January 4, 201016 yr Geordie and Scouse accents on the rise as Britons 'look to protect their sense of identity' By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 8:07 AM on 04th January 2010 Comments (40) Add to My Stories Attractive: Cheryl Cole could well put the Geordie accent on the world stage, as experts expect her way of speaking to be a hit in the US Geordie, Scouse and Mancunian accents are on the rise in the UK as regional inflections become more and more common contrary to all expectations, research has shown. A string of academic studies have found that people are clinging on to their accents as one of the few things that links them to their roots. Researchers also found that accents centred around smaller locales are merging with their big-city counterparts, to form what they call 'super-accents'. They identified a handful of these accents that are likely to be long-lasting; including different accents from the West Midlands down to south-east England's 'estuary English'. The trend is driven predominantly in the north, where the need to preserve identity is important to people. 'People want to protect their identity,' Dominic Watt, a lecturer in forensic speech science at York University told The Times. He added: 'You could be parachuted into pretty much any British city and the shops look the same, people dress the same and have similar pastimes and interests. 'What still makes these places separate and distinct is the dialect and accent.' One study found that the Scouse inflections have spread far beyond its heartland in Liverpool to places as distant as North Wales, while you could be surprised by the Geordie twang anywhere from the west coast right up to Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish border. On the other hand, urban patterns play a strong part. Paul Kerswill, professor of sociolinguistics at Lancaster University, told The Times: 'Liverpool and Manchester are only half an hour apart but the accents remain rock solid. 'There must be a lot of commuting between the cities but they are not merging.' Meanwhile, the allure of the regional accent has spread beyond British shores - singing sensation Cheryl Cole was told by Simon Cowell to lose her Geordie accent to make it big in the US, but apparently the Girls Aloud star's way of speaking could well be a huge hit in the American heartland, especially in the deep south, experts have said. Cole isn't the only one to retain her accent - television presenters Ant and Dec have admitted in the past that they deliberately keep the Geordie twang going for commercial and personal reasons. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240264/Geordie-Scouse-accents-rise-Britons-look-protect-sense-identity.html#ixzz0bfyIXbLN
January 5, 201016 yr How could you hate them? Theyre simply writing an article about how impressing the US will protect the UKs state of identity.
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