You get THREE board
games in our packs!
The wide variety of accents and dialects that characterise the different regions of Britain are in decline, according to new research from Cambridge, which shows that we’re all taking in a generic South East English accent rather than keeping our local tongues.
That is likely going to make it easier for us all to communicate in the future, but it comes at a cost: We’re gradually losing the entertainingly difficult-to-understand brogues of unreconstructed Scouse, Geordie, or Glaswegian.
The most surprising sign of this shift is that large swathes of British people now pronounce the word “three” incorrectly. Or at least, differently — but certainly not the way it is written. Sixty years ago there was broad agreement on how that word was said properly. Now there isn’t.
How do you say “THREE”? If you drop the “th” and say something like “FREE,” you’re probably from London or the South East. Scotland and Ireland have a strong preference for “th” version of “THREE.”
The result is surprising because data from 60 years ago shows there was broad agreement in England in favour of “THREE.” Only North Londoners said “FREE.” (The historic data was collected only from England.)
Blaxter says that the influence of London and the South East has spread southern pronunciations over the rest of the country — which is why a large minority of people in Hull and Plymouth now say “FREE” even though their parents grew up saying “THREE.”
