Northerners are apparently losing their accent for something more 'generic', according to new research.
Northern accents are merging into one dialect - except for those from Liverpool and Newcastle, linguists believe.
Experts at the University of Manchester instead suggest that a "new variety" is emerging in the cities of Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester.
This is, they say, "general northern English" which apparently is used by younger, middle-class people.
Dr Patrycja Strycharczuk and her team used machine learning to analyse speech patterns of people from major cities in the north.
But found that the machine learners typically struggled to tell the difference between voices from Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield.
Dr Patrycja Strycharczuk said: "I often hear statements like 'I'm from Liverpool / Manchester / Sheffield, but I don’t have the accent' – however, there is very little systematic evidence that General Northern English really is a coherent variety, so that’s the question we asked ourselves.
"It may seem as though local accents are dying out, but we believe we’re actually seeing a new variety becoming established – educated, urban and northern.
"I think its prestige has increased, and people are now less tempted to lose their accent if they've been to university or they do a lot of public speaking."
However they did find that while some accent features had vanished, distinctive northern features in the use of short vowels in words like 'glass' and 'bath', and pronouncing 'crux' like 'crooks', still existed.
