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Parents express shock at son’s inexplicable accent

Ben and Stephanie Cooper, a very ordinary middle-class white couple who live in suburban London, have expressed concern at the accent that their teenage son Michael has inexplicably adopted.

Although the Coopers and their son were born in south-east England and have lived there all their lives, 15-year-old Michael has taken to speaking with a cod-Jamaican inflection, crossed with an estuary English accent that bears no relation to the way either Ben or Stephanie speak.

"It started about six months ago, not long after the new school year began," Ben said. "I think I noticed it when I came home once and asked him how his day at school was. He said it was 'a'ight'. 'A'ight'? I was shocked. When he left the house in the morning he had a full compliment of consonants. Suddenly, and without warning, the 'r' and 'l' had been erased from his vocabulary."

Our experts immediately rushed to the scene and put Michael through a rigorous battery of linguistic tests. Shockingly, the boy's other acute anomalies include changing all "th" sounds to "v", describing things of which he approves as "safe", and needlessly adding "like" and "man" to his statements, although the way he pronounces them makes them sound more like "lahk" and "mun".

"That's certainly not the way we brought him up to speak," a visibly-shaken Stephanie told our emotional support councillor. "We've spent years buying a new car every year to reinforce our social standing, but I dread to think what will happen to us if Michael speaks to one of the neighbours."

Ben and Stephanie have themselves done considerable research into where this baffling dialect might have originated.

"We've never even been to the Caribbean," Ben said. "I mean, of course he's got black friends, but they were all born in Britain and speak with perfectly normal London accents. Well, when they're round here they do, anyway."

"We've pleaded with him to stop, but he told us to 'just like chill man'," Stephanie sobbed. "My God, soon he'll be doing interviews for jobs or university. He'll end up in a pea-canning factory, I know he will."

When we spoke to Michael himself, however, he did not seem to think this was a problem. Clicking his tongue against his top teeth with a sharp intake of breath, he told us: "Raaas, yeah, well, just, like, whatever, man."

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