Southern Twang 'Creeping North'

Southerners' pronunciation of certain words is "slowly creeping northward", language experts from the University of Manchester have found.

People in the south of England moved away from rhyming words such as 'put' and 'cut' in the 1500s while northerners stayed faithful to the traditional pronunciation of such words, linguists said.

But after studying differences in the way people from the north and south of the UK speak, researchers said southern pronunciation is no longer confined to the region.

However, they did find some clear examples of how people from opposite ends of the country pronounce some words in completely different ways. For example, 'one' and 'gone' typically rhyme when spoken by northerners, but not southerners.

The research, conducted on 1,400 English speakers aged 10 to 87, also found a "clear north-south" divide in the phrases used for bread, trousers, footwear and evening meals.

Northerners wear 'pants' and eat 'baps', 'buns' or 'barms' while their southern neighbours wear 'trousers' and eat 'rolls'. And for evening meals, people who live in the north sit round the dining table for tea while those in the south have dinner, the researchers said.

Researcher Dr Laurel MacKenzie "This research shows a clear north-south divide in many of the words we choose to use when describing everyday items, and the way we pronounce them.

"Variation is pervasive in language, and often correlates with social factors, like age, socioeconomic status and a person's place of origin.

"But it's not completely clear why different words are used to describe the same thing in different parts of the country. There are sometimes anecdotal explanations - for instance, daps, the south west's word for sports shoes, is said to be an abbreviation of Dunlop Athletic Plimsolls -- but they're often hard to verify."

She added: "The source of regional differences in pronunciation is often more clearly understood. Changes in pronunciation may start in a particular area and spread outward, but be stopped or slowed down by political or geographical barriers.

"The northern way of rhyming the words 'put' and 'cut', for example, is faithful to how these words were pronounced centuries ago.

"Speakers in the south of England moved away from this pronunciation in the 1500s, but their way of saying these words didn't make it to the north.

"However, we've compared our maps to those put together a few decades ago, and it looks like the southern pronunciation is slowly creeping northward."