Regional Accents 'still Thriving' in UK

Despite the progressively homogeneous nature of society, regional accents in Britain are increasingly getting prevalent according to academic studies.

According to forecasts, accents would disappear and merge into a national way of speaking, albeit with some class and regional variations.

However, experts found that accents like Geordie, Scouse, Mancunian, and Brummie are actually becoming more distinct.

But, nuances between districts within the big cities are fading.

Outside the cities, the hundreds of accents that once distinguished small towns and rural districts are gradually being subsumed into regional "super-accents".

Experts have identified eight to 10 of these likely to predominate within the next 40 years-they include estuary English, the burr of the southwest and separate accents in the West Midlands, Yorkshire and north and south Wales.

And the resilience of urban accents is most evident in northern England, i.e., in the south only two cities - London and Bristol - have strong accents of their own.

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"People want to protect their identity," the Telegraph quoted Dominic Watt, a lecturer in forensic speech science at York University, as telling a newspaper.

"You could be parachuted into pretty much any British city and the shops look the same, people dress the same and have similar pastimes and interests. What still makes these places separate and distinct is the dialect and accent," he added.

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Source-ANI
TRI