Why the Bristol accent won’t die out

Geoff Davis is founder of the Facebook page The Professor of Bristolian and is on the lookout for a publisher for his new book, A Bristolian in Sardinia.

I couldn’t help smiling when I saw the map that accompanied Bristol24/7’s recent article Is Bristol losing its accent?. Although the bit about the tourists’ guide to Bristol is not my work, the rest most certainly is and the map first appeared on my Professor of Bristolian Facebook page.

I must confess that for some of the districts on the map I tried to be consistent with the spellings used in that little guide to Bristolian speech, A Dictionary of Bristle. I was actually beginning to question my sanity when I was creating the map and I wondered if I was ‘immaturing with age’, to use a phrase first coined by Harold Wilson.

But to return to the question: is Bristol losing its accent? I don’t think it is, although I do agree broadly with much that was written in the aforementioned article.

However, I don’t think that there’s anything especially new in the observation that the Bristol accent is less prevalent around the city centre or in those well-heeled fairly central districts like Clifton or Redland.

Along with Stoke Bishop and Sneyd Park in the north west of the city, these were always the kind of districts that professional people gravitated towards when moving to Bristol for career reasons.

It is no surprise then that there are parts of the city where you’re less likely to hear the Bristol accent. This was also very much the case in the 1970s when I was still very young.

As a schoolboy I attended QEH on Jacob’s Wells Road, now private but it was a direct grant grammar school when I was there. That was back in the late 1960s but there were certainly attempts made then by some of the teaching staff to soften any perceived Bristol accents and any grammatical errors in speech were quickly and sometimes ruthlessly corrected!

Nevertheless, because I remained loyal to the working class friends I had in Brentry, where I grew up, and in the neighbouring district of Henbury, and because my friends tended to speak with very noticeable if not strong Bristol accents, I never entirely lost my own accent. Furthermore, I became rather adept at imitating the variations I heard in the accent from my fellow Bristolians.

While it’s true that certain dialect words and phrases, like “ow bist?” (for “how are you?”) and “thees cassen’t do that!” (for “you can’t do that), are very rarely heard in ordinary conversation nowadays, unlike when I was growing up, I am convinced that the strongly developed sense of humour of most Bristolians is likley to preserve the treasures of the dialect.

Bristolians are not so lacking in self-awareness that we do not realise that there’s a rather comical element to a broad Bristol accent, along with the liberal use of dialect words and phrases, and we enjoy sending ourselves up.

The Professor of Bristolian Facebook page is full of this kind of humour and it’s interesting to note how the page’s most enthusiastic followers tend to be from areas like Southmead, Henbury, Lawrence Weston, St George, Knowle West and Hartcliffe – all areas where many true Bristolians live.

However, it must be said that we do groan if someone from outside of Bristol tries to take the mickey out of the accent and gets it hopelessly wrong (as is usually the case).

I can remember that as a young man I used to tease my dear late departed mother by speaking in very ungrammatical broad Bristolian. When she tried to correct me I would respond with something like: “Ark at she! Cor blige! That ain’t never right is it arr muh? Bleed nell!”.

She would then immediately burst into fits of laughter and realise that she was on to a lost cause.

What is encouraging, especially in relation to the fact that 40 years ago the BBC would have gone to the ends of the earth to avoid employing a presenter with a Bristol accent, is how the likes of Stephen Merchant, Josie Gibson and Ian Holloway have become familiar faces on British television and have never tried to change or soften their Bristol accents.

Furthermore, if the Bristol accent isn’t “cool” then it’s wonderfully ironic that two of the people who have done so much to contribute to Bristol’s reputation as a “cool” city, the musician Tricky and Banksy (judging by the narration on Exit Through The Gift Shop), both have strong Bristol accents.

So, is Bristol losing its accent? No. Certainly not on the evidence that I’ve heard on my recent returns to my native city. It’s obviously changing a little but that’s inevitable. Despite the way that the accent is perceived by some, many think of it as a warm and friendly accent that is relatively easy on the ear.

As long as Bristolians retain their sense of pride and their sense of fun, I am sure that the Bristol accent is safe for decades to come.