Regional varieties of the English language

The form of English most commonly associated with the upper class in the southern counties of England is called Received Pronunciation (RP).[10] It derives from a mixture of the Midland and Southern dialects which were spoken in London in the early modern period[10] and is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.[10] Although speakers from elsewhere in England may not speak with an RP accent it is now a class-dialect more than a local dialect. It may also be referred to as "the Queen's (or King's) English", "Public School English", or "BBC English" as this was originally the form of English used on radio and television, although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days. About two percent of Britons speak RP,[11] and it has evolved quite markedly over the last 40 years.

In the South East there are significantly different accents; the London Cockney accent is strikingly different from RP and its rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand.[12]

Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. In London itself, the broad local accent is still changing, partly influenced by Caribbean speech. Communities migrating to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's school children. As a result, Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors.

Since the mass internal immigration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian. It is the last southern midland accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath/grass (i.e. barth/grarss). Conversely crass/plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby, five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite, which unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent.

In addition, most British people can to some degree temporarily "swing" their accent towards a more neutral form of English at will, to reduce difficulty where very different accents are involved, or when speaking to foreigners.

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