Re: Guardian 23000

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> When I inquired whether the reason I have trouble understanding the
> dialogue on the TV series *Metrosexuality* is that it's in Estuary
> English, John Wells, who is one of the leading English dialectologists,
> replied rather snippily that there's no such thing as Estuary English

John Wells, eh?

Would that be Professor John Wells of UCL's Department of Phonetics and
Linguistics?

If so, an assertion that "there's no such thing as Estuary English"
seems somewhat at odds with what he says here:

    "Estuary English is a new name. But it is not a new phenomenon.
    It is the continuation of a trend that has been going on for five
    hundred years or more - the tendency for features of popular
    London speech to spread out geographically (to other parts of the
    country) and socially (to higher social classes). The erosion of
    the English class system and the greater social mobility in
    Britain today means that this trend is more clearly noticeable
    than was once the case."

        http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/whatis.htm

A new name, but not a new phenomenon, eh?  It sure seems that the author
of that paragraph believes in the existence of Estuary English, even if
he isn't all that keen on the label itself.