Priti Patel, PLEASE recognise and use the letter G!

Aaargh!! There is no 'proper' accent! It's outrageous to try to impose personal preferences on how other people pronounce words. Non native English speakers often retain their own accent which can be charming eg French.

Please don’t misunderstand - I love different accents (I’m Welsh, for a start) and agree that of course there is no ‘proper’ accent. This is an accuracy argument.

Argh you still don't get it. Accents arise from different pronunciations of various vowels and consonants. These reflect regional variations among other things including social class and education.
Forget the spelling of words. Orthography came long after spoken language.

Dropping or accentuating the 'g' at the end of 'ing' is a regional thing.

The 'g' should be barely pronounced in received pronunciation.

Yes, Priti Patel tends to emphasise the 'n' as if the 'g' is non-existent. I've met other people who do same.

However, it's what she says that matters.

When I think of how the queen USED to talk, she pronounced words in ways I'm sure were wrong.

Of course, she has toned it down, or commoned it up since then.

I think that we are fortunate that we have so many rich dialects in our country, and I welcome the fact that we hear so many of them on tv and radio, instead of the ‘received pronunciation’ that we used to hear. However something that really grates on me is the current trend to pronounce words such as ‘Matter’ as ‘Ma-uh’. I can cope with a dropped ‘g’, but bring back the glottal stop.

There is no 'wrong'! Received pronunciation was discredited and dropped long ago.

Phoenix
Thank you for your PM pointing out my mistake.
I have checked the snowflake thread and you are quite right, I had misread and I apologise.

People tend to forget that correct enunciation assists those who are hard of hearing.
A lack of care about the way you speak is a form of discrimination....(that should put the cat among the pigeons)

Can't tell you how many programmes DH and I turn off due to mumbling /background noise/regional accents. What with my tinnitus and his hearing aids, lazy modern speech loses us.

Thank you annsixty glad that's been cleared up

Priti Patel makes as little effort to speak in a comprehensive manner as she does to understand what is going on in this country and act accordingly.

Like the rest of her colleagues, she has been given a job well beyond her capability because of her blind loyalty to the Vote Leave government.

Come to Wales there aren’t many g’s here.
Watch the One Show Alex Jones never ends words with a g.

I have no problem with regional accents, but agree with Lexisgranny about the glottal stop! I also ponder one of lifes mysteries, namely:

Why is it usually the people who drop the letter H at the beginning of a word, refer to it as "Haitch"

It's dialectal! Oh no another massive topic.

Jane10

There is no 'wrong'! Received pronunciation was discredited and dropped long ago.

Should that be wron?

There is still such a thing as Received Pronunciation, even if it isn’t called that any longer. Anyone with an ear for language recognises it when they hear it.

Sorry Jane10 I'm inclined to disagree, but happy to be proved wrong.

Which particular dialects habitually drop their aitches?

The overpronounced g in ing endings used to be a feature of English as it is spoken in Derbyshire. Where you could even hear singing with both g's pronounced very audibly.

Personally, I am more irritated by the extra r inserted into words such as draw, which an increasing number of people pronounce as drarw these days.

Anyone else annoyed by drawr, drawring drarwers etc.?

Sigh again. This subject goes far beyond a forum thread. I suggest that if people really want to try to understand why other people speak in a way that differs from themselves, that they study linguistics,phonetics, morphology and syntax and cross reference those with sociology, psychology and geography.

That would defeat the object, though, it seems.

Jane10 "cool your jets" as a Scottish friend of mine used to say!

Right, I have no problem with people using words such as "owt" or "nowt" that is dialect.

But Ms Patel dropping every G bugs me, because it is just plain lazy!

Loving ‘cool your jets’ as an example of Scottish usage.
I absolutely know the difference between accent and dialect and the fascinating overlapping hinterland of Standard English (God knows, I’ve taught it for years).
Thinking about this particular case, I think that the issue with PP is that in every other respect, she speaks Standard English with a neutral accent. That’s why the ‘g’ issue stands out (with some of us).

I give up. I'm not cross just very disappointed with you all. ?

Sorry that you are disappointed Jane10, life is full of disappointments, but hey ho, we just carry on.