English language in southern England
South East England and the Home Counties (the counties bordering London) tend to reflect the interface between the London region and other regional accents. Affluent districts are associated with a modified Received Pronunciation (RP) accent, reflecting their traditional popularity with upper middle and upper-class residents which has spread throughout more social classes broadly in rural areas with commuting access to London. Less affluent areas have traditionally mainstream London accents (that is, variants of the Estuary English accent) that grade into southern rural outside urban areas.
English-language vowel changes before historic /r/
In local (working-class) Dublin, the West and South-West Region, and other very conservative and traditional varieties of Irish English, ranging from the south to the north of the island, the typical English phoneme actually retains an opposition as two separate phonemes: and . For example, the words "earn" and "urn" are not pronounced the same in these varieties. In these traditional accents, this vowel, when after a labial consonant (e.g. "fern"), when spelled as "ur" or "or" (e.g. "word"), or when spelled as "ir" after an alveolar stop (e.g. "dirt") is pronounced as ; in all other situations, this vowel is pronounced as . Example words with include "certain" , "chirp" , "circle" , "earn" , "earth" , "girl" , "germ" , "heard" or "herd" , "irk" , and "tern" . Example words for include "bird" , "dirt" , "first" , "murder" , "nurse" , "turn" , "third" or "turd" , "urn" , "work" , and "world" . In non-local (middle- and upper-class) Dublin and in younger and supraregional Irish accents, this opposition is seldom preserved, with both of the phonemes typically merged as , the same as, or similar to, most American accents.