What a shame. Queen Elizabeth's grandchildren are not quite so "posh" anymore.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth has acknowledged that her granddaughter Zara Phillips no longer speaks the Queen's English.
Royal biographer Kenneth Rose revealed that during a conversation he had with the queen about a recent study claiming her accent had become "less posh," HerMajesty made a reference to Zara's less than eloquent speech.
He told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, "The queen is not the least bit interested in how she is perceived by her subjects or how her accent sounds. But she did say that her grandchildren spoke Estuary English. I took this as a reference to the children of the Princess Royal, Zara and Peter Phillips."
The Queen's English is a form of pronunciation of the English language also referred to as Received Pronunciation (RP) and perceived as being spoken by the upper classes.
Over recent years a "less posh" form of RP has developed called Estuary English, a term referring to a Southern middle-class accent displaying working-class or cockney phonetic features.
Zara has reportedly come in for a bit of playful stick after she spoke with a typical Estuary accent during her acceptance speech for her BBC Sports Personality of the Year award in December.
