Regional accents are a source of pride, but they're in danger of fading away

Regional accents and dialects are long-held loves of mine - vocabulary, grammar, idiom and slang, rooted in a particular place.

- 

In childhood, we assimilate quickly, wanting to fit in. From the “eyup me duck” and “weey up” greetings of dad’s Northamptonshire, to the markedly different Portsmouth enclave of mum’s Hampshire, with its Romani dialect roots, there were several influences, not least my own rural blend of the very west of West Berkshire.

The way we speak is an important part of our identity. It expresses and reveals the story of where we are from, or have adopted or absorbed. But it also attracts assumption and judgement. No matter its farmerish burr, my southern English was posh in Northamptonshire. Assimilation was easier in Portsmouth, the dialect part of my own, but there I was a country bumpkin.

Accents and dialect should always be a source of pride and friendly inquiry. But just when it seems we’re embracing them, in train-station announcements or on the BBC, in a cultural shift from the empire-emanating Received Pronunciation (RP) of the King or Queen's English, are they dying out?