Still searching for a Yarmouth accent

MOST bloggers use a clever bit of software to see how many people visit their website.  It’s vanity of course. Who wouldn’t log on in the hope that their hits are soaring? But as well as numbers, my one tells me what people have searched for. Statcounter calls it  “recent keyword activity” and all the usual stuff is there. People looking for pubs, B&Bs and footpaths; local history buffs brushing up on their Billy Bluelight etc.

But the most surprising stat for me is the number of people who go into Google and type “Yarmouth accent” into the magic box. There’s so little on that subject that this blog comes in at No 2 on the strength of an almost throwaway line in a piece on St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth. 

I quoted my (Suffolk-born) father-in-law swearing he could tell the difference between a Yarmouth and Lowestoft accent when he grew up in the 1940s/1950s. But did one exist now? This was November 2010 and it prompted a couple of replies, including one from Norfolk dialect expert Peter Trudgill, though even he was relying on research from the 1970s. But if statcounter is to be believed there’s still plenty of interest out there. So is there an accent? And how would you define it? Answers on a comment page please.