The old regional dialects were fine for working the same fields as your grandparents, but less effective in a computerised call centre. Some suspect that RP itself will be replaced by Estuary English, the near-Cockney employed across the whole of the Southeast and generously spread across the nation by the broadcasters. But television and radio, says Upton, can't permanently change people's accents. To learn an accent, you have to speak it. Dorothy Daniels is an elocution teacher in Cheltenham.
People enter new lives, and they want to fit.
It's not an easy thing to lose an accent. It's like the nose on your face. You can change it ever so slightly, but there's not a great deal you can do with it. But accents characterise a person, often unfairly. And their associations change.