In England, Northerners have the last 'laff'
Editor's note: The British Library has just opened its 'Sounds Familiar: Accents and Dialects' website, featuring 671 recordings and sound clips. A map with this Telegraph story shows the regions where 'bath' is pronounced with 'a' or 'aa' or 'ah'.
Read entire article at Telegraph
The grarse spreading out from its London roots is gradually stifling the graaas, but one of Britain's leading accent experts said yesterday that a larf will never drown out a laff.
Students of the voices that make up a patchwork quilt of spoken English across the country have drawn up a map of the way in which the long"a" of received pronunciation has followed the exodus of Londoners into the rest of southern England.
But a sort of linguistic Hadrian's Wall just south of Birmingham is keeping the long grass out of northern England and the rest of Britain...
Related Links
Sounds Familiar website (British Library) The Big Question: Are regional dialects dying out, and should we care if they are? (Independent)