Where have all the accents gone?

More than just how it sounds, the loss of accents represents the destruction of a cultural heritage and a movement toward a far more homogenous and grey world.

Something I’ve noticed recently among the younger generations is how much we all sound the same, how accentless we are.

I come from a region of the country whose people are know to have a strong accent, yet it is very rare to find it at all in those under forty. This of course has given rise to a question, where have all the accents gone?

I don’t particularly like my accent. It’s the default Southern English, a bit too nasally with nothing interesting about it. In all honesty I shouldn’t have this accent, I should have a regional one; so why do I, and seemingly everyone North of the upper Midlands, speak in exactly the same way?

The answer is I don’t know; accents seem to have disappeared in the span of a generation for no apparent reason. It's a shame too, the various accents that coloured the country made the place far more interesting than it is today, and those accents are far and away nicer sounding than modern speak.

More than just how it sounds, the loss of accents represents the destruction of a cultural heritage and a movement toward a far more homogenous and grey world. Slowly, all that makes a place unique has been stripped out of it, and gradually every town is just the same as the last until there is only one sprawl of identical buildings.

All in all, the world is going to become a much more dreary and standardised place, where even our language and way we speak is going to be bought directly off the shelf.