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A few weeks ago while driving I tuned in to BBC Radio 4 and there was a great programme on (no, not ‘The Archers’), called ‘A Journey through English’. It follows the ‘longest continuous train journey in Britain’, from Aberdeen to Penzance, and describes how English accents change as you travel from Scotland to the South West. I was particularly interested in the accents in and around the area where I live – Bristol, but also Somerset and Devon.
There was a lady from Somerset, who said that because of her accent people can think of her as a ‘country bumpkin‘. I thought it was a very amusing phrase well worth of a blog post.
Here are some more examples:
- A country bumpkin from Brittany, seduced by a corrupt banking system and the avarice of his bosses, or “a crook, a fraud and a terrorist”? These were the competing descriptions that a French court was asked to weigh in the case of Jérôme Kerviel, a rogue trader who almost laid low Société Générale, France’s second-biggest bank (The Economist).
- But, as the book shows, Mr Hun Sen’s ascent from country bumpkin to virtual deity, with little formal education, is remarkable (The Economist).
Confessions of the Linguistic Spy 