The First Thing They'll Ask ...

[Dave Monroe]

"'Come, Sir,-- what's the first thing they'll ask when you get back to 
County Durham?  Eh?  'Did ye see them rahde the Eeahr at Taahburn?'
   "Is it too many nights alone on top of that fam'd Hill in Greenwich? can 
this man, living in one of the great Cities of Christendom, not know how to 
behave around people?--  Dixon decides to register only annoyance.  'Nooah, 
the first thing they'll ask is, 'Did thoo understand 'em the weeay they 
talk, down theere...?'"
   "Oh, damme, I say, I didn't mean,--" (M&D, Ch. 3, 15)

>From Lisa Picard, Dr. Johnson's London (New York: St. Martin's, 2001),  Ch. 
23, "Manners, Speech, Conversation and Customs," pp. 262-73 ...

"There was no way, such as broadcasting, of imposing a uniform 'received' 
speech.  Perhaps the most widely admired speaker was David Garrick, but he 
apparently spoke with the accent of his native Staffordshire.  The examples 
of this solecism merely confuse.  Garrick as said to guilty of pronouncing 
gird, birth and firm as gurd, burth and furm.  Well yes ....  Many vowels 
seem to have changed their values...." (p. 267)

"English as spoken 'amoing the better sort in London ' was, however, 
beginning to emerge as the proper way to speak, so long as it avoided the 
worst of Cockney ...." (p. 268)

As she does for so many aspects of English life, esp., of course, in the 
capital (Dr. Johnson's London ...), Picard (not to be confused with either a 
certain starship captain or the titular character of a current indie film) 
provides all sorts of interesting examples here.  A handy quick reference on 
virtually every annotation I've made so far ...

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