This talk will discuss ongoing sociolingistic change in the two cities of Dublin and London. For many reasons speech in the two cities has changed, evolving into new forms which are different from traditional ones, but also from other varieties in the anglophone world. The motivation for the changes in Dublin can be seen to lie in the linguistic dissociation practised by young urbanites. By this is meant that this social group began to use pronunciations which were diametrically opposed to those of local Dublin English thus maximising the phonetic distance between their speech and that of the group which they were dissociating themselves from. In the course of the 1990s the ‘new’ pronunciation of Dublin English began to spread, first throughout the area around Dublin, but quickly to all parts of the Republic of Ireland. Now the new Dublin pronunciation has become the normal mode of speech for the younger generation in Ireland. However, there are new features which have appeared recently such as the lowering of short vowels, testifying to ongoing variation and change in Dublin. The situation in London with the rise of ‘Estuary English’ shows similarities, e.g. the dissociation from more vernacular varieties in the city and the spread of the newer forms to other parts of England. But there are differences too, e.g. in the prior existence of a formal standard of pronunciation in Britain. The differences and similarities between present-day speech in both cities will form a major focus of the presentation.