{"id":687519,"date":"2026-07-12T11:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687519\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:02:08","slug":"they-were-competing-for-supremacy-which-is-the-oldest-english-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687519\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;They were competing for supremacy&#8217;: Which is the oldest English accent?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Paragraph-styles__ParagraphStyled-sc-ffb5f5ba-0 fqhmpl\">William Park: &#8230; would say &#8220;baaath&#8221;, &#8220;graaass&#8221;, and so on, with a long &#8220;ah&#8221;-sound. In my accent, &#8220;foot&#8221; rhymes with &#8220;put&#8221;, but not with &#8220;strut&#8221; \u2013 the latter has an &#8220;uh&#8221;-sound, like in &#8220;upper&#8221;. I grew up in Suffolk, in East Anglia, where the accent is a variation on southern standard English. We say a lot of things in the southern way with a stretched out &#8220;a&#8221; sound, for example. But we also have our own bit of regional flair. If you greeted me with &#8220;Ey up m&#8217;duck&#8221;, I might ask how you are doing with &#8220;yer oroight buh?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Park: &#8230; would say &#8220;baaath&#8221;, &#8220;graaass&#8221;, and so on, with a long &#8220;ah&#8221;-sound. In my accent, &#8220;foot&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}