Regional accents are losing the battle to standard English

[Jonlang]

... according to i. This, of course, only applies to UK regional accents. here's the article.

[Travis B.]

In my family, it varies; my daughter has more standard diphthongal /eɪ oʊ/ (as [ɛɪ oʊ]) where I have monophthongs, but then I've heard her pronounce /i/ as a diphthong [ɘi], which I do not know where that came from. (I have probably the least standard English out of anyone in my immediate family.)

[CatDoom]

I'm from California, so I never had an accent to begin with. ;P

More seriously, I've traveled to a number of different parts of the country and don't feel like I usually notice a lot of pronounced region accents. However, it's entirely possible that I'm not very perceptive of them. I once spent a month living with a guy in Minneapolis, and when I came home my parents commented that when they'd talked to him on the phone he had a strong Minnesota accent. I, on the other hand, never really noticed it the whole time I was staying with the guy.

[Vijay]

The Texas Twang is also endangered, especially in Austin.

[vampireshark]

The standard Southern drawl also seems to be disappearing from North Carolina, or at least the larger cities, though that's also partly a product of NC having a lot of people moving into the state from other parts of the US as of late (especially from the Midwest). And I mostly notice this in Fayetteville, which is a military town that has a lot of net migration of people to begin with, so...

[mèþru]

A lot of people in Mercer County, New Jersey speak in something close to General American rather than typical New York or Philadelphia.

[kodé]

I'm from California, so I never had an accent to begin with. ;P

Hey, let's hear that fronted /u/ [}]! >:O

[finlay]

If this is the same 1950s study I learned about in uni, they only took data from older rural males, so the data is going to be massively skewed anyway towards a more conservative way of talking – deliberately. Those maps are compelling but it's important not to take them solely at face value.

[Yng]

If this is the same 1950s study I learned about in uni, they only took data from older rural males, so the data is going to be massively skewed anyway towards a more conservative way of talking – deliberately. Those maps are compelling but it's important not to take them solely at face value.

Yeah - this has got a lot of press coverage but I mean, come on.

[jmcd]

So it basically means some of damage was already done by the 50s, not that the destruction isn't taking place.

[Travis B.]

I'm from California, so I never had an accent to begin with. ;P

Hey, let's hear that fronted /u/ [}]! >:O

This is sufficiently common in English that CatDoom probably does not consciously perceive it as an innovation.

[Alon]

The article shows just two maps, and one of them, the board a, doesn't show much movement since the 1950s.

[Yng]

So it basically means some of damage was already done by the 50s, not that the destruction isn't taking place.

I mean is it really that much of a loss if fifty words for splinter (most of which were probably confined to the old men of three or four bumfuck villages 70 years ago) have now been replaced by one...?

[jmcd]

OK so there are worse things in the world but it's clear that the words, pronunciation and grammatical forms used were more varied beforehand and this is part of a general trend of assimilation. And there isn't a right or wrong way of speaking; this change just encourages even more the unrelentingly overbearing process that resulted in the change.

Sometimes combinations of words are curious... is 'bumfuck villages' intended as more offensive to bumfucks or to villages?

Also, note that this project is based off a Swiss German one that shows a lesser loss and corresponds to political differences.

On a sidenote, the results this time are likely skewed in the opposite direct: smartphone app use will be skewed towards techie young fogeys, who are among the least likely to speak traditional dialect. I don't even use my smartphone for anything other video calling family. I don't imagine our grandparents would fare any better; indeed quite to the contrary.

It would also appear from the comments here that some people got a wrong place chosen for them by the app.

[vec]

The longer I've lived in the US, the more perceptive I am of dialectal differences here. The minute differences in a-sounds and o-sounds in particular that make such a huge difference here in America. That said, I barely ever hear people with a "New York" accent around me – occasionally with Jews and older Italian-Americans, but that's it. However, I hear plenty of Puerto Rican English around my neighborhood, and whatever you call the North Brooklyn variety of AAEV – accents I feel are often ignored in dialect coverage.

[linguoboy]

The standard Southern drawl also seems to be disappearing from North Carolina, or at least the larger cities, though that's also partly a product of NC having a lot of people moving into the state from other parts of the US as of late (especially from the Midwest). And I mostly notice this in Fayetteville, which is a military town that has a lot of net migration of people to begin with, so...

Interesting. Most of the people I know who've moved to NC recently are from the Northeast--so much so that I tend to think of it as a second Florida. (For instance, my Bronx-raised stepmom spilled her iced tea in a restaurant near Hilton Head and the server said to her, "I suppose you want another one." Her response was, "You're not from around here!" That's not the kind of raillery you'd expect from a Midwesterner, and a Southerner least of all. That's straight-up New Yawk.)

[Travis B.]

One of the things about here in southeastern Wisconsin is we do not really get people from other parts of the country, aside from Chicago and Madison, and occasional people from Minnesota, Indiana, or Michigan. Wisconsin is not the kind of place people want to live in unless they are already used to the cold. The main population movement here aside from the movement back and forth between southeastern Wisconsin and Chicago and between southeastern Wisconsin and Madison is movement of people away from here; people in both sides of my family have wound up in places such as Minnesota, Arizona, various parts of the South, and so on, and I myself moved temporarily to Maryland and my sister used to live on Long Island.

(I should note that what is known as "Chicago" to Wisconsinites is what is known as "Chicagoland" or just "northern Illinois" to Illinois people.)

[Nortaneous]

One of the things about here in southeastern Wisconsin is we do not really get people from other parts of the country, aside from Chicago and Madison, and occasional people from Minnesota, Indiana, or Michigan. Wisconsin is not the kind of place people want to live in unless they are already used to the cold. The main population movement here aside from the movement back and forth between southeastern Wisconsin and Chicago and between southeastern Wisconsin and Madison is movement of people away from here; people in both sides of my family have wound up in places such as Minnesota, Arizona, various parts of the South, and so on, and I myself moved temporarily to Maryland and my sister used to live on Long Island.

(I should note that what is known as "Chicago" to Wisconsinites is what is known as "Chicagoland" or just "northern Illinois" to Illinois people.)

Why wouldn't people move to Wisconsin, then? I've been up to New York and Massachusetts in May and it's always been too hot. (I have no idea how anyone ever settled the East Coast.)