Southeast and Southwest

The major subdivision of southern accents into Southeastern and Southwestern accents is based on the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/ in syllable-final pre-pausal and pre-consonantal position, as in far or farmer. In these positions /r/ is preserved in local accents of the Southwest, whereas it is absent or rapidly disappearing from accents in the Southeast. In the Southeast, rhoticity used to be a characteristic of rural accents in Kent, Sussex and Surrey where it has been recessive for quite a while. According to Wells (1982: 341), “traces of variable rhoticity may be found” in Reading, formerly in Berkshire. As Trudgill (1999: 54) puts it, “[e]very year the r-pronouncing area gets smaller”.