What is Jay Rayder's speaking accent?

June 18, 2009 7:35 PM

BritFilter: What is Jay Rayder's speaking accent? (He's the bearded man in this video clip.)

I wasn't able to learn where he was born or spent his childhood. If it's relevant, he graduated from Leeds University.

posted by Joe Beese to media & arts (16 comments total)

It sounds just any old Home Counties accent to me, but that style of accent could easily apply to anyone that has been brought up in a home with people with lots of money. It's the stereotypical 'upper class, Ranger Rover and house in the country' accent' and doesn't necessarily accurately reflect a region.

I couldn't pick up any definite regional inflections from it, to be honest.
posted by Brockles at 7:51 PM on June 18

Yup, it's a generic upper middle class accent that doesn't really denote any region, but is more likely to be spoken by people in the south-east of the country.
posted by Gamel at 7:56 PM on June 18

He is from London, he is upper-middle class Jewish.
His mother is Claire Rayner, a noted agony aunt, in the UK. She was born and bred in London, as was her son.
posted by the_epicurean at 7:56 PM on June 18

Do British upper-class accents have less regional variation than lower-class ones?

In America, "Texas rich" sounds a great deal more like "Texas poor" than it does "Massachussets rich".
posted by Joe Beese at 8:15 PM on June 18

Upper-class and rich don't mean the same thing. Especially not in Britain.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:42 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

Do British upper-class accents have less regional variation than lower-class ones?

Yes, most definitely. The difference between, for example, a working-class Glaswegian accent and a Cockney (London) accent is huge; between a posh Glaswegian and a posh Londoner, not so much.
posted by Gamel at 9:16 PM on June 18

That's "standard english", aka BBC English, aka RP. How can you not know that? It's the bland vanilla of English accents. Any middle class person from within 100 miles of London talks like that.
posted by w0mbat at 10:40 PM on June 18

There are people with 'posh' accents where I work and, although they're from all over the UK, their accents are indistinguishable from one another. This is not so much to do with where they were born or grew up, but with the type of school they went to. A good private school or a public school (which in the UK is the poshest type of private school) will teach kids from an early age to speak in a certain way, with the RP accent.

Us 'common people' in the office, though, have a huge variety of accents. I'd also add that, speaking as I do with flat East Midlands vowels, I am often treated as if I'm thick by both (a) posh people and (b) many southerners in general.
posted by essexjan at 12:46 AM on June 19

RP is "Received pronunciation"
posted by stuartmm at 12:56 AM on June 19

Thirding that that's the standard private school accent. I know nominally Scottish people who were privately schooled in Edinburgh and Glasgow who have that accent, or something very close to it.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:21 AM on June 19

w0mbat: "That's "standard english", aka BBC English, aka RP. How can you not know that? It's the bland vanilla of English accents. Any middle class person from within 100 miles of London talks like that."

Well, to these American ears, class-wise, Rayder sounds "higher" than Mick Jagger [Dartford, 15 miles east, "middle class" - Wikipedia, Dartford Grammar School, London School of Economics] but "lower" than Christopher Hitchens [Portsmouth, 65 miles southwest, mother: "If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it" - Wikipedia, The Leys School, Balliol College].

Those may be bad examples*, but they're the only ones I could think of offhand.

* I seem to recall reading that Jagger "lowered" his accent and that people were scandalized by this, but I could be wrong.
posted by Joe Beese at 2:17 AM on June 19

You're right about Jagger, Joe Beese. Early interviews show him to have a standard middle-class south of England accent (not quite RP but fairly well-spoken). He later roughed this up to sound more 'Estuary English' with glottal stops and dropped aitches.

Compare 1967 with 1977. Now he's been knighted, Sir Mick is back to being a big posher.

Added bonus: with 1977 you get the opening credits to the OGWT.
posted by essexjan at 3:32 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

You know his name is Rayner right?
posted by JPD at 4:53 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

Joe Beese, I'd say that in America the same holds true -- Texas upper-middle-class (which I speak) sounds more like Massachusetts UMC than Texas lower class sounds like Mass. lower class. It is, like Rayner's accent, fairly indistinguishable regionally. Almost nobody can ever guess I'm from Texas by hearing my voice, but I sound like my mother (4th generation Texan) and the majority of people I went to school with (Texas public schools K-law school).
Even most of the middle class and higher people I know with Texas accents are, to some extent, making a deliberate choice, like Jagger did, to sound that way. My uncles do the hick thing in everyday conversation, but when they want to intimidate someone over the phone all of a sudden they sound like newscasters from the Midwest.
posted by katemonster at 7:14 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

essexjan: "You're right about Jagger, Joe Beese. Early interviews show him to have a standard middle-class south of England accent (not quite RP but fairly well-spoken). He later roughed this up to sound more 'Estuary English' with glottal stops and dropped aitches."

heh heh... Our icons prefer to travel in the other direction:

Madonna, 1982. Madonna, 1995.
posted by Joe Beese at 7:45 AM on June 19

Yeah there's nothing special about his accent at all. He probably went to public school or to private school, but that's about it. It's not really, really posh, but he doesn't drop any letters or relax in any noticeable way. I have friends with a variety of accents from cut-glass to very estuary and their accent really has nothing to do with money, just background.

I have to say that my accent shifts a fair amount depending on who I'm talking to, where I am (the US or the UK) and what I'm doing teaching versus having a drink for example, which apparently is quite common in estuary accents.
posted by ob at 10:33 AM on June 19