North-south accent divide is on the move, claims study

SCIENTISTS have identified where the north-south divide is in England, based on dialects, and it bisects the Midlands and lies between Derby and Leicester.

They came to the conclusion after studying data from more than 14,000 native English speakers, gathered via questionnaire.

Derbyshire is still stoutly northern in its dialect. But the study found that “some of the more southerly locales show very different behaviour”. Leicestershire, for example, now sounds more southern than northern.

The divide, traditionally, was from the Wash in the east to the Severn estuary in the west.

But the new study, published in the Journal of Linguistic Geography, shows signs that it is creeping further north in recent times. It seems Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire are the last remaining bastions of proud Midlands northernness, with Northamptonshire and Leicestershire joined by Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Herefordshire in switching to the southern speak.