RIP RP

Goodbye RP
Let our words go free
Coo and howl
Lay flat your vowels
Ah ay ee
Goodbye RP
Tongue uncross your t’s
Slang and slur
Bah and burr
They thy thee
Goodbye RP Teachered tyranny
Speed this end
Our ows to bend...
Who were he wi’?


For all the untutored British accents, for the un-Queen’s English, for the inexorable drift away from the trad BBC voice. ‘RP’ is ‘Received Pronunciation’.

“It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed.” (A. Burrell, from ‘A Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary School, 1891’).