• Researchers say Generation X is particularly to blame for accent falling off a cliff
• Study based on white people native to Georgia born from 19th century to 2000s 

By Sam Tonkin

Published: 12:35 EDT, 8 September 2023 | Updated: 12:38 EDT, 8 September 2023

Keanu Reeves signs autographs for fans while carrying his bass guitar into a Southern California venue where he’s performing with his band Dogstar

By Brian Gallagher For Dailymail.com

Updated: 00:51 EDT, 25 August 2023

Southern Water pins efficiency hopes on ‘LeakBot’ trial

• LeakBot will be introduced in a trial to over 1,000 customers in the group’s area

By Daniel Fessahaye

Published: 09:35 EDT, 14 August 2023 | Updated: 09:35 EDT, 14 August 2023

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Macquarie pours fresh funds into Southern Water

By City & Finance Reporter

Published: 16:50 EDT, 11 August 2023 | Updated: 03:32 EDT, 12 August 2023

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The besotted brother of Southern Charm star Taylor Ann Green had just introduced his new girlfriend to family when he died aged 36. 

Richard Worthington ‘Worth’ Green died aged 36 – the tragic news revealed on his sister Catie King’s Instagram alongside a picture of him beaming while sitting in a boat.

Caroline Evans, wrote a heartbreaking tribute to her ‘greatest love’ just three days after his death saying she’d love him forever.

‘Worth Green you are the greatest love I’ve ever known. Although you are not here physically, the love you gave is still felt every single day. I love you forever and always.’

The cause of the 36-year-old’s death remains unclear but its been revealed he’d set up a men’s religious group in Raleigh where Caroline was from prior to his passing.

Taylor Anne and family told DailyMail.com: ‘Worth left this world on top of the world – he had a beautiful passion for life and cared deeply for those around him.

‘We are going to miss his jovial personality and all of the love and laughter that he brought his family, girlfriend and countless friends. 

‘Heartbroken is an understatement, but we are finding so much peace knowing he is in the arms of our Heavenly Father. We kindly ask for privacy at this time.’

An obituary posted on a North Carolina funeral home‘s website revealed Worth had found love with a woman he’d introduced to his family.

‘Worth loved his family dearly. Any excuse to be with them, he truly loved with his whole heart,’ the obituary reads.

‘He was a vivacious and loving son and grandson, and the best big brother to his sisters, always being there as a protector and a cheerleader.’

Taylor Ann and Catie can be seen with their brother in numerous pictures across social media often boasting about their close relationship. 

The pictures span the decades, with Taylor Ann, Catie and their brother posed for photos as kids to when they’re adults – each sibling beaming as they hold one another close. 

The obituary mentions a woman names Caroline, who ‘brought so much joy to his life’ referring to a budding romance that the 36-year-old had been pursuing before his passing.

‘Most recently he met the woman he adored and treasured. Caroline brought so much joy to his life,’ it says. 

‘He loved her enough to bring her home to his family and was beginning to plan a future with her by his side.’

In a post to her Facebook page, Caroline asked friends and family to write tributes on a separate site: ‘For all who knew Worth Green, if there’s one thing you remember it’s probably his incredible stories. 

‘We hope to keep all of his memories and stories alive through the tribute link below.

‘If you have any stories, memories, or just thoughts to share on the impact Worth had, please upload a video using the link below.’

The obituary goes on to add: ‘Friends, too numerous to name, will miss the exuberant love for life that Worth brought to them.’ 

Just days after Worth died, Caroline wrote: ‘You are the greatest love I’ve ever known.’

‘Although you are not here physically, the love you gave is still felt every single day. I love you forever and always.’

Worth’s obituary also described him as an ‘adventurer’ with a ‘love of travel’ who taught English while living in South Korea post-college.

He was hailed a ‘protector and a cheerleader’ to his two younger sisters and ‘a beautiful example of how to live life as fully as possible.’

The obituary noted that the deceased ‘had recently started a small men’s group in Raleigh to reflect on life and challenge each other’s faith in Christ.’

In a comment on Catie’s Instagram post, Taylor Ann’s ex Shep Rose wrote that Worth was ‘Absolutely one of a kind. A pleasure to know and to laugh with.’

Worth’s heartbreaking death came at an already fraught time for his family, as Catie found herself fighting a recurrence of cancer last year.

In May 2022, Green wrote on Instagram: ‘Almost 5 years ago, my older sister was diagnosed with 2 different types of ovarian cancer; she was a damn warrior and kicked its a** after a few months of holistic treatment.’

Taylor Ann continued: ‘We were so excited for her and her husband to hopefully have the chance of starting a family, but here we are 4 and a half years later and it has decided to rear its ugly head again. Truly F you cancer.’

Catie announced in December that she had undergone ‘[h]opefully my last major surgery ever needed, an oophorectomy of my only ovary and tube I had left.’

She wrote wanly: ‘A part of us is gone and will never be what we dreamt of, but we trust God’s greater plan for our little family.’

The devastating news comes five months after another Southern Charm star, Olivia Flowers, lost her 32-year-old brother Conner.

Conner’s death was preceded by a years-long battle with Lyme disease, as well as a turbulent past including arrests for drug offenses and driving under the influence.

His exact cause of death has not been made public, but his sister wrote on Instagram last month that his Lyme disease left him battling ‘debilitating symptoms over the last 17 years.’

Olivia added that he was subjected to ‘several misdiagnoses and unnecessary medicinal treatment at a young age.’

She went on: ‘By the time he was properly tested and given a diagnosis from Dr. Jemsek, a God send, and an infectious disease specialist, the disease had caused severe internal damage, and the consequences from his earlier ‘treatment’ were just as long-lasting and devastating.’

If your first thought when hearing ‘get down from the car’ is that someone is standing on your hood, you’re probably not from southern Florida.

Researchers have identified new speech patterns and expressions in the greater Miami area that they believe are a new English dialect developed over time from repeated direct translations between Spanish and English speakers.   

The linguists compared local and national responses to over 50 turns of phrase that were increasingly common in Miami — like ‘get down from the car’ instead of ‘get out of the car.’

Those choices in words are because the standard Spanish phrase is ‘bajar del carro,’ and ‘bajar’ means ‘to get down.’ 

Locals were much more likely to rate these expressions as ‘okay’ or even ‘perfect’ compared to the majority of national subjects surveyed, who found phrases like ‘make the line’ for ‘wait in line’ to be ‘awkward.’

‘Words come from somewhere and someplace,’ wrote the study’s lead author Phillip Carter, a sociolinguist at Florida International University, for The Conversation.

‘Every word has a history. That goes for all words spoken in Miami.’ 

Carter and his coauthor, SUNY Buffalo linguist Kristen D’Allessandro Merii, identified three categories of borrowed phrases, or ‘claques,’ that have come into frequent use in Miami from direct Spanish-to-English translations between people.  

First, they found ‘literal lexical calques,’ or direct, word-for-word translations of many common Spanish phrases, in routine use around southern Florida.

For example, the researchers found residents said ‘throw a photo,’ from ‘tirar una foto,’ as a variation of ‘take a photo.’

Given this history, native Spanish speakers are much more likely to think of themselves as stepping ‘down’ from the car to the curb moreso than stepping ‘out’ of the car.

The second category the linguists found was ‘semantic calques’ based on unique double or multiple meanings for words in Spanish. The word ‘carne,’ for example, can translate to mean either all kinds of ‘meat’ or ‘beef’ specifically, depending on the context. 

‘We discovered local speakers saying ‘meat’ to refer specifically to ‘beef,” Carter wrote in a recent essay for The Conversation, ‘as in, ‘I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.”

Their last category, ‘phonetic calques,’ covered new phrases where aspects of a word’s Spanish equivalent carries over into the speaker’s English usage. 

According to Carter and Merii, many in Miami hold so closely hold ‘thanks’ and ‘gracias’ in their minds that they view the final ‘s’ as comparable. 

So, you’re more likely to hear someone say ‘Thanks God’ there, inspired by ‘gracias a Dios,’ than in most other parts of the United States.

The linguistic researchers collected their data by surveying the reactions of both first- and second-generation Cuban Americans in Miami, getting their reaction to different phrasings unique to their region. 

They pulled in a national perspective by conducting the same survey via Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace Mechanical Turk.

While their results, published in April in the academic journal English World-Wide, found that some claques faded out between the first and second generations of Cuban immigrants — some expressions stuck. 

Phrases like ‘get down from the car,’ ‘super hungry’ and ‘meat empanada’ were still commonly used among second-generation Cuban Americans. Even very particular phrasings, like ‘give me a chance’ meaning ‘let me cross,’ was used by both generations.

Many of these were phrases the national audience found via Mechanical Turk were more likely to rate as ‘awkward.’ 

National audiences were particularly baffled by ‘made the line’ used instead of ‘waiting in line’ and ‘eating shit’ as a euphemism for ‘doing nothing.’

‘This is how dialects are born,’ Carter said in a university press statement. ‘Minor things add up.’

‘This shows Miamians assess certain phrases differently and don’t see some examples as ‘ungrammatical,” he explained. ‘So, those are the ones that are passed down.’ 

Carter quickly points out how fluid and patchwork all human languages are. 

He said that what’s happening in Miami is not an entirely unique state of melding or some breakdown in English decorum, but the natural state of human speech over millennia.

Everyone may recognize the French origins of a word like ‘croissant’ or a phrase like ‘Déjà vu,’ but the English language is laced thoroughly with more borrowed loan words than most would recognize. 

‘Pajamas’ from Hindi; ‘gazelle’ from Arabic, via French; and ‘tsunami’ from Japanese,’ Carter noted. 

Each new introduction of foreign words into a new language brings with it the history that brought it there, in his view, be it through war, colonialism, immigration or other factors.

‘When we conduct research like this, it’s a reminder there aren’t ‘real’ or ‘pretend’ words,’ Carter said. ‘There are only words.’

Ukraine launched attacks on Russian forces in the key southern Zaporozhzhia region and on the eastern front today, a Russian official said, in what observers believe could be the start of Kyiv‘s long-expected offensive.

Ukraine has not offered any confirmation but expectations have built for months over when its forces, bolstered with Western weapons and training, would launch a counter-offensive in a bid to reclaim land occupied by Russian forces.

Pro-war Russian bloggers reported intense battles today on the Zaporizhzhia front near the city of Orikhiv, around the mid-point of the ‘land bridge’ linking Russia to the Crimea peninsula, seen as one of Ukraine’s main potential targets.

‘At the moment, active combat is ongoing in the region between Orekhovo and Tokmak,’ Vladimir Rogov, an official with Russian occupation authorities, wrote on the Telegram messaging service, referring to a locality known in Ukrainian as Orikhiv. 

Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent for Russian media, wrote on Telegram of ‘intense fighting’ in the area. 

‘The enemy is undertaking incredible efforts, attacks. In vain. Our forces are holding on. The front line is stable,’ he wrote. 

The information could not be independently verified and so it was impossible to assess the degree to with Ukraine’s operation was underway.

Ukraine’s army said only that ‘the adversary remains on the defensive’ in Zaporizhzhia, in a Facebook post. It said it destroyed four missiles and 10 drones, out of some 20 that Russia had fired at ‘military installations and critical infrastructure’.

The fighting comes as the humanitarian and environmental cost climbed after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam unleashed destructive flooding in a different part of Ukraine’s south.

Russia said on Thursday that its forces had fought a two-hour battle with Ukrainian troops in the early hours in the Zaporizhzhia region, which neighbours the flood-hit areas.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Ukrainian offensive involved 1,500 soldiers and 150 armoured vehicles.

‘The enemy was stopped and retreated after heavy losses,’ he said.

Ukrainian officials have said their forces are ready for a long-expected counteroffensive but that there would be no formal announcement when it begins.

In its few comments, Ukraine has reported gains of territory in the east around the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces captured last month after nearly a year of the deadliest ground combat in Europe since World War Two. 

But Kyiv has said virtually nothing about the southern front, widely assumed to be the focus of its main assault as it tries to push towards the coast and cut Russia’s access to Crimea. 

In his nightly video address, delivered on a train after a visit to the flood zone in the south, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Ukrainian troops and repeated earlier claims of success in Bakhmut, but gave no further account.

‘We see every detail. But it’s not time to talk about it today,’ he said.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar described heavy fighting in the east, where she said Ukrainian troops had mainly held off Russian attacks.

On the southern front she said only that battles were continuing for the settlement of Velyka Novosilka and that Russian troops were mounting ‘active defence’ at Orikhiv.

Ukraine has been attacking targets deep in Russian-held territory for weeks in preparation for its assault.

The initial days of the counter-offensive have been overshadowed this week by a humanitarian disaster after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam holding back the waters of the Dnipro River that bisects Ukraine.

Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate homes flooded in the war zone, vast nature preserves have been wiped out and the destruction to irrigation systems is likely to cripple agriculture across much of southern Ukraine for decades. 

Emergency services were racing to rescue people stranded by the flood-swollen waters of the Dnipro.

Ukrainian authorities said water levels in a reservoir which had been created by the Kakhovka dam had fallen ‘below the critical point of 12.7 metres (42 feet)’.

They said the reservoir was no longer able to supply households and the cooling ponds at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest.

However late Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said he nuclear plant was continuing to receive water from the reservoir after the dam was damaged.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down but they still need cooling water to ensure there is no nuclear disaster.

Ukraine meanwhile called on Europe to double power supplies to two gigawatts.

Ukraine accuses Russia, whose forces control the dam area, of blowing up the dam, while Russia accuses Ukraine hitting it with artillery. Ukrhydroenergo, the dam’s operator, said it was most likely mined from the inside.

Kyiv said on Friday it had intercepted a phone call proving that Russian forces in control of the dam had blown it up. Moscow says Ukraine sabotaged it. 

Western countries say they are still gathering evidence but that Ukraine would have no reason to inflict such a devastating disaster on itself, especially right as its forces were shifting onto the attack.

The emergency service has warned the flood water has dislodged land mines that pose a threat to civilians.

The government has also sounded the alarm over the environmental impact, calling it ‘a crime of ecocide’.