A question of accents

[LizzieW]

I lived in Cheshire until I was 21, then went to Derbyshire, then Gloucestershire, then Surrey, then Wiltshire and now Hampshire, but people can still tell I'm from "the North", even though my accent is nothing like people who have never left the north of England, I think it's just certain sounds in words such as bus, cup that give the game away, although my granddaughter is trying to teach me to talk with a southern accent, so barth, rather than bath, grarss rather than grass etc.  My youngest son was born in Gloucestershire but we moved to Surrey when he was 11 where his school friends asked him why he spoke like a country bumpkin.  Moving to Wiltshire when he was 16 his friends there asked him why he spoke so posh. 

[Rena]

As children first learn to speak from their parents and in earlier times would not have been exposed to outside influences in nursery schools, etc. then I should think your ancestor would still have kept some Devon traits, such as using the long "r", as in:-  warm = warrrrrrrm;  farm = farrrrm.    Another illustration is of my own experience.  I was born and bred on the east coast of England but now live in another county.  I pronounce words such as where and there with a wide mouth unlike the locals who say "whur" and "thur".  We moved to this county when my (now adult) children were aged 4 and 5 and they have never used the local pronunciations of "whur" and "thur".

Youtube has a few spoken illustrations of regional dialects/accents.  Here's one of the Devon accents:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahznvtDunEw

[a chesters]

When I was 10, we moved from Liverpool to Kent. For a couple of years, I could only properly understand one teacher, who was from Cheshire.

Just yesterday, I was asked by a competitor at bowls, if I was from England. I have lived in Australia for just over fifty (50) years

He was the only person to ask me that for many years and the only one who was able to pick it.

[LizzieW]

When I was at school in Cheshire aged 11, a new boy came to join the school from High Wycombe and not one single child could understand his southern accent for about 4 weeks.

[BW252]

The accents must have affected births,deaths and marriages as well as census takers.     My grandmothers name went from Tobit to Talbot in Hampshire

[radstockjeff]

I was just nine when we moved from a small mining town in North Somerset to Nairobi, where my dad had been posted to RAF Eastleigh. The school I attended, Parklands Primary, was for "whites" only and the predominance of pupils was from  second or third generation settlers families and quite a few from South Africa.
My "quaint" bumpkin accent amused them and I was teased mercilessly.
However I had the last laugh, because in a class where I was some nine months younger than most,I came very nearly top of the class for the two years I was there.
Some bumpkin!
Exposure to such a variey of accents, the service children fromm Eastleigh came from all parts of England, gave me a good grounding in listening and understanding the differences in accents.

[Rena]

The accents must have affected births,deaths and marriages as well as census takers.     My grandmothers name went from Tobit to Talbot in Hampshire

I had the same problem reearching my grandfather's "Shearing" surname.   His family roots were in Norfolk when it was written as Shearen but when the family moved to Cambridgeshire the spelling reflected the dialect and was written as "Sharring".

[KGarrad]

My moment of epiphany came later in life!
At the age of 17, in my first job, I had to speak to other offices twice per day: Glasgow, Liverpool, Herefordshire, Birmingham, Kent.
That was an education!

And then, at the age of 21, I got involved in ice-hockey, and was traveling all over England & Wales, listening to a lot of regional accents.

I am OK with most British accents, but broad Geordie and broad Glaswegian often leave me stumped!