I’m listening to an audiobook series at the moment, and the lady who is narrating has an affectation that is really starting to annoy me. She has quite a posh English accent, and frequently says her ‘s’es as if through clenched teeth, so they come out as ‘sh’. So ‘sex’ becomes ‘sheksh’, ‘sparrow’ ‘shparrow’ etc. I realise that I’ve only ever heard women with this affectation, including my mother on occasion, and this narrator only does this when narrating or describing female characters.

What is it called? Where did it come from? Is it meant to indicate steely resolve? Is it because the posh classes try to talk without moving their jaws? This narrator also has a wheezy Keith Richardesque quality to her voice that makes all the characters sound like 75 year old chain smokers. For the first couple of books I kept getting startled whenever their was any physical activity (including the aforementioned ‘sheksh’) and would have to remind myself that the main character was meant to be in his 30s.