No one seems to speak proper British English over here. What I mean is, the British accent that we're exposed to on a regular basis (both here and in the U.S.) on tv, movies, etc, it's like the generic mid-west accent that news casters have at home, a "news neutral" of British English. There are so many different accents, regional dialects, slang... and it's so small here, so few people (there are what, 30 million people in the UK? in an area smaller than Oregon?) I'm not just talking about the differences between the sing song of the Irish, or the guttural sounds and rolling r's of the Scot's or even the Welsh that seem to combine all of these with the quirkiness of British English I'm talking on a village to village basis, where there is much more cockney-like English than I would have thought, with separation of just a few miles. As I go out and about and explore the area and interact with locals, I'm surprised and caught off guard that I didn't understand them right away. I mean, I know they're speaking English, it's just my brain needs an extra moment or two to parse what they said. (It's particularly embarrassing when considering all the contextual clues my brain seems to be ignoring, say, being asked if my bank card is a debit or credit while in line at the grocers). What I'm curious about is how do so many accents arise in such a small area, and not managed to have homogenized over so much time? Does anyone know of a good book to recommend that explores the evolution of regional dialects? (back dated entry I had posted elsewhere but for some reason never published here)