You only have to walk around any town or village in Norfolk to hear examples of the local accent. But to many people it's not as strong or as widespread as it once was. That’s why the group FOND, Friends Of Norfolk Dialect, was formed in 1999 to record as many of the county's traditional words and sayings as possible. Losing our accent Dr Ken Lodge, a lecturer in linguistics at the University of East Anglia, thinks the rural nature of Norfolk has helped to preserve the accent because historically people tended not to leave the county and the number of those coming into the area was also quite small, although that’s now changing. "As more and more people come in from other areas outside Norfolk they bring their own types of language and accent with them," he said. "Dialects and people get mixed up more and more and so, of course, eventually it will have some kind of influence on the way Norfolk people speak as well. "So over the years there will be a change and that’s quite normal and natural and has nothing to do with Norfolk specifically – it happens all over the place," he added. He doesn’t believe local accents will ever disappear entirely because they are so strongly rooted in local communities and unless the fabric of society changes completely the accent will still be there. But Keith Skipper, author, broadcaster and founder member of FOND, thinks more could be done to reduce the speed of change. "I think there could be far more encouragement in our schools, especially in primary schools, and I think if they do it there it may help," he said. Hindered by accent To some, like the members of the Norfolk band Crone, a distinctive Norfolk accent was a bit of an issue. It was suggested to them that they should lose their accent if they were really serious about progressing in the music business. Band member Jason Wick said it wasn't what they were expecting. "Disappointed at first I suppose... and a little bit angry too but after that I guess we just sort of resigned ourselves to thinking well that’s their loss really," said Jason. "We’ll just stick how we are and hopefully someone will take us on for how we are," he added. Prejudices Dr Ken Lodge, from the UEA, says this kind of prejudice based on an accent isn’t acceptable. "I think people need to change their whole attitude to accents generally not to have some feeling of inferiority, not to be made to feel inferior," he said. "The people who do that are actually wrong in their attitudes anyway and so a great deal of education needs to be done to make people's attitudes change. "Sadly one would have hoped that had been happening over the last 40 to 50 years but it hasn’t happened enough, I think," he added. Language trends It's not just accents which change over time. The actual words we use to describe things evolve. Only in the last couple of years has the word 'chav' become part of everyday language to describe someone who wears too much cheap jewellery and fake designer labels. Swear words, and words which people find offensive change too with time. To a Victorian gentleman it would have been considered an insult to be called a cad, but now it’s a word which is rarely used. Claire Powell, from the BBC’s Editorial Policy Unit, says words fall in and out of favour from generation to generation. "Casual terms of racist abuse and pejorative terms about people with disabilities were quite frequent even in the 1980s," she said. "Nowadays we simply wouldn’t broadcast that kind of language." Today women swear a lot more than they have ever done, and not everyone in Norfolk is happy about that, with some of the most conservative views coming from men. Listen to the Voices audio to hear more views about changing patterns and social norms which drive the evolution of our language. | 
