Becoming bilingual might prove a challenge for many people, but a growing number have mastered “bidialectalism”.
Linguists have reported a rise in people able to speak with two distinct accents, switching between them according to circumstances.
They say that the rise of bidialectalism — whereby people with strong accents adopt a more standardised speech when talking to outsiders — could be helping to sustain Britain’s varied regional dialects.
The trend is particularly noted among younger speakers and in smaller, isolated communities, such as coastal towns, rural areas, Lancashire mill towns and Welsh mining villages.
In cities, dialect speakers rarely find themselves in a minority, so need to adapt their speech less to make themselves understood.
The switching is thought to be largely deliberate, although some elements of it appear to be subconscious.
Dr Jennifer Smith, of the University of Glasgow, who is researching the rise of bidialectalism, said: “This is really something that applies in lots of places. The dialects can sound like completely different languages.
“It has always been the case that people have a slightly “posher” speaking voice that they can switch a little bit.
"But younger generations now are becoming more adept at that. It is probably a result of more exposure to different ways of speaking and more mobility.
“When people didn’t leave their area, they didn’t hear other voices. But once you step out, you are forced to find a different way of speaking, or people won’t understand you. It is a functional thing.
“It may be how dialects survive. When there are large numbers of you, you don’t have to switch.
“Everyone talks about dialects disappearing, but that is hugely exaggerated.”
She said evidence of bidialectalism had emerged in a number of recent studies.
As part of her research, Dr Smith will analyse three generations of men and women in the Banffshire port of Buckie, where locals have developed markedly different “parallel” ways of speaking, depending on whether they are talking to other inhabitants or outsiders.
