regional UK accents

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

short article but I found it quite interesting

 

A FIERCE pride in one’s regional roots can be found throughout England. Increased mobility and the ubiquitousness of television and radio have done surprisingly little to homogenise the distinctive accents and dialects that characterise the different parts of the country. Some are spreading; some retreating. Some are mutating; some are even getting stronger. But, overall, the pronunciation and prosody of spoken English seems to vary as much as ever across the country of its birth.

 

Liverpool’s “Scouse” dialect has long fascinated linguists, with its throaty, guttural utterances that emerged from a mixture of Irish, Scots, Welsh and Lancashire accents in the late 19th century. For example, Liverpudlians tend to add a breathy “h” sound to words that end with a “t”, lending their distinctive intonation to “what”, “that” and “but”. According to Kevin Watson, who lectures in “sociophonetics” at the University of Lancaster, this is not lax articulation but rather a conscious effort to soften the uttered word through what he calls “plosive lenition”. Older Liverpudlians limit their use of it to words of a single syllable but younger ones have increased the individuality of the Scouse accent by extending it to “chocolate”, “certificate” and “aggregate”, he says.

 

Although some aspects of south-eastern “Estuary English” have infiltrated northern parts—replacing the “th” in “think” and “nothing” with an “f” sound, for example—regional accents have largely survived in northern cities, thanks to a relative lack of immigration combined with chirpy civic pride, reckons Paul Kerswill, a colleague of Mr Watson.

 

Nevertheless, Mr Kerswill’s research finds that the distribution of accents across the country is undergoing big changes. While Scouse’s Merseyside redoubt is static even as the accent grows stronger, variations of the north-eastern “Geordie” accent, articulated by Cheryl Cole—and cited as a reason for the pop singer’s recent removal as a judge on the American version of “The X Factor”, a talent show—are not only retaining their distinctiveness but conquering fresh territory (see map).

 

The Brummie accent, a nasal drone that suggests despondency to anyone outside Birmingham who is lucky enough to hear it, is also spreading as its speakers move west into Wales, where it threatens to snuff out the melodic local lilt. That is because the accents with which teenagers speak are most influenced by their peers, not parents, teachers, television or radio, says Mr Kerswill.

 

Nowhere is this truer than in the capital. The traditional Cockney accent is fading and is no longer so common even within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church in east London, where by legend it was born. Mr Kerswill predicts that, by 2030, Cockney-influenced Estuary English will dominate most of the east and south-east, as Londoners move out. In the capital itself a new dialect, inspired by recent immigration, is emerging: “multicultural London English”, heavily influenced by Jamaican with undertones of west African and Indian. Mocked by Ali G, a comic character created by Sacha Baron Cohen, whose catchphrase was “Is it cos I is black?”, it is now spoken by teenagers of all hues, united by their pride in urban grime.

 

 

[Swan Red]

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[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

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[Swan Red]

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[boohog]

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[Tosh]

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