Is Estuary English flooding the country?
Some people would tell you there’s no such thing as a homogeneous ‘Estuary’ variety of English. Others see it as a non-regional accent that will soon be widespread enough to rival RP. Some explain it as a spread of some London features to other parts of the country through geographic mobilisation, while others consider it more a social change, with more upper middle class people keen to sound less ‘posh’. “Use of the English language is absolutely appalling.” – complaint to BBC It’s even been suggested that speaking Estuary is just another fad, like the mass affectation of the Liverpool accent in the 1960s. Linguists don’t yet agree whether or not this thing called ‘Estuary’ really exists, and if it does, how far it is ‘flooding’ which areas of the country.
