Prejudice and bigotry should be removed

IT IS difficult to believe that the reported comments of Beryl Bainbridge about regional accents, were made by somebody so involved with the English language. Languages are living, fluid entities, in a constant process of change. Every major European language have regional accents, and to call for all or any of these accents to be abolished is an impossibility. To support regional dialects over accents is nonsense; languages do not have dialects but not accents. Beryl Bainbridge's comments imply that she herself has no accent, whereas she has consciously adopted the accent of the South East based middle class, which is unfortunately, elevated above all others by its adherents. It is not regional accents that should go, but the prejudiced and bigoted attitudes that assume that people with regional accents are unintelligent and worthless.