The spread of fashionable Dublin speech

Because of the status of Dublin, non-vernacular speech of the capital acts as a de facto standard for the rest of the south when speakers, outside of Dublin, are seeking a non-local, generally acceptable form of Irish English. This has also meant, for instance, that the retroflex  used by fashionable speakers in Dublin is spreading out of the capital, especially with younger urbanites from different parts of the country. Various features of fashionable Dublin English, both vocalic and consonantal, are spreading rapidly, especially among the younger female population. For the following discussion, this speech is labelled the New Pronunciation, the capital letters deliberately suggesting a bundle of features which are adopted as a group by innovative speakers.

Apart from vowels, the New Pronunciation of southern Irish English involves above all the realization of liquids /l/ and /r/. Other segments do not seem to be affected by the shift in pronunciation. Specifically, the complex area of coronal segments has not been altered to any significant extent.