Brits in the southeast of England are increasingly speaking without the King’s English and Cockney accents, a new study has revealed.
Researchers at the University of Essex, led by Dr Amanda Cole, found that the classic accents were falling among 18 to 33-year-olds in the region.
Three voices were identified as more common, indicating that accents were moving away from class-based accents such as received pronunciation or the more typically working-class cockney.
Features from the three accents were shared across social groups and geographical areas.
The most popular of the three was the accent defined as Standard Southern British English (SSBE) – with 49 percent of the 200 people studied using this accent.
This is defined as a modernised version of the King’s English.
People who use this accent will drop the “t” at the end of the word, but not in the middle of it.
Celebrities such as Singer Ellie Goulding and Comedian Josh Widdicombe speak in this way, and the research has suggested even Prince Harry uses SSBE.
People with this accent also tended to say words like “goose” with the tongue further forward in the mouth, making it sound more like “geese”, than those who use received pronunciation.
The accent of Queen Elizabeth II even changed in this way over the course of her lifetime, researchers claimed.
The least popular accent of the three was Multicultural London English.
25 percent of those studied spoke in this way, with most of them being Asian British or black British people from London.
England footballer Bukayo Saka and rapper Stormzy both speak with this accent.
Dr Cole said the accent “is a relatively more recent accent, it is thought to have be around since the 80s, it has a lot in common with the cockney and South Eastern dialects.
“But it also has linguistic features that have come from other languages and other dialects of English.”
For people who use this accent, they will pronounce vowels in words such as “bate” and “boat” with their tongue starting higher up in the mouth compared to people with the standard southern British English.
As a result, these words sound more like sound like “beht” and “boht.”
The third identified accent is Estuary English, spoken across the southeast and particularly in Essex.
