page_title: North–South divide (England)
section_title: Language and dialect
hierarchical_section_title: North–South divide (England) / Identities and differences / Language and dialect
context_page_description: In England, the term North–South divide refers to the cultural, economic, and social differences between:
  Southern England: the South-East and South-West, including Greater London and the East of England
  Northern England: the North-East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the North-West including Merseyside and Greater Manchester.
  The status of the Midlands is often disputed, however counties in the higher midlands, such as Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, are culturally very Northern. Sometimes the higher areas of the West Midlands County. A grouping of Central England based on UK EU parliamentary constituency boundaries combines the Midlands and East Anglia.
  In political terms, the South, and particularly the South-East and East Anglia, is largely centre-right, and supportive of the Conservative Party, while Northern England was generally more supportive of the Labour Party prior to the 2019 General Election.
  An article in The Economist argued that the gap between the north and south in life expectancy, political inclinations and economics trends was growing to the extent that they were almost separate countries.
context_section_description: Although younger generations may be less likely to use speech that is specific to a particular town, there is still a clear difference between north and south; young Northerners are more resistant to sounding as if they are Southern than sounding as if they are from a different Northern town.
  The division is sometimes used for comedy, but has its serious side as well. The London media are sometimes claimed to look down upon those with northern English accents. For example, Ken Livingstone (a Londoner) suggested that the press's unsympathetic treatment of John Prescott was partly because he is one to "speak like ordinary people".
  Some linguistic research has concluded that many people in the North of England have a dislike of the /ɑː/ vowel in BATH words.  AF Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to /ɡrɑːs/, describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'." On the subject, KM Petyt wrote that several respondents "positively said that they did not prefer the long-vowel form or that they really detested it or even that it was incorrect" Mark Newbrook has assigned this phenomenon the name "conscious rejection", and has cited the BATH vowel as "the main instance of conscious rejection of RP" in his research in the West Wirral.
caption: North-South divide between the Provinces of Canterbury and York