The two remaining places where people have traditional English accents

[Mad Prof]

<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/16/blackburn-bristol-traditional-english-accent/>

The two remaining places where people have traditional English accents

Study finds people have stopped using the rhotic R for several hundred
years, with it now becoming associated with rural living

Joe Pinkstone, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
16 December 2023 • 12:39pm

Blackburn and Bristol are the two last places with traditional English
accents, a study has found.

The English accent used to be dominated by people who pronounced the letter
R in a pronounced and noticeable way, but this is in decline, a study has
found.

A rhotic R is the hard enunciation of the letter at the end of words,
leading to an inflection towards the end of words such as shearer, pore and
bird.

It is a common trait of many accents and Irish, Scottish and American
people all tend to keep the rhotic R and emphasise the letter.

However, in England, it is disappearing everywhere except for two final
bastions of accented rhotacism: the South West and East Lancashire.

Remnants of rhotic R in areas
Study author Dr Danielle Turton, from the University of Lancaster, told The
Sunday Telegraph that language in a country changes “a bit like a puddle”
and is hard to predict.

“The whole of England was pronouncing ‘r’ this way at some point and then
it dried up and we’ve got remnants in little disparate areas left over,”
she said.

“That’s why Bristol and Blackburn are the same in this respect. This goes
for the areas surrounding them also, like Accrington or the South West of
England more generally.

“But Scotland and Northern Ireland also have their ‘r’s and there it’s the
standard (so Scottish and Irish accented news readers will retain their
‘r’s). So, this is really a change in England.”

Dr Turton took 28 speakers from Blackburn who lived there all their lives
and asked them to say a list of words, which had a r at the end, such as
pour, beer, Blackburn, singer, barm and spar. They also then read out
another string of words and said if they sounded the same or different.

The key focus was on how people pronounced and perceived the words “spa”
and “spar”.

To the native Blackburnians these words sound different, whereas to the
rest of the country they sound identical, due to the dropping of the hard
R.

A similar phenomenon occurs for “stella” and “stellar” and “pander” and
“panda”.

Younger people have weaker accent
But while rhotic Rs are still in place today in Blackburn, the scientists
found reason to believe it may disappear in the future as younger people
had a weaker accent.

In the study, the scientists say there is evidence of England losing this
rhotic R for several hundred years and that now the accent is associated
with rural living, particularly for jokes.

“This is a sound change that started a couple of hundred years ago, and it
was thought to originate in London,” Dr Turton said.

“At the time people complained about speakers dropping their ‘r’s. So, a
bit like we’d complain about people glottaling their ts today in the caT
saT on the maT. Instead, some Londoners were dropping their ‘r’s in words
like far, her.

“Over time, as with a lot of these sound changes, that just became the
norm, and other places started to do it as well.

“Linguistic change is like many trends – some are conscious, some are
semi-conscious or sub-conscious, and they sweep through the community. So,
these places left that retain the ‘r’ are really the traditional areas that
haven’t changed.”

Blackburn a self-sufficient town
It remains unknown why Blackburn is a stronghold for the accent, but the
authors speculate that it could be because it is a very self-sufficient
town.

“It’s got local amenities comparable with a town of a much bigger size,”
said Dr Turton.

“It has one of the highest manufacturing rates in the UK so perhaps we’re
seeing fewer people commute outside the area compared to other places in
the UK.

“Geographically, it’s in a valley, so we can imagine historically it might
have been more isolated, but even today transport links in and out of
Blackburn are not as efficient as those in nearby Preston, for example.”

The changing accents and loss of the rhotic R could be due to TV and easier
access to international accents and exposure to received pronunciation, for
example, but Dr Turton thinks this is unlikely as most accent change is
driven by face-to-face interactions.

“What we found in this study was that when more attention was drawn to
speech, the Blackburn speakers produced an even stronger sound.

“We were surprised about this at first and thought it might be regional
pride. But, in fact, really this is just because for speakers from this
area, this is the correct way to speak. You pronounced the ‘r’ at the end
of the word.

“We have more face-to-face contact with people these days. People are
travelling farther from work; people don’t live where their parents grew up
as much anymore.

“And that affects the way we speak. So as much as I love the idea of a
campaign to save the rhotic ‘r’, I think such a thing would be completely
futile.”

The study is published in the Journal of Phonetics.

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Sanity is not statistical