Comment: 鈥楤reksit鈥� or 鈥榖regzit鈥�? The question that divides a nation Published on: 14 August 2017 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Damien Hall discusses the effect of linguistic differences when forming impressions of others. , Lecturer in Linguistics, This article was originally published on . Read the . , Britain is divided. With the clock ticking on negotiations in Brussels, neither national leaders nor the wider public can agree on one of the most fundamental questions arising from the vote to leave the European Union: is it pronounced 鈥渂reksit鈥� or 鈥渂regzit鈥�? Linguistic differences are crucial when we form impressions of others. A funeral planning business set up a call centre in South Wales, at least partly because the accent was considered friendly. Less positively, after has demonstrated that a Birmingham or Liverpool accent can make British people think the speaker is unintelligent. The impulse to correlate differences is so strong that speakers can seize on any speech difference they hear, and connect it to some social difference. This duly happened with Brexit. Both 鈥渂reksit鈥� and 鈥渂regzit鈥� make sense in linguistic terms. British speakers who say 鈥渂reksit鈥� are likely to have a vocabulary-related (lexical) explanation: the word is made up of Br(itish)- + exit, and they pronounce the last part 鈥渆ksit鈥�. The explanation for 鈥渂regzit鈥�, on the other hand, is phonetic and phonological (to do with the way sounds are produced and arranged). In English, voiceless sounds (where the vocal cords don鈥檛 vibrate) can become voiced when they occur between two voiced sounds (in which the vocal cords vibrate). The voiceless 鈥渒s鈥� becomes a voiced 鈥済z鈥� in the case of 鈥淏rexit鈥�, since the sound falls between two vowels in the word 鈥渆xit鈥�. So either of these two pronunciations could be naturally produced by a native speaker of English. Neither one is intrinsically more correct than the other. Nor is there an obvious social reason why any given speaker would produce one or the other. Presence or lack of intervocalic voicing of voiceless consonants doesn鈥檛 differentiate UK accents, social classes or the sexes. And yet the difference between 鈥渂reksit鈥� and 鈥渂regzit鈥� is very prominent, as Twitter polls by historian demonstrate.
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