#bc it's so hard to find resources on the actual HISTORY of english dialects

[hella1975]

accent enthusiast and yorkshire citizen here: tho posh pricks and classists attack regional accents (even though by nature these accents are arguably MORE english and retain more germanic features because of less education and/or more rurality, while they sound french) because they hate poor people, i am going to hypothesise that they are also racist

so. i assume youre northern by the sound of your h dropping. h dropping is a very white northern accent trait, people who grew up in places with a significant white majority. however, t dropping is very recent addition to working class northern english which originated with estuary english and spread across the country by ethnic minorities - mostly by second/third gen a. carribbean, south asian and polish people. this creates a new type of working class english which is unique to every city, every ethnicity and every household across britain. its called MBE (multicultural british english). it is usually spoken in places with diverse population. and although not much research has been done on these accents (apart from the one in london bc of fucking course), they are spoken by many many people.

mbe is usually a mix of a. carribbean, south asian, polish and regional slang amd accent features. but one defining characteristic is the t dropping. which again is a pretty new accent feature outside of london. so my hypothesis: they focus on the t dropping specifically because it's unique to ethnically diverse english.

i will talk accents with anyone for hours upon hours upon hours anon i am shaking u by the head for all ur thoughts rn. im not from up north! im a midlands girlie through and through, rural england right by the welsh border. mine is technically a rhotic accent with hints of welsh?? but my town in particular has much more welsh elements than midlands elements just bc of how close we are to the border?? idk my accent has been known to confuse people far and wide lol. the perks of being from the midlands truly.

everything you've said here is new to me, are there any sources/articles you could send me so i can read more? this seems super interesting!

i do however know a bit about midlands' accents/rural english accents, and from what i know of them, the 'dropping Ts' part of certain dialects has been present for centuries. it's called the glottal T (which is v funny to me bc saying that out loud on its own will reveal to people if you t-glottal or not). it's really hard to find out where this originated from and i cant speak for up north but ik in my area the general consensus is that it's just. always been around (which i know can't be true so again! if anyone has any sources or knows anything im such a nerd about these things so pls dont be shy!). still, i always thought it came from old english and a lot of influence from scots? and from my knowledge from its origins in england i always thought it did START with the rural areas like mine? alas for my own sanity i try not to research t-glottalling too much bc even the 5 mins i did for this to double check my facts had me seeing words like 'insidious' and 'lazy' and 'ugly' being thrown about literally bc of a single letter. like insidious are we being serious rn. someone tell barnaby from kent to take deep breaths.

the polish thing really interested me here though bc ive heard once or twice people say about my dialect/region that there are polish elements, and as someone who knows nothing about polish i couldn't really pinpoint to you what it was or anything but seeing it in your ask i was like !!!!! fr !!!!! it's interesting that this could be why people say that.

going back to h-dropping and t-glottalling, my region is actually RENOWNED for 'dropping letters and syllablles left right and centre' <- direct quote from someone trying to explain it lmao. like we've got very farmer accents to the point my flatmate once - very rudely - went on and ON about me having a west country accent and even when i explained it to her over and over that no just bc i have a RURAL accent doesnt mean it has to be west country, she still wouldn't let it go and tried to make a joke that my accent was 'inbred' bc of it. this is the flatmate i made cry and is now too scared to stay at our flat though so all is well <3 so yeah it's not just the northerners! even if we all have to suffer at the hands of the RP folk

the mbe thing is super interesting though bc while i dont know enough about it to speak on the letter dropping, i do know that my own accent has picked up a couple mbe features since coming to uni (mainly just new slang than actual accent but ive had to catch myself a couple times icl). not only is my uni city one of the most multicultural cities in england, but a lot of the student population are from london, which IS the most multicultural city in england. i know there's the stereotypical roadman accent that a lot of people tease about, but that is of course hugely inspired by the ethnicities you listed, particularly caribbean, and a lot of that comes right out of london. there's definitely something to be said about the fact that the people who most often get called chavs/get slated for being rough are also the ones who speak with that multicultural accent. like i WONDER what that's about