Researchers from York University, Lancaster University and New York University surveyed more than 14,000 native English speakers and compared the way they speak today with findings from similar studies 70 years ago. The conclusions are somewhat “mixed”, said Dr George Bailey, from the University of York’s Department of Language and Linguistics. “The important thing for me is that the concerns you hear about how we’re all going to be talking the same whether it’s 40, 50 or 100 years from now … those concerns are over-dramatic,” he said. “The characteristics of the northern dialect hold their own. We won’t all sound the same.” The research mapped people’s responses to questions about pronunciation, grammar and the use of certain words against where they lived between the ages of 4 and 13 – the key years for acquiring language and developing the way we speak. Bailey said they discovered that a particular feature of the dialect was creeping north. People all over England used to pronounce “cut” and “foot” so as to rhyme, but this changed in the 17th century and now the rhyming pronunciation is a northern thing. The research shows that the dividing line is creeping north, with people from counties in and around the Midlands, such as Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, switching from a ‘northern’ to a ‘southern ». However, there were also signs that northern features continued to flourish and spread. For example, the rhyme of “fur” and “bear” is as prevalent as ever in Lancashire and Merseyside, and is even spreading, emerging in Hull and Hartlepool on the east coast of England. The reasons for this are hard to pin down, Bailey said. “A lot of times, language changes because of face-to-face contact. they are different background speakers that move. When you talk to someone, you often subconsciously gravitate towards them, and these short-term effects can accumulate over a long period of time.” The researchers hope in the future to look at census data to track population movement and migration patterns and see how they correlate with pronunciation trends. Whether someone pronounces the “g” in “finger” and “singer” is another key indicator of dialect, with the silent “g” in singer now the most common form. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST In the 1950s, speakers who articulated the ‘g’ in both words were mainly in the north-west of England and the West Midlands, but new research has found that this pronunciation is spreading beyond its traditional boundaries, in Herefordshire, the Preston, on the Ribble. valley and Nottinghamshire. Similarly, the research found that the term “ice pig” instead of “snorting lollipop”, which was thought to be used exclusively in Liverpool, was now common in North Wales. Bailey said the research showed there was still a rich variety of accents in the UK. “People often have this idea that we’re all going to speak the same and the London accent is spreading. We found some evidence for this, but we also found the opposite. “Accents are still a huge part of people’s identity. It is like an indicator of who we are and where we are from, not only geographically but also socially. There’s real pride in it and we’re not going to give it up lightly.” The research is published in the Journal of Linguistic Geography.
