This turned up the other day

Estuary English – the pride of Kent
Susie Rushton’s Notebook:
The Independent, Tuesday 7 June 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/columnists/susie-rushton-estuary-english-ndash-the-pride-of-kent-2293831.html

“Let me make my own declamation of regional pride. Estuary is also the accent of people who, like me, originate from the south east of England. I’m sure Surrey and Essex can claim it as their own, but I like to think Kent is the heartland of Estuary.

Like the accent, it is unlovely and downwardly mobile in places, but quite charming and natural in others. As Rosewarne observed, we speakers of Estuary use rather too many question tags, always asking “isn’t it?” (or “don’t I?” in the more extreme version).

And if I didn’t use a glottal stop in place of the ‘t’ in words like “Ga’wick” or “Sco’land” before spending eight years at a Kent school, I defini’ley did by the time I left, and to this day, otherwise fair-minded people feel quite within their rights to mock it. Let them. We might not have any decent football teams, but that doesn’t mean we should be ashamed of our – very popular – accent, awight?”

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©Sidney Wood and SWPhonetics, 1994-2014

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