People in Scotland could find themselves adopting Cockney slang after research found watching television could be a factor in accent change.
Scottish fans of long-running BBC1 soap EastEnders were shown in a study to have variations in pronunciation, according to experts from Leicester University.
They found two particular features of speech typically associated with London English that were becoming increasingly apparent in the Glaswegian dialect among people who regularly watched show.
The features were using “f” for “th” in words like “think” and “tooth”, and using a vowel sound like that in “good” in place of an “i” sound in words like “milk” and “people”.
The study, published in the American journal Language, is the first evidence that active and engaged television viewing helps accelerate language change.
Researchers said the results show significant correlations between using these features and strong emotional and psychological engagement by the viewers of the programme.
