English Blogs has a post about English accents.  You have to be registered to post comments so I thought I’d pick up on it here.

Living in Shropshire, we have quite a wide range of local accents that are substantially different from each other.  The traditional Shropshire accent is almost extinct now although it is possibly more accurate to say Shropshire accents as the accent is different throughout the county.

The traditional Shropshire accent in the south and east of the county of the county is a good old “farmer giles” kind of accent.  Ooo arr.  The accent in the north and west is similar but with a noticable Welsh twang.  I have an uncle who lives in the wilds of Shropshire, near Shrewsbury, who speaks with the Shropshire accent with the Welsh twang.  He has two sons – one speaks with a bit of a Shropshire accent, the other with a cockney accent (go figure!).

Telford has a real mixture of accents due to the massive influx of West Midlanders bringing their dodgy accents with them but some parts of Telford are still clinging to their own accents.  Such as Dawley, for instance, which has a dialect that is virtually uninteligible to outsiders – listening to the locals jabbering away in what appears to be a foreign language at the top of their voices in the high street is actually quite entertaining.  There’s a local joke:

“I think it’s gunna ren” (rain)
“Dust?” (Do you?)
“No, bloody wearter” (water)

Ok, I didn’t say it was funny.