"With hundreds of lilts and cadences across our small island, the ever-changing sound of an Irish voice isn't a new phenomenon - and, of course, it's always the kids' fault"
"Depending on who you ask, anywhere between five and hundreds of Irish accents exist. From the flat Kildare fry to rounded Derry vocals or melodic Killarney brogues, the sound of the island varies from place to place. However, some worry that these tones are being lost to the annals of time. With new generations come new accents, linguists insist."
""They were talking about it in Shakespeare's time," Dr Kate Tallon, lecturer in linguistics at the University of Oxford, says. "About children ruining the language. So even though rapid accent changes have happened in Ireland in recent decades, this is not a new phenomenon; they were talking about it in the 1500s.""
Irish speech displays a wide variety of regional accents, from the flat Kildare fry to rounded Derry vocals and melodic Killarney brogues. Estimates of the number of distinct accents range from a handful to hundreds, reflecting fine-grained local variation. Some speakers fear that particular tones and regional characteristics are disappearing. New generations introduce shifting pronunciations and emergent accents. Historical evidence shows similar concerns about younger speakers dating back centuries; rapid accent change has occurred in recent decades but also in earlier periods such as the 1500s. Popular explanations frequently blame children for driving language change.
Read at Independent
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