As a child, I grew up speaking the East Midlands dialect of English.

But I was led to believe that were I to “get on in life”, I would need to speak Standard Southern British English.

As I believed this, I willingly embraced it and now I mostly do speak SSBE.

But I’m somewhat bitter about needing to, even if I did willingly embrace it at the time because, as I was taught, I thought my own dialect was “unsophisticated”.

It wasn’t; it was just different, but in the 70s and 80s even local celebrities who made it big on the national stage were encouraged to drift linguistically towards London, and if they didn’t, that acted as a barrier.

It’s less the case now, but with the benefit of hindsight I do feel a bit resentful about it.

As times have changed, and as I don’t feel that I have anything to prove, I increasingly find myself drifting back towards the way I used to speak as a child.