I'd like to know more about UK accents. From what I hear, during colonization of North America, UK spoke similarly to how US speaks now, but since then US accents stayed somewhat the same, while UK accents drifted a lot. Apparently, at a certain time in history, in UK, it was posh to speak differently. Was that a form of classism?
The opening scene of My Fair Lady where Henry Higgins the linguist is able to spot which area of London someone comes from by a few words in their accent is a slight exaggeration, but not much. The UK developed hyper-regional accents (unavoidable in the pre-mass-media age), and poshness being a particular set of families who socialise with each other and are educated together converged on its own accent. Especially among people who've been to Oxford or Cambridge. This effect got magnified by the early BBC being based in southern England and comprised of educated people, leading to a distinctive "BBC English".
(Also factor in the bans at various times on speaking Gaelic or Welsh; children were being beaten for speaking Welsh at school well into the 1970s, but the plan to extinguish the language never quite succeeded.)
Growing up in the 1980s, I could tell from their accent whether a child came from Oakham (where I lived), Whissendine (five miles away), or Melton Mowbray (five miles beyond that).
30/40 years later the differences are still there, but increasingly ironed out by the spread of a generic southern English accent. Where I now live in rural Oxfordshire, the traditional local accent is a definite minority, particularly in those under 40. There are little tell-tale vowels and phrases if you look closely for them, but they're more like variations on a common accent.
That said, Midlands and northern accents seem to be fairly resilient, at least for now.
Is an interesting insight into the accents of the new country of the USA.
Its important to remember that the USA has a very different understanding of class compared to the UK.
Its also important to understand that accents change wildly within 50 miles. (sheffield, bolton & leeds are all divergent so are manchester birmingham and liverpool)
