Accent?

Regional dialects are part of our heritage, We should encourage more regional presenters on TV. It would be awful if we all sounded the same. We are gradually losing regional variations due to TV and movement of people. it use to be possible to identify which village people came from by their dialect, but this is now rare. It is only the media that can perpetuate these dialects.
Some of the ones I love are :-
North Essex
Suffolk
Norfolk
Tyne/tees side
Liverpool
Welsh
Scottish west highlands
Cockney

Went to a talk about how these dialects came about due to the various foreign invaders influence over the centuries. it was fascinating.

Elrel, yes I understood that, which is why I said they should leave Flintshire in Wales, all of it not shift boundaries and move part of a county from one country to another

GrandTea, I admit I have problems with english regional accents, not the accents but which part of England they are from . A welsh accent I can pin down to each county , with some even which town or valley . I have cousins in Watford what accents to they have ?

Anniebach - I'm a bit slow today, ?

I can't stand hearing Neil Nunes! Nothing to do accent but his voice is just so deep, too deep to be a radio announcer.

He tries to lighten the voice and ends up so strangulated and fractured that I have to switch off - the Shipping Forecast is torture when he's on!

Watford has been multicultural for so long, I doubt the original dialect remains, probably a mixture of multi cultural London and Estuary English. From what I read the original dialect was similar to North Essex.

Thanks GrandTea, I doubt their accents have changed since I last spoke to them and that was in the seventies

Yes Steph has a Teesside accent - same as me. Well spotted GandT! I must admit I don't much like it. I always speak up if I am taken for a Geordie though, (happens often) despite preferring their accent to mine

When we were children my family and I went on holiday to Blackpool from our home near Carlisle in Cumberland as it then was. There were two older ladies staying in the hotel who were puzzled by our accent. The asked if we were Scottish or Welsh, and were highly amused when told we were English. I suppose it's difficult to pin down a Cumbrian accent, we are surrounded by Scots and Geordies.