Op th' rivva wiffout a paddo, bruvva: Estuary Angst

While critics blame American-inspired laziness and anti-intellectualism for the rise of EE, the accent itself differs considerably more from North American speech than RP does. (So much for the theory that electronic media beget linguistic uniformity.) But perhaps the most striking, and most disdained, characteristic of EE is its glottal stops. These are present in many British accents, all of them irredeemably lower class. (Cockney also features glottal stops [e.g. "wa-uh bah-oh" for "water bottle"], which has lead some to conclude that EE and Cockney are synonyms. However, detailed linguistic analysis proves that this is not the case.) Their growing popularity in England contradicts a truism of linguistics, that phonetics evolve from complex to simple. Glottal stops demand a lot of muscular effort; avoidance of same is why North Americans say "thuh sea" but "thee ocean." EE speakers' tendency to revel in this and other phonetic caprices elicits howls of dismay from the gatekeepers of English culture.

More sinister is EE's rough treatment of venerable regional accents such as Scouse; even Glaswegian is feeling the heat. This is the dark side of the EE phenomenon; losing RP may not be so great a tragedy, but the threat to organic traditions is and should be a matter for concern. "The rise of Estuary English is unsettling," John Mullan points out, "because it seems to tell us that we do not come from anywhere in particular."

However, J.C. Wells, University College London linguist and an authority on EE, believes that regional traditions are holding their own. "It is my impression that certain features are changing," he writes, "but others are being maintained."

Whatever the future holds, no-one can deny that British English is taking another of its periodic radical evolutionary turns. Like a solar eclipse, the passing of a comet, or a millennial New Year's Eve, it's a rare privilege and a scientific windfall to be present to experience and document the event. Imagine the enjoyment that George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion , would have derived from the sight of all those public-school alums, earnestly practising their glottal stops and diphthongs.

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