Well Ron, if you publish it, I'll buy it!

Just off to eat now and of course I will not mention that famous Welsh insult which begins with twill and ends in sais  

Totally agree with you, Mary.

Accent is the ultimate repository of class prejudice. Wage war on 'regionalism', so that everyone speaks RP and it would be one of the biggest blows against the class system that could be made.

Besides, most UK regional accents are hideously ugly and unpleasant to listen to. 

I remember, when I was a child, my uncle explaining to me why his children did not have a very sing-song Welsh accent when they spoke English. As they spoke only Welsh at home and at school (my uncle and aunt were involved with establishing one of the first Welsh-speaking schools), they learned English mainly from English people (for example our grandparents lived next-door to them for long periods) and heard English spoken by English people on TV. As they' grew older, I think my cousins' Welsh accent became stronger, probably as they mixed more with other children speaking English to them.

Being used to the accents of South Wales, I found the North Wales accent quite strange until I became  used to it.

How dull it would be if we all sounded the same!
Very interesting theory, Ron. It does explain a lot. But there must be an in-built tendency too for someone to be able to adopt an accent. I was at school with a friend who had a stronger South London accent than me. Within a short time at Leeds Uni she'd adopted a Leeds accent. She then moved to Derbyshire  and within weeks had a pronounced Whaley Bridge accent! A few years later I too moved up North but even after 20 years my accent's nothing like as strong as hers. I've neither tried to keep my old one nor adopt a new one (apart from phonics at school!) - perhaps you need to consciously allow your accent to change?

Edit: That's just reminded me - an English-born cousin of mine, living down the road from my family with his German mother, spoke English with a thick German accent, even after being at school for a few years. Then, at about the age of 11, he rebelled, refusing to speak German any more and, almost overnight, swapping his German accent for a very strong London one - in fact, we kids, amazed at this transformation, referred to it as a Cockney accent.

Yes, MJ, some folk are chameleons when it comes to accents. Others really want to fit in, and work at it. Others hold onto theirs with might and main. I find some accents very easy, but others tremendously hard: I don't have to think about Ulster, but a Southern Irish accent is really difficult for me; I can't get the mouth shape or vocal placing at all. Sometimes it's a single word which provides the key. Having worked very hard at a Scouse accent, I found myself shortly after required to produce a Brummie one - before I'd studied all the stuff I've mentioned above - and it was just mutating back to Scouse all the time. Then one day i was listening to a documentary about schools in Brum when I suddenly heard a kid pipe out "Plyse, Miss, Johnny's stolen moi spyce ship." I was able to place the word space/spyce absolutely from that - it's a very tight tripthong, with a very slight upwards then downwards curved inflection, and the word 'ship' is half way to 'sheep'. From that one sentence I was able to deduce the sound of the whole accent.

 

Following the water maybe, Mary.

I can't decide whether I'm more shocked by Mary's spelling mistake (shhh!!!) or by her having heard Michael Owen speak. I don't think I have!

I've never heard of Hawarden, either! Is that really Welsh borders? It sounds very much like a Yorkshire place-name (Todmorden, etc.).

Really?  Not me, anyway.

booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Not any of them at all? (I know you've excepted the NI one, but still...I have a thing for cork ones, and there are several others that I find perfectly tolerable!)

My favourites are the Irish and French accents. The Irish because of that lilt it seems to have. I better say, ofocourse, that its the softer accent I like best. Places like Belfast, etc, have a harder accent. With the French, I still find it has the quintessentially sexy accent. I suppose it all depends where in  France they come from and maybe also the social background as well, perhaps??