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A couple of years back, an author my XYL loves who writes mostly Regency era romances and has a monthly or so email newsletter, answered a question by a one reader about why her characters spoke mostly modern English. Her answer was to publish a snippet from one of her books where dialog had been rewritten so the characters used 1800's local accents/word choices and phonetic spelling.
This was done courtesy of some help from a couple of people who study that era and language pronunciation guides and dictionaries. My XYL got a laugh out of it but it was pretty unreadable though in many ways oddly similar to a Boston accent (R? you pronounce a terminal r?) for the elite class. OTOH, the servants were given the accents appropriate to their origin which made me wonder if the butler and/or housekeeper were chosen for their ability to translate as much as any other talent.
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