Will their accents change after marriage?

May 2018 sees The Wedding of the Year take place at Windsor Castle, Berkshire.  Prince Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, will marry Meghan Markle, former actress and United States’ Californian. Each of them speaks to the media with a fluent, calm, warm voice, but each has a completely different accent from the other. 

Will Harry and Meghan’s accents change?

In a previous newsletter, we explored Queen’s English and how Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has an accent that has changed and evolved over the last 65 years. Her son, Prince Charles speaks in a similar way to his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, but Charles’ sons, Princes William and Harry grew up in a very different world with wider exposure to people from a variety of social backgrounds, in the age of the internet, and speak with a more contemporary English accent. 

The influences on Harry’s accent over the years are numerous. Princess Diana, Prince Harry’s mother, spoke with the ‘Queen’s English’ accent – clipped and precise, which had an enduring influence in his early years but after Harry left Eton he joined the army at the age of 20 – becoming an officer in 2006 – and from that time mixed with a wide spectrum of people from many backgrounds and many accents. 

Prince Harry’s accent has neutralised a little after years mixing with soldiers of all ranks, working with charities in poorer regions of the world and spearheading the Invictus Games. The ‘insincere and distant’ qualities that had become associated with RP during the 1990s and early part of the 21st century appear to be have evaporated from Harry’s accent. 

A few years ago Received Pronunciation (RP) or Queen’s English, was an accent associated with privilege and elitism and was eschewed, even by some of those who were brought up surrounded by that accent. In the last decades, there has been a tendency to mix Queen’s English with an East London accent with the resultant accent being called ‘Estuary’ English. Today’s RP sounds less clipped and ringing than the ‘cut glass’ sound of the 20th century. And accents continue to evolve.

Our accents change to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the person to whom we are speaking and listening. David Crystal, linguist and writer, says assimilations – as it is called when we adopt accent or speech styles from others – are perfectly normal and that it is difficult to speak without them. 

Fundamentally, we want to belong to a certain group and our accent is our ‘badge’ of belonging. Subconsciously, we modify our speech to ‘fit in’ with the group we are with. Meghan Markle will want to be part of Harry’s world and is likely to increasingly adopt her new husband’s speech patterns and accent. Equally, Harry is likely to make changes to his accent to be in harmony with his wife’s speech style. 

As David Crystal says, “It’s not that one accent replaces another. Rather, features of two accents combine to make a third. When an RP speaker is influenced by a regional accent or vice versa, the result has been called ‘modified RP’”. 

There is very likely to be modified Californian accent to be heard in the new Mountbatten-Windsor household, post 19 May 2018, therefore, and equally, a modified RP accent heard from the other half of the new royal couple. And what could this sound like..? 

“You like potato and I like potahto, 

You like tomato and I like tomahto

Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, 

Let’s call the whole thing off.”

Despite the words that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang, back in 1937,

Harry and Meghan are highly likely to accommodate each others’ accents – and I don’t think they’ll call the whole thing off!

For more information on accents or speech, please get in touch.