The fading Welsh accent, and does it even matter?

I've not really noticed that much of a decline in the Welsh accent across recent years. My daughter, who grew up as a child in the north-west of England but went to university in Cardiff and stayed on there to live and work, has by now, in her forties, evolved a distinctively Cardiffian accent. Is she unusual?

Try being a Forces Brat. My dad was in the RAF, so from the age of about 4 to 12, I lived in South Wales, Scotland, North Wales, The Netherlands, and Germany. Since moving back in ‘94, I’ve subsequently lived in Pontypool (where I’m originally from), Swansea, Cwmbran, Newport, and finally Cardiff, where I’ve been for nearly 17 years. My parents held on to their Welsh accents; my dad has been gone 7 years, but my mam’s accent is as strong as it ever was. But because I was around so many other kids from all over the UK when I was younger, I never really developed a Welsh accent. In fact for a long time, probably until around 15 years ago, I very much saw a strong Welsh accent as “parochial” and a sign of poor education. I didn’t even call myself Welsh, I called myself British. Yes, all the old stereotypes. My Welsh accent has definitely become stronger since I stopped moving around so much, but it’s still quite generic. Most people I meet just assume that I’m English.

I ordered, or rather tried to order, a Coke in Cambridge a few years ago. Met with a blank stare. Turned out they only served Cowke. Lesson learned, drink Pepsi!

Since starting to learn Welsh 3 years ago, my accent has fortunately, got stronger. Which now stands out quite nicely in a border town.

I hate everything that's not English!

Wholeheartedly agree Stephen. I LOVE hearing the many regional accents of these islands, and lament their fading. Born in Yorkshire, but studied at Aberystwyth University, I remember having to moderate my speech so that people would understand me. I didn't realise how strong my accent was back then. These days, people say, 'I didn't know you were from Yorkshire' so I must have lost my accent somewhere (though I've unconsciously hung on to short vowels - grass rhymes with mass etc). I guess it happens because we're all communicating globally, and it's expedient. So how to keep our beloved heritage alive....? I don't know, but perhaps the global energy and environmental crises will mean we need to focus on our local communities more, and perhaps our accents will thrive after all.

Is there a single "Welsh accent"? There's a significant Cardiff accent, a very definite Newport accent, and I guess across the board. There's an academic Welsh accent, a middle class Welsh accent, a media Welsh accent when those people want to demonstrate their "authenticity", the "my great grandfather was a Rhondda miner" BS. I imagine North Wales is the same. The MYTH is that Wales is homogeneous, politics, culture, association...& the rest. It really isn't.

This article could have been written solely through having watched a single episode of Gavin and Stacey. Horrible program and horrible Welsh accents - which i normally love be they from the north or south.

Language changes, that is the nature of language. It take about 35-40 years on average to notice that change, for an individual not actively researching it or paying attention to it, but after saying that amount of time, an accent is sufficiently different that a layperson may notice tacitly, but not be able to quantify the change. I mean, listen to a news broadcast in the accent or accents that you are most familiar with, from any year since voice recordings have existed, and you can surprisingly accurately pinpoint the decade in which it was made by the accent alone (discounting audio quality etc.). And that's even with active attempts during the late Empire era to level all regional accents to RP. Interestingly, Received Pronunciation (RP) no longer exists, save but in a ever-dwindling handful of elderly individuals and in a relative scattering of people inhabiting the upper echelons of a certain class. RP has been replaced in terms of many of the social situations it was previously used in, by Standard Southern British English (SSBE). In fact, the isogloss (an imaginary line on a map delineating where the pronunciation of a particular sound changes from 50% to 49% on average) for the TRAP-BATH split, has been moving swiftly southwards for a few decades now. This basically means that the areas where the sound that you characterise as "chaRnce" is made is shrinking. More and more people ever closer to London are saying "chance" in the same way as a person from Derbyshire would say it. I myself am a massive outlier, I am a native south Londoner, and I say "bath" in the "Northern" way considerably more than 50% of the time. Having lived in Japan for 4 years and having to clarify my pronunciation without Americanising it, I subconsciously chose to say "bath" over "baRth" when the Japanese asked me to repeat and it stuck, even 15 years later. Cockney is even "deader" than RP, it really is almost completely gone (in fact it has completely disappeared in London). Within London (and in fact in many urban centres of the UK), a partial descendant of Cockney, called Multicultural London English (MLE) has formed using many features of Cockney, but also carrying a heavy mainly Jamaican influence in its vocabulary, cadence and phonology. Another, more "conservative" partial descendent of Cockney survives in parts of Essex, where it, in its turn caused the traditional "old Essex" accent to disappear.... Except, there's no such thing as a "traditional accent"; the very concept is completely imaginary; an accent that is recognisable as part of the same accent continuum from its first to its last speaker can only last around 70-80 years, and perhaps, if you were to really strain to really pick up on the precise similarities, I'd stretch that as far as 150 years at the absolute maximum with an awful lot of hand-waving and confirmation bias to aid the perception of similarity. All accents change, even in a vacuum, the nature of language is for it to do so, and it has been doing so for as long as it has existed. Both the Welsh language AND the Welsh accents when speaking in either Welsh or English have and will continue to change. They will remain distinctive in their own way. Perhaps Welsh English will adopt the baRth pronunciation. wholesale while it is utterly lost in London and the south east... It is constantly the case that nonstandard varieties often become closer to the standardised accent in many features slowly over time, and by the time they are fully adopted, the speakers of the standardised form no longer speak with that feature. Surprisingly, it's not the first time something similar has happened - the "o" in the American pronunciation of GOAT was once the signal of an upper class British accent in the latter half of the 19th century, a feature that the current King's great-grandfather exhibited, (gifted as he was in the facial hair department). Now it has utterly vanished from England, being seen as a less-prominent but nonetheless existent feature of North American pronunciation.

This article seems to focus very much on what linguists call the BATH-TRAP split for its evidence. This is the lengthening of the "a" in some words (like bath) and not others (like trap). This is a feature of most Southern English accents (not just RP as stated in the article) whereas Northern English accents don't have the split. What I found surprising about the article is that all the Welsh people I know from South Wales have the BATH-TRAP split. These are not youngsters but people in their 60s and 70s and include people who have lived in Northern England for much of their life so have definitely not acquired it in England. I am therefore curious about the claim that this is a recent change. The other point I would make regards the pronunciation of "master" by someone from Sunderland that was mentioned in the article. This is actually a standard North East England pronunciation. Although the NE lacks the BATH-TRAP split like the rest of the north, the pronunciation of a couple of words - master and plaster - are quirky and follow the more southern versions. You will find this all over the NE from Teesside up to Northumberland and it is not a recent phenomenon.

Doesn't matter at all to me, all I ask is that I am able understand what is being said. Language and accents evolve over time, pointless to worry over something you have no control over.

I grew up in Barry with an English dad, a mum from Pembrokeshire and an Irish nana. I never noticed any of their accents... My brothers have definite Barry accents (although one picked up a bit of Scots over 10-15 years there). The odd thing is I spent 35 years in England and the English only ever spotted my Welsh accent a day or so after I came back from Wales. Yet many times Welsh people in England would pick up that I had one. Finally, I always wanted to sound like Richard Burton whose Welsh accent with a touch of RP sounded incredible.

When the welsh speak English you can understand them when the Scottish and Irish speak English it is very difficult to understand them.Welsh should be compulsory in all welsh schools