up from Brighton, so I put on a Chester accent when I was there and spoke normally with my mum at home. It got awkward when I was out with Mum and someone from school saw me.

I wonder if the Scandinavian girls at the school picked up Welsh accents at all. I say this because any football fans on here who've heard Ole Gunnar Solskjær (Norwegian) or Peter Schmeichel (Danish) speak will notice they sound very Mancunian. Likewise, Thomas Myhre (Norwegian) and Thomas Gravesen (Danish) picked up Scouse accents when playing for Everton. I wonder if it's because the Scandi countries are north of Scotland and Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic are related to English (though Icelandic is different to the other three). I had a go at Norwegian on Duolingo and it amazed me how many words were either the same or very similar to English. You could see the obvious links.

I hate how Highland Twins was hacked to bits but one advantage of the abridged version: NO PHONETIC ACCENTS. It got very tiresome trying to read Flora and Fiona's speech. And I've never met an Irish person who talks like any of EBD's Irish characters either!

I think the first noticeable one was Jan Molby, who used to talk broad Scouse when he was at Liverpool . Jesper Olsen was at United at the same time, and I don't remember him sounding noticeably Mancunian, but Ole certainly does, and Schmeichel. Northern English accents are supposed to have links to the North Germanic languages, so maybe there's something in it. You certainly don't hear, say, Eric Cantona sounding like he comes from Stretford! I tried to learn a bit of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish (er, all at once) before a tour of Scandinavia, and words like fjell (fell), dal (dale) and barn (bairn) are so similar to Northern English.

Having read Malory Towers, St Clare's and the Chalet School, I assumed that my French teacher at secondary school would be A Real Frenchwoman, and was rather disappointed to find out that she was no more French than I was. I always find it odd that, apart from Maria Marani briefly, the CS never employed a native speaker to teach German. I'm sure Miss Denny had a perfect accent , but an Englishwoman trying to teach French girls to speak German sounds a bit messy.

_________________
We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/

In linguistics we were taught “Good butter and good cheese is good English and good Fries” as an example of languages with same roots.

Does the GGBP version of Highland Twins use the phonetic accents?

Yes. Basically a straight reprint of the Chambers editions.

(I was tempted to say "we ton't know"...)

My first French teacher was a German with a strong German accent. She had also taught my mother 25 years earlier presumably with an even stronger one.

Yes! I'd forgotten about Molby's Scouse accent. The only foreign footballer I can think of who ISN'T Scandinavian, but who has a northern English twang (Wigan?) is Roberto Martinez, who's Spanish. He's lived in the UK for ages and the way he says 'centre half' sounds almost Scouse.

We had a French language assistant at our high school, and a German one, but all our language teachers were British. At university, it was more mixed. My tutor, who was a real-life Bill in terms of personality, was German and so were a few of the other lecturers, and all the language assistants were (and one was Austrian and I couldn't understand a word she said at first!)

To add to the mix - I was born in Sunderland and brought up in Carlisle (university was Leicester then lived in Birmingham before moving to London in the early 1970s). We spoke RP at home (albeit with a north-eastern accent) and Cumbrian at school. I would have expected my residual accent to be North-West but when I started having to record myself was surprised to find that my residual accent was that of my grandmother who was born in Newcastle (upon Tyne that is) but lived, as an adult, in Sunderland.

_________________
"Lack of planning on your part does not necessarily mean an emergency on mine"

"Association does not infer causality"