The BBC presenter Alex Scott says she is proud of her accent, after Baron Jones of Birmingham accused her of “not pronouncing her ‘g’s” (“Presenter hits out at peer over ‘poor elocution’ insult”, News, last week). Not so long ago, far from being a habit of the working classes, dropping the final “g” was a privilege of the aristocracy, as in “Huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ ”. I can’t recall that anyone objected to it then. Patricia Hodges, Bromsgrove, WorcestershireSponsoredContent over styleWhen I took part in a radio interview with Jones, he claimed he was objecting to Scott’s “poor pronunciation”, not to her accent — despite my clarification that “g-dropping” is a feature of her accent. He then selected two other women

Source: The Times August 07, 2021 23:00 UTC