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I've traveled Britain a fair bit and being in the Army i hear loads of them and i'd have to say they're all going pretty strong.
The only one you hear less now is cockney as it's not an accent really more a manner of speaking. I think many people think of the Kentish accent when they think of London. I'm from Kent and people always assume i'm from London. It's probably the harshest of the Home Counties accents.
At risk from what? Not sure where you copied that list from, but real regional dialects probably died out 100 years ago. Time was when every town had its own unique vocabulary, and way of talking. Before the industrial revolution the same was probably true of every village. Thomas Hardy has Tess speaking dialect at home and standard English at school, so you can probably blame compulsory education. Accents change with every generation, and it is no tragedy when old ones are replaced with the new. People in the Home Counties probably once despised Cockney, but now lament its passing, unaware the way they speak was affected by the influx of Londoners. No living language stays the same for long.
For us "Yanks" who can't tell one British accent from another, could someone provide the names of some contemporary British people who speak with distinct regional accents (Brummie, Geordie, Yorkshire, etc.)?
At risk from what? Not sure where you copied that list from, but real regional dialects probably died out 100 years ago..
I think that is only true for dialects from the south and the Midlands. Proper Suffolk or Kentish dialect was probably last spoken by very elderly people in the 1960s, but I'd be surprised if anyone used it to converse in nowadays.
But ever been to Newcastle/the Northeast, rural areas in Yorkshire or Lancashire, or basically anywhere in Scotland apart from posh parts of Edinburgh? Broad dialect is spoken in these areas even by children. I lived for a while in county Durham and the locals would turn it on and off - standard English to outsiders, Geordie dialect among themselves. When you overheard them talking among themselves it is virtually incomprehensible and sounds like Swedish.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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There was a lad from Middlesbrough who went to my high school. Could barely understand a world he spoke, not just the accent but the sheer speed he spoke at!
Received Pronunciation
'Jafaican'
Cockney
Estuary/London/SE
East Anglia/Norfolk
Kentish
West Country
Gloucester/Border counties
Brummie (Birmingham)
West Midlands (Coventry, Wolverhampton)
East Midlands (Leicester, Nottingham)
West Riding Yorkshire - rural
Urban Yorkshire - Sheffield, Leeds
East Riding Yorkshire (Scarborough)
Lancashire
Liverpool (Scouse)
Cumbria
Northeast (Geordie, Middlesbrough.etc)
Scotland - Lowlands
Scotland - Highlands
Shetland, Orkney Islands
I'd say all of these are going strong, although they keep changing all the time.
Where I grew up, in Suffolk, the regional accent is quite distinctive and even a few old dialect expressions survive (although the proper dialect died out a generation ago). For example, the term "bor" ( = boy) meaning "mate", "buddy" (eg. arr y'alroit bor? = You alright mate?) or "aan th' huh" - which is a fantastic term to describe something that is askew or not quite aligned (eg, "that picture's aan th' huh"). Other features such as using "tha' " for "it" (eg, "tha's gonna be rainin later"), and pronounciation of words like "won't" or "don't" as "wown't" and "down't" mark you out as a true Suffolk boy!
However, it (together with the Norfolk accent/dialect) is one of the least known regional accents in the UK - most people outside of the East Anglia can't place it, and you never hear celebrities or tv stars with the accent.
I think that this is because unlike other accents it sadly doesn't enjoy a high status, and it is only really the rural, working class population who have it, as there was a huge influx of Londoners into the county after the war - the larger towns nowadays tend to have a general Estuary/southeast accent. Anyone who leaves the area generally looses the accent pretty fast
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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^ Yes, you're right, the dialects of East Anglia seem to be the least known. It's an interesting dialects, decidedly southern but with a lot of it's own unique features.
Anyone seen the movie "Kes"? It is shown on the Turner Classic Movies network sometimes. I need to turn on my telly's caption feature to know what the actors are saying!
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