>Actually, I would guess that those first term students had not traveled
>around their own country until University. Making this a better example
>of a LESS modern occurrence.
>My experience with living in England was that young people outside of
>Greater London really don't travel much at all, especially to destinations
>within England. And the same was true for adults once they start having
>children and are less free to travel.
It's certainly possible that first year university students have never been outside their local areas. Sheffield and Bristol accents can be pretty strong but are by no means the most difficult to understand.
>TV doesn't help, except to understand the BBC and American television
>accents, in general. Certain there aren't a lot of shows on the
>television set in Berick-upon-Tweed...
TV also helps to teach children how to speak with those accents. So most can communicate if they choose. The school system also puts pressure on children to learn the mainstream English accent because most teachers use it. Indeed it's not that long ago that a strong local accent would have prevented someone becoming a teacher. The settings of TV programmes don't help because the producers rarely bother getting accents right.
The subject is further complicated because there are some people who have great difficulty changing from the accent they first learnt. While others, like myself, tend to gradually switch to the accent of the people I'm with a lot.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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