A tour of British Accents

[Stillhomewardbound]

Excellent short video by voice and dialect coach, Andrew Jack. Fascinating even.

http://twentytwowords.com/tour-accents-across-british-isles-performed-single-unedited-take/

[Serial_Apologist]

Brilliant in the time available, but he shouldn't have missed out on Geordie!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Superb!

[Serial_Apologist]

It's the subdivisions that are in many ways the most interesting. Lancashire for instance has so many that it's possible to travel 10 miles northwest from the centre of Manchester and cross at least four dialect or accent boundaries. And then there are the anomalies and the points of transition from one sort of accent and another. Parts of Suffolk have an accent very similar to that found in Hampshire, for instance, despite what he says about the "rolled R" only applying to the West Country, as one found out listening to Percy Edwards introducing "Birrd songs". Also, there is considerable flexibility along the boundary running approximately (and not in a straight line) from Worcester by way of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to Peterborough, as regards the presence or prevalence of the short a to its north ("past" as in "pack" further south) and the "u" sound in say "pub" being pronounced as the double o in "book" further south. And I haven't even started on differences within what is generally thought of as "cockney", or at what point "cooking" turns into "coo-king"!

[antongould]

Brilliant in the time available, but he shouldn't have missed out on Geordie!

Surely not how can this be........???

[Stillhomewardbound]

Yah cannae be serious, man. I'll no 'ave Jack Foordd in dis oose!

[Padraig]

Brilliant in the time available, but he shouldn't have missed out on Geordie!

......or on the Isle of Man accent, especially as Frances posted a page of Anglo-Manx dialect on the 'myself' thread.

[jean]

And I think he's wrong about Scouse owing anything to the Northern Irish accent.

[Serial_Apologist]

And I think he's wrong about Scouse owing anything to the Northern Irish accent.

So do I

[marthe]

An English friend, living in Newport, RI, posted this on Facebook. We've already noticed that the Midlands are not represented at all. Notts, Derby, and Staffs. have their own distinctive accents. I'm most familiar with Lancs, especially Wigan, the HH's hometown. If you cross the Atlantic and venture into New England, you'll find accents that have their roots in the east of England.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Re Lancashire accents, I can often locate people to their home town, having been born there and having met family and friends from different parts of the county. Professor Higgins had nothing on me.

Scouse sounds more like Brum than Irish.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Bear in mind, folks, this is a 85 second overview of our regional accents. Also, the speaker is a dialect coach and not to be confused with a phonetician.

Re. the Scouse/NI assertion. Not as daft as you might think. My tertiary education was in that city and I came to realise there was a triangle of migration based on Belfast/Liverpool/Glasgow. Imagine what I call the 'Belfast hnar hnar', add in the Scottish emphasis, throw in a bad case of adenoids and you'll hear what he's hinting at.

The assertion I found most interesting was the origins of Cockney being in the East Anglian accents. Nonsense I would have said, until he raised that point, but now I can hear it.

[Old Grumpy]

Parts of Suffolk have an accent very similar to that found in Hampshire, for instance, despite what he says about the "rolled R" only applying to the West Country, as one found out listening to Percy Edwards introducing "Birrd songs".

Northumbrrians also rroll theirr rrs - but it has a different, perhaps more guttural, quality than the West Country burr.

[teamsaint]

do we have any board experts on how British and other accents exported around the world, EG to America, Oz, etc ?

[Pabmusic]

do we have any board experts on how British and other accents exported around the world, EG to America, Oz, etc ?

No expert, but I know a few things. For instance, the pronunciation of 'Z'. It entered English from French in about 1200 as zède from the Greek and Roman zeta. Very quickly it gathered a second pronunciation, zee (which is a tad more consistent with other English alphabetic names). This pronunciation became prevalent in East Anglia, for whatever reason, and when the American North-East was settled it was largely from people from East Anglia. Hence Northeners tended to say 'zee'.

However the older settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (as well as many other Southern settlements) attracted more people from the South and West, whose pronunciation was 'zed'. 'Zed' became a notably Southern pronunciation, 'zee' Northern.

A similar thing happened with 'lieutenant', which entered English about 1400 as a Norman-French dialect pronunciation possibly like 'levtenant' or 'lieftenant'. It quickly gained a second pronunciation - 'lootenant' in East Anglia especially (medieval Essex?). When it emigrated to America, New Englanders in general said 'loo-', Southerners 'lef-'. In fact the US military retained 'lef-' until the 1890s! John Wayne was just wrong in all those films (they used the British-style salute, too).

Factors that caused the changes were (1) the eventual dominance of the North after the civil war and (2) Noah Webster, a New Englander, who insisted in his influential dictionary os 1828 on the Northern (ie: often East Anglian) pronunciations.