Fionnuala Ward: I guess it’s time for elocution lessons to make a comeback?

The other day a pupil in my primary school answered a maths question by opting for the number “eigh-dy” with that “d” staying as still and quiet as snow, almost disappearing into the word but pulling up just short of the border.

This was in no way unusual. This American interloper has been tiptoeing into words all over the place for years now. But it’s what it does when it arrives on the scene, in its not quite silent way, that makes the heart sink. It sidles up to our unpretentious, unglamorous, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, soft Irish “t” and shoves it over a cliff.

The moment came and went without any response from me. I didn’t get the chance to interrogate the child, to question her pronunciation, to write the word up on the board and go through the sound or lack of sound of each individual letter slowly and painstakingly. Lucky escape for her.

A family member didn’t fare quite so well. They were young at the time, maybe six or seven, maybe younger come to think of it. Anyway, they asked me to pass the “bu-dd-er” at the table and oblivious to all family dynamics and without even pausing to catch a breath, I responded: “The WHAT?”

Man of Letters – Frank McNally on the Irish rebel origins of an extravagantly named Australian cricketer

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The chimes they are a-changing – Frank McNally on the joys of listening to church bells at night

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Jumping off the page – Lara Marlowe at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair

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Egg on face – Alison Healy on the Warwick Egg Incident

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But they’re over it now and we’re all back on talking terms.

I guess I have to come clean here and admit that I’m not immune to this transatlantic influence myself as you can no doubt tell from the “guessing” and the “coming clean”. My biggest downfall, though, is use of the collective “guys”.

“Guys, you’ll have to keep it down!”

“Guys, do you know where the copies are?”

That sort of thing.

Of course, the demise of accents and related colloquialisms hasn’t always warranted such serious bouts of reflection or consternation. I come from Navan and in the 1970s there was pretty much nothing in the country more prone to derision and ridicule than a Navan accent.

It was flat. It was emotionless. It took that run-of-the-mill “ah” sound and dragged every last morsel of life out of its slumped body.

One of the phrases she used to encourage her students to enunciate their vowels was ‘my father’s car is a ja-gu-ar’, which sadly never made it to Navan

In truth, the Na-a-a-van accent left those “ah”s in need of critical life support.

And because of this the Loreto primary school I attended set aside half an hour a week for elocution lessons. If it killed them, the nuns were going to get us speaking the Queen’s English and so we practised all those “oo” and “ee” sounds by learning to recite any number of poems with verve and gusto.

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn? And the tedding and the spreading of the straw for a bedding, And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, And the wine that tasted of tar

It was a woman from the town who gave those elocution lessons and my aunt from Dundalk did likewise in a handful of Loreto secondary schools around Dublin. One of the phrases she used to encourage her students to enunciate their vowels was “my father’s car is a ja-gu-ar”, which sadly never made it to Navan.

But these were dark days for any woman who wanted to work outside the home and no doubt they took whatever was out there and got on with it.

[ Just desserts – Fionnuala Ward on the joys of baking ]

[ Fright nights – Fionnuala Ward on scary films ]

There was also a kind of postcolonial, cultural inferiority complex at the time, which manifested itself in endeavouring to somehow out-posh our former posh overlords.

Accents are seen as a badge of honour now and an important indicator of identity and belonging. But their days in the sun may well be numbered. YouTube and TikTok have seen to that. And there’s a good chance there’s some other platform out there on the horizon just waiting to deliver the killer blow.

And so what to do? We are an ordinary Dublin school. If it’s happening with us, it’s happening elsewhere. And though it would be lovely to form a kind of phonetic militia, wandering around the corridors, challenging utterances of “compu-d-er” and the like, it’s just not possible to police every interaction.

Maybe it’s time for those elocution lessons to make a comeback. But this time with the emphasis on accents.

We could give it a go for say eigh-t days or eigh-t weeks but if it goes to anywhere near eigh-ty of either, we may throw our hats at it.

You can bet your bottom dollar on that!