> The fact most of the speakers of the language have switched to a different accent (by the way, I feel curious why) It was a long process of L-vocalization [0

> The fact most of the speakers of the language have switched to a different accent (by the way, I feel curious why) It was a long process of L-vocalization [0] that started around XVI century. The first segment of the population to be affected by it were peasants (it is also one of the reasons why the original sound quality of «ł» survived relatively long among Polish artists in early XX century as a sign of professionalism, similarly to English’s Mid-Atlantic accent [1]). I suspect that L-vocalization’s proliferation was aided by multiple wars, partitions and occupations that followed, which caused many waves of both natural and forced internal migration and disappearance of most dialectal differences. According to [2](PL) the pronunciation of «ł» as /w/ was codified as the standard around XIX/XX in both informal and formal settings. There are still remaining populations using the old sound quality, but they are mostly confined to the areas in proximity to other Slavic languages. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-vocalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-vocalization [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent [2]: http://www.dialektologia.uw.edu.pl/index.php?l1=leksykon&lid=742 http://www.dialektologia.uw.edu.pl/index.php?l1=leksykon&lid...