Growing up in the uk during the 90s, you could tell if someone came from the next town over by accent. The difference in accent from just a ten mile difference was huge.
My husband and I are from the south east, one of my lovely daughters in law comes from Newcastle in the north east. My husband jokes that he hasn’t understood a word she says in 30 years!! (She then hits him!!!!)
As a British citizen, I didn't think the examples shown were that great or shown off the accents in a particularly obvious way to an outsider. Thinking about it, I wished they had shown clips of the eighties drama, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, as the mixture of different characters clearly demonstrates the diversity and broadness in UK dialects.
@@EtherealSunset Funny thing was, only the Geordie characters accents were authentic because the actors actually were Geordies, but all the other actors actually weren't from the region their character was from.
Most accents on tv are toned down so people can understand Birmingham has so many ascent from the black country to Wolfhamton to Dudley even Yam Yam .and Newcastle is just as bad the softest is the midleland
Proud West Country boy here. You would know this accent from Hagrid in Harry Potter, Sam Wise in the Lord of the Rings and Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean
A lot of the accents you heard in the video were accents for TV shows, so an element of a variety of different viewers being able to understand it would be taken into account. The everyday accent you hear across different towns and cities in real life are usually a bit stronger and the differences tend to be greater.
No representations of British accents at all in the video. Missing the real accents via actors. Missing Yorkshire, The Midlands, East Anglia, Scottish other than Glasgow. All areas have slightly different accents. The shown video is nowhere near representation. Just to put the record straight, don't attempt to reproduce. It's offensive. You enjoy our melodic English speech. Maybe the odd exceptions.
There is a youtube video that basically teaches you to understand Gerald (I think it's "This is what gerald said"). Once you watch it, everything suddenly makes sense. (If you grew up around it, no need to watch the video)
Before they invented the bicycle and the train, most country folk lived, worked and married within a few miles of where they were born. There were also many different local dialect words, as well as different accents.
Its fascinating to look at old maps before the motorcar, market towns were like the hub of a spoked wheel with roads leading to the next settlements, they normally worked out about 13 to 15 miles in-between, a comfortable distance for a man to travel there and back in a day on a horse and cart. So they noticed speech variations about that distance apart.
I'm from Wakefield, went to school in Leeds, went to university in Hull, worked in Harrogate, now live in Barnsley and my girlfriend is from Sheffield. All Yorkshire towns and cities. Every single one has a completely different accent to the others.
I’m a Scouser living in Barnsley, I’ve been here 4 years and I’ve noticed that Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster accents are all so different yet there’s only a few miles separating each place.
The old joke is: You drive two hours in the US you're in the same state. You drive 2 hours in the UK the accent has changed seven times and bred rolls are called something new.
I'm quite surprised the Broad Yorkshire accent isn't on there. The modern Yorkshire accent for most areas is now fairly watered down, but older generation of people have some truly amazing broad yorkshire accents, they're also the only people that can sing the Yorkshire Anthem with any real hope! The accent local to Sheffield in South Yorkshire, was recently voted as Britain's favourite accent. Received pronunciation does indeed sound 'stuck up' to people here, its generally associated with people who are wealthy, as well as stereotypically the accent of broadcasters, giving it the nickname of BBC English.
I know exactly what you mean! My dad is 65 and is a West Yorkshireman. His accent is pure and broad. I live in Glasgow and my father-in-law has a very strong Glaswegian accent and speaks pretty much pure Scots. My dad and father-in-law actually have trouble understanding each other hehe
@@goose300183Sweet, I'm in West Yorkshire myself. Have a wild mix of accents here, all entirely different twangs & local words. Doesn't matter if you're in Halifax, Bradford, Leeds or Wakefield, you'll always not understand 100% of the conversation with anyone from the other places. I have considered getting elocution lessons to try making my accent broad, but oof, pricey! Gonna have to live with my 'modern' Huddersfield one with plenty of input from the Holme Valley & Halifax.
@@BritishAdam aye, my family is originally from a pretty rural place in the Keighley/Skipton area. A lot of farmers and rural folks still have the traditional accent, especially the older generation like you say. To outsiders, it sounds like people are speaking Old English or something with phrases like "see ya anon" and "you laikin out t'night?" "as't bin man bin?" "hows yasen?" etc lol
I grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire and love the accent there. But since I last live there 30 years ago, I've lived in south Africa, south Wales,Essex, Hereford, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Chester and also worked with a lot of scousers and Geordies. I've lost most of my original accent and people in Yorkshire don't believe I'm from there, but people everywhere else still say I sound northern.
The Yorkshire accent is one of the friendliest accents in the world (4th to be exact) and I'm from the South of Yorkshire and the irony is that the worst, most aggressive sounding accent in the world is only 100 miles from Yorkshire. This accent is known as Liverpudlian and sounds like someone with no education trying to speak with a mouth full of spit. It's nice to see some Americans finally embrace and learn about British culture without automatically resorting to insults and criticisms ❤👌
As a Geordie myself, I can talk with a strong accent when I'm talking to my family, however I'm also a radio presenter so can talk relatively accent-free! I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and am a true Geordie, however just about 12 miles away, there is a city called Sunderland, and their accent is completely different to Geordie! They are known as "Mackems" because they pronounce the word "make" as "Mak"! I love accents, and the huge variations just a few miles away!
Yep! I have my normal accent and my "phone voice" for the rest of the World. I think it's something all of us with stronger regional accent have had to develop so those from other areas can understand us. And yep, I have relatives from Sunderland and Teesside and they're very distinctly different to mine (along with my friend from County Durham). Last time I met my elderly Mackem relative I could barely understand her for a few mins until my brain shifted.
I went to in uni in Hartlepool. One of my classmates was a geordie. One was mackem. The were besties but fought like cats and dogs. Especially about pronunciation. And ‘phone voice’ is weird. I grew up being forced to speak ‘properly’ so rp or a very relaxed rp is my normal speech pattern but I still manage to slip into a Goole (close to the doncaster accent?) accent when I’m stressed.
Haha loads of people are like that. My Mrs is from the black country moved to Somerset with me and she lost a lot of her accent. Stick her on the phone to her family and it all comes flooding back 😂
I think part of the problem with a lot of these accents is they’re using actors so a lot of them aren’t native speakers of the accent. There is a really good accent video where they use celebrities speaking in interviews so they’re talking in their own accent which is better to help you hear them
And if they are native speakers of particularly broad accents like Paul McCartney, Limmy, Billy Connolly or Cheryl Cole it's quite a watered down version of their accent that is toned down for telly
The thing is in the UK. There tends to be an accent for each county. Although Norfolk is similar to Suffolk, there will be very small changes and bearing in mind there are 230 something counties. Each county is very different to the other.
That film is RUBBISH, it's all actors, many of whom are not getting the accents right. Everybody in the UK makes fun of Mel Gibbs and Dick van Dyke because they got it excruciatingly wrong.
Can't upvote this comment enough!!! Feel sorry for the reactors because these all sound the same. (UK born linguist). We have so many beautiful wild accents. These are all tamed (and there's WAY too much narration from someone who knows nothing!)
Hey, Scotsman here. Per every 15 minutes or so of driving, you’ll find another accent. For example, where I’m from we speak a dialect of Scots called doric. Just in my area if you drive 15 minutes west, you get a slightly different accent, 15 minutes east, different accent, 15 minutes south a different accent, if you drive 15 minutes north then you’ll just be in the moray firth lol. The same principle applies to cities and major towns, so that comment about changing in every village certainly does apply :)
Etymology From Glasgow, modelled after Galwegian (“inhabitant of Galway”), itself modelled after Norwegian (“inhabitant of Norway”). The noun is from the adjective.
My Uncle is a Cornishman though and though. He has spoken the Cornish Language from a child. He speaks at a million miles an hour with a very heavy Cornish accent. The Cornish Language was almost lost but is making a big comeback. People think it's just like Welsh but it really isn't its very similar to Breton spoken in Brittany in northern France. These two languages are the closest to Brittonic the language of the Celts.
Yeah it doesn't sound much like Welsh. There are two branches of Celtic in these islands ... Brythonic and Goidelic (from 'Goidel' = Gael). Strangely, Celtic is related to Latin, both belonging to the 'southern indo-European' language group. In France, as well as Breton, they also have 'Gaulish' which was the language the Gauls spoke and isn't really related to Gaelic. So 'Gallic' and 'Gaelic' are not the same thing.
@@susanwestern6434 I must admit to not being a Cornish speaker, although i live in Cornwall now and have alot of Cornish ancestry but ... Dohajydh da! 🙂
@@CliveAdlam-yn8uz.. a lot of people in wales don’t speak English but instead speak Welsh. Same with Scotland idk what the language is but please check if you’re correct before commenting something like that.
I’m from the north west of England and worked for a lot of my life in the south east. When I was at work, people thought I sounded like a northerner, when I went home people thought I was talking like a southerner. We all have our base accent but pick up from all the other places we live and work.
I'm from Dublin and there are many accents in the city alone. You can tell what part of the city someone is from simply by their accent. There are also hundreds of accents all over Ireland and again you can easily tell where someone is from. 😅
The most challenging accent not mentioned, 'Doric' from Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Want a phrase to copy? See the Disney film 'Brave" and try to say, "It's nae richt tae mak us fecht fae th' haund o th' quine." Phrases include, "Foos yer Doos?" and Aberdeen is known in Scotland as "Furry Boots City" because of the dialect question, "Fur aboots?" = "where about's." I'll bet ye dinnae ken fit 'a loon' is eethur?"
My Father was born in London with a neutral accent, moved to the West Country, for one of his jobs he acted as a translator between an agricultural employment agency and the local farmers. So this is an Englishman translating for Englishmen because the accent is so thick. :)
Hi Steve, The woman you saw speaking in the west country clip was not from the west country, her accent was all wrong, she was only playing the part in the tv drama Broadchurch which was filmed mainly in west bay Dorset, It was a type of Dorset accent but spoken really badly, in fact i think her home town is up country somewhere.
Liam Neeson is from Ballymena, Co Antrim, N.Ireland. Northern Ireland is made up of six counties and is only a part of Ulster which is made up of nine counties. The remaining three are part of Ireland.
@@matt01506 Conservative is relative to something. You might be socially conservative but relative to what period or state? For instance Old Tory, New Tory. If you mean slow incremental change that is another definition, but again is still relative to some kind of status quo. I'm just wondering what is it about liking punk you are embarrassed about?
Glaswegian (Slang) is a throwback to the vikings who were prominent in the area, Norwegian. The welsh village has the second longest name the Longest is found in New Zealand.
I can hear similarities in there, I'm from Somerset. We pronounce some words very similarly. I had to do an American accent for a school play some years ago and we had Americans visiting and heard it. They actually thought I was American haha
As a Brit from Manchester UK, I’ve just discovered your channel, you too are so lovely, and I love your enthusiasm for learning all things Brit ❤ love your channel x
Trust me, if you heard old school Brummie or Black Country accents, you’d have a hard time understanding it. It’s said to be closest to the old Anglo Saxon and it’s not just an accent, it’s a dialect.
It's horrible (the black country accent and dialect 😂 Birmingham not so bad to me, that sounds better. And in this video the one "brummie clip" (Jeremy kyle) was the black country, which many often mix up. The black country dialect is ridiculous I really dislike it and sadly I live there 😂
I’m from the black county originally totally different to Birmingham I love our accent very proud of the people of the Black Country , I’m now living in Cornwall ( perranporth ) took them awhile to get used to my accent but I do work with a couple of brummies lol that helped abit .
@@kaycresswell6179 oh brilliant. I’ve been going to Cornwall, near Newquay, for over 40 years on holiday. Absolutely love Cornwall. Often people down there would ask if I was from Liverpool. That happens less often these days since Peaky Blinders as people have recognised the accent. 😂
@@kezlana6907 I don’t hate it at all as it’s known by linguistic Professors to be the closest to old Anglo Saxon. It’s more authentic than every other accent and King Richard III whose bones were found under a car park is believed to have had the accent. Very difficult for people outside of the West Mid’s to distinguish between Brummie and Black Country accents.
Geordie is very specific to Newcastle upon Tyne where I'm living, but down the river in South Shields you have Sandancer, and Sunderland and Durham are Makems.
The 'West Country' accent examples were from actors who did not come from the West Country. Hardly any actors get it anywhere near right. Let alone the differences fom Cornwall to Somerset. Then there are the accents from Wiltshire,Oxfordshire and Hampshire etc.
I'd personally say the Yorkshire accent is difficult to get simply because there's alot of variation of the accent. Barnsley, Sheffield, Doncaster, and Rotherham are all places in the same area and all have different variations of the Yorkshire accent.
The Glasgow accent varies depending on which part of Glasgow you live in . Glasgow is a large City . North, West, South,East.The accent can be very different . I frequently baffle my English colleagues at work with my Glasgow accent 😂
Scotland, my dad was Scottish from St. Andrews- I could understand him except when he went home.😘 Sean Connery was great too. I lived in London so that was okay. But Geordie and areas of Dublin, no. 😅😊
My wife’s family come from Hamilton south of Glasgow and after 40 years I still cannot get half of what they say!!! Michael Caine (good bloke!) isn’t really doing a cockney accent. His is more Essex / Thames Estuary. The Northern Ireland accent is truly one of the my favourites. And the people are really lovely. If you want to do an Ulster accent instead of saying Nothern Ireland say NORN IRON. Then you’ve got it!! All lot of those accents in TV shows were really parodies of the real thing as the actors are themselves putting it on!
I'm a few miles away, born near Wetherby and have lived in Harrogate most of my life. But that strong west Yorkshire accent hangs on no matter . That Barnsley accent is one of my favourites as its so warm and friendly. Its so identifiable and always reminds me of Charlie Williams.
I'm from South Yorkshire as well, Swinton, Rotherham, and it's fairly easy to tell Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster accents apart even though there isn't more than half an hour driving between us. The Barnsley area is definitely the biggest hold out for the broad Yorkshire accent tho. "Put wood in' oil on' way art." Might be tricky to translate. Biggest divider is the O vowel. Sheffield would generally pronounce tongue "tong" Barnsley and Rotherham would say "tung"
They didn't use very good examples in the video to be honest, but it's really true that in some parts of the country, people only twenty miles apart will have a noticeably different accent. Apart from the South-East where accents have got more blended, we know pretty well straight away where someone was brought up. (It's not often mentioned that there's a whole bunch of very different Irish accents too - some of them reeeally hard for foreigners to understand.)
Sometimes way less than that. The dialects are homogenising these days, but get a bunch of men from my mother's generation and every colliery in my area has a noticeably different accent. One of my lecturers in University was able to guess which village I was from by my accent alone.
When the British Library's website is fully back up (they had a cyber attack), they have a great resource on regional British accents so you can hear the difference say from South Edinburgh to Stornoway and Aberdeen within Scotland for example. It's called 'Accents and dialects - Sound Archive'. Worth having a listen and looking at a map just to see where things are from.
I was in the city one day an some Americans where asking a guy for directions, and the guy in his best Glaswegian accent was telling them how to get to there destination, and the look on there faces was oh my god lol they had no clue what he was saying. And when he finished and walked off I asked them did you get all that and they all said no. And yes I did explain it to them slowly lol xoxoxox
That happened to me once. I was 20 years old and drinking with some friends somewhere in Greece, two Scottish women said something to me and I was totally lost and caught off guard. There's a point where an accent sounds like someone is putting on an act, like pranking you. Haha. I've seen a ton of British TV shows but that Glasgow accent is just on a completely other level. The accent is so tough that I bet they're fully aware of it when speaking to foreigners.
Oh yes, often when I’ve been abroad and didn’t want to be understood by the local population, we spoke in very strong Weegie accents 😂 Don’t watch Braveheart if you want to hear a Glasgow accent (btw it’s pronounced “Glaz-go” not “Glass cow”) first of all, William Wallace was born in either Paisley or Kilmarnock, and Mel Gibson isn’t good at a Scottish accent! You want anything with Billy Connolly, Taggart, Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game, Scotch and Wry, Sweet Sixteen or The Wee Man both with Martin Compston. There’s plenty of Glasgow accents around if you want to hear them.
@@frankgibson1335 And even Geordie and Cumbria. Loads of people think both Hairy Bikers are Geordie, when Dave Myers is from the Lake District, only Si is from Newcastle.
Agreed. I'm from County Durham, so not far away and still can't do a Geordie accent. I have no idea what goes wrong, but it ends up sounding like a weird combination of Geordie, Welsh and Jamaican (I have no clue why or how that happens). I can't do accents at all. I have my own and my telephone voice and that's it.
Yes, we get our slang and colloquialisms directly from Norwegian viking invaders. "Gannin doon the ruaad" is almost identical to the Norwegian for Going down the road. 🤗
Im from Warwickshire and my husband is from Leicestershire, although we grew up only about 8 miles away from each other our accents are quite obviously different and because I spend more of my time with our son than him, his accent is closer to mine even though we now live in a village in Leicestershire. Its wild. How I say beer or deer, as someone from the west midlands it sounds like 'beeya' or 'deeya', and my husband makes jokes about it, but now our lad says it the same and he finds it hilarious. It's mad how towns or cities just over the border can sound so different!
there really are so many accents, i live in a 3000 person city in scotland and we have a completely distinct accent to any other place in scotland, it isn't really exaggeration to say every city has its own accent lol
I am a "Wessie" from Wakefield Yorkshire, Yorkshire folk have their own sayings that are completely understood by most Yorkshire folk, just like Cocknys understand theirs, it just is mostly the Yorkshire accent where folk don't understand a word we say! never mind what we are saying. "Sithie"😁
Actually Ulster English is predominantly Scottish influenced, being that the people who came to Northern Ireland during the plantation period were mainly lowland Scots and some English from the border region. So your Mrs was right.
My husband of 34 years is a Macam. From Sunderland. When he moved to Peterborough in the 1970s, his name was Tom, so everyone said ‘rock on Tommy’ from the comedy show Cannon and Ball. lol x
Thirty miles! Ten miles, more like. I could tell which part of town someone came from when I was growing up, and it was only five miles from one side to other. Same in the valleys, you can tell which side of the valley they live.
I remember travelling on the boat train which ran from Harwich to Liverpool. The train made many stops en route and it was fascinating to hear the accents change as passengers boarded at each stop.
I live in torbay in devon and love it here in the summer being the english riveria and a tourist spot we get folk from all over the uk on holiday the shops restraunts bars are just full of wonderful uk dialects. Im a massive fan of a liverpudlian accent especially from a female. 😂
Believe me guys there are far more accents than this. Some parts of the States are considered to have the most authentic 17th century English accents left. Especially in rural New England.
Hi Steve & Lyndsay, Egian comes from the word Region or area. So Glaswegian is an accent from the Glasgow Region. GLASgoWrEGION. The same for Norway Region NORWayrEGION. Accents often change within ten or so miles here but to people from outside the area this can be more difficult to hear. It is generally safe to assume that each county throughout the UK has it's own distinctive accent alough the bigger counties will have notable differences within the North, East, South and West of their areas. The reason that you both find the westcountry accent easier to follow is that the early settlers in the states had an accent very similar to the Gloucestershire and the Somerset accents we heve here today. Cheers from Trev & Jane from across the pond here in Devon.
Definitely, people outside of the areas don't notice the differences. I'm from south County Durham. If I go to the next county south (North Yorkshire) or anywhere further south, they say I've got a Geordie accent. If I go to Newcastle, they say I'm from North Yorkshire 😂 (unless they're a bit more familiar with the accents in between). I understand it though as if I go two towns north, they sound a lot more Geordie than here (although not proper Geordie) and a couple of towns south and they sound fully Yorkshire to me.
The “egein” suffix just means where it comes from. Mel Gibson is Aussie and sounds nothing like a Scot. Braveheart was a truly bad film. It was Mel Gubson’s view of history. Not what actually happened - ignore! My wife’s family don’t say Glasgow. They say Glazgay. !!! “I’ve seen it” is “I sin it”. South Wales accent is also lovely really musical! And I can understand every word you both say! Cheers Steve and Lindsay.
You need to listen to the western isles of Scotland accent also orcadian(someone from the orkney islands). I myself hail from north east Scotland we have our own accent called the Doric it's a brammer 😘🏴
The Barnsley accent in Yorkshire is the strongest accent in that region I went to secondary school in Barnsley and it took me a good two years to understand it I'm not kidding 😂
I’m in a small town surrounded by 5relatively large and some small cities, nobody speaks at all the same from where I’m from and from the surrounding areas
That isn't a really good choice of how cockney sounds, Dicky Van Dyke isn't English so they should have had a proper cockney speaking. You really need to listen to people who actually come from Liverpool, Birmingham, Wales, Scotland etc, because they are speaking how it really is, it's no good listening to actors who are imitating the accent because they don't always get it right.
Lindsay's RP accent could be good with some practice, well done! My recommendation for videos on accents would be "Anglophenia - One women 17 accents" It's fun but informative. Other recommendations are "Map Men videos on Jay Foremans channel" Educational and very entertaining Also the channel "our Travel Place" for videos on York, Whitby, The Yorkshire dales. Includes good footage of many sights with handy information. From the hills to the village shops, its a great look into what to add to your visit list :)
I don't think the video didn't emphasise enough is the difference between an accent, and a dialect. The west country - Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, Wessex, have a dialect a distinct variation of English that is very old, dating back to the Saxon times of King Alfred in the 6th Century, it has a more Germanic grammar, pronunciation, and tenses compared to modern "standard" English.~ There's also the accent - the way west country people speak "standard" English It's often derided as a simple farmers / peasants way of talking
Yeah the amount of different dialects and accents we have are staggering considering the size of us. The changes between places that are close to each other is indeed a real thing, mainly I think due to slang mainly.
I live in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. It’s a medium sized town and it’s origins lie in markets, coal mining and glass production. The town is surrounded by villages, and we can generally tell which village someone is from by their accent. It’s harder to do since I was a youngster, because people are moving more nowadays, but it still works as a rule.
It would be good for them to make a video with the actual people from those areas, rather than actors who are picked or speak more clearly and less strong in a way, so that viewers can understand it better. Some people even we can't understand from a few towns over 😂
Glaswegian is just somebody from Glasgow. Same with Norway as you mentioned. I'm from Fife in Scotland so I'm a Fifer. Love your Channel. I really hope you make it over here. Yes accents change every few miles here xx
I feel your reference video is not really meant for non-British people but more for those who can laugh at what they already know. A lot of the references are not ‘real’ accents but from TV shows. Exceptions are those who were actually born and bred in their regions, but some of t6em are very dated by how old they people are. I am actually from Birmingham my brother says I am very brummie, but I am probably not, and many accents presumed to be brummy are Black Country which is a thing of its own. With very diverse immigration to all of our major cities you also hear hybrid accents, British south Asian accents for instance, or British Caribbean….. but then the very regional are also quite distinct too, West Country are just as diverse as any city accents. Live here long enough and you can place them. I was brought up and schooled in RP, it was drilled into us, but my school friends were from all over the country and from different classes of people too, you only briefly touched on that, how accents define where people are in the pecking order.
Liam Neeson is from Ballymena in Northern Ireland, Ulster is a Provence in the North of Ireland it includes all 6 counties of Northern Ireland and 3 more countries from the Republic of Ireland but can sometimes be used interchangeably as a term with Northern Ireland. So you are right in Ulster English is English in a Northern Irish accent. There is also a dialect called Ulster Scots which is a mix of English and Scottish which is maybe what Lyndsey was thinking of. You don’t normally watch tv on here but you should watch Derry girls to really hear a strong northern Irish accent. 😊
I'm Yorkshire and my aunt told me once that when she was young, the accent would change from literally street to street. Obviously as time went on and there's a lot more moving around the area/country, things got a little more diluted...so that village to village is not that far fetched to be fair. Not so much these days but definitely used to be the case. You only need to drive half hour or less to come into a completely not accent zone...
In the old days you didn't get on TV unless you spoke received pronunciation (RP or Queens English). Now you see a few more, but many still don't go on air because many wouldn't understand it without subtitles... I live in Yorkshire and there are some really heavy accents you really have to concentrate to understand... On a telephone you could struggle without visual clues, maybe pick-up 60% and construct sentences from that.. It's a skill requiring the understanding of context and syntax with a healthy amount of guess work.
The versions of the accents shown in this video were ALL very mild versions. If you heard BROAD Geordie, broad Glaswegian, broad Bummie, they would sound very different to the voices we heard. And accents WITHIN regions can differ. For example people talk about a Yorkshire accent, yet most people from Yorkshire or futher away would have no difficulty in distinguishing a speaker using the accent from part of North Yorkshire (say Middlesbrough), from the accent of another person from Leeds in West Yorkshire, or from Sheffield in South Yorkshire or from Hull in East Yorkshire where some say they can distinguish between 3 different Hull accents. And when the Police were looking for the Yorkshire Ripper a few decades ago, a hoax "Geordie tape" was sent to the Police which many might have thought came from someone from Newcastle (Geordie) but which experts said came from a (Mackem) man from a particular part of Sunderland - Newcastle and Sunderland are 14 miles apart and have a fierce rivalry. They could even say it came from an area within Sunderland. North Wales (where there is a high percentage who speak Welsh) have a very different accent to the people from the South Wales valleys. It's all part of Life's Great British Mystery....
The first west country bit was from the movie Hot Fuzz, and was specifically a joke about varying accents accross a small area. The main characters had to bring another copper to translate him, who himself had to be translated by the local copper, Danny.
I'm surprised that they didn't mention every pirate movie accent ever when talking about the West Country! The West Country has always been a major sea faring part of the UK and was the home to many famous pirates from history - most notably Blackbeard.
Bristolian in particular. Not actually the accent of pirates, but just one famous actor who played Blackbeard happened to be from Bristol and his accent stuck as what people think pirate sounded like. When in reality ship crews were full of people from all over the country and all over the world so there would likely have been many different accents around at one time.
Accent changing every town, but even in the same town the accents arent the same. Scottish is the same as England. The accents are different. The man on the picture of mancunian is Karl pilkington, related to my family. the Cornwall you showed on here is nothing like the real Cornish accent. Glaswegian is glasgow. One of the hardest accent ever to understand, next is a real strong Liverpool accent. Glaswegan means Glascow region. All of these accents are toned down. You need to see the real accents like the woman you couldnt understand. Heres a nice Welsh accent, and he speaks Welsh . He can say the longest place name too. Hes well known . ruclips.net/video/8KeGMedWgE4/видео.html. Ive a sort of geordie accent. Like haway man, (come on) some of them geordie accents were pee takes, not the real one. Americans cant do an English accent. Im English and cant understaant west country. The woman isnt speaking west country. Its too pash lol. None of these are real accent, theyre accent fpr tv. None of them, apart from the woman losing it, are real. Theyre toned town accents done by opeople who have different accents. For gwordie maybes watch biker grove. Its still toned down Geordie, but it is done by geordies
In the UK, Dick Van Dyke is infamous for how bad his cockney accent is in Mary Poppins - proving how difficult it really is!
in fact, my wife whose actual cockney, said that where she grew up a bad impression would be called "going full dick"
That was a shocking attempt, even by American standards 😂
Apparently he had a voice coach to help him with the accent, however that voice coach was from Ireland! 😆
@@andybaker2456 🤣🤣🤣🤣
‘Alright, I’ll do it myself’ 😂😂😂😂
Growing up in the uk during the 90s, you could tell if someone came from the next town over by accent. The difference in accent from just a ten mile difference was huge.
I love this about the UK
it’s still like this in wales! can tell from a 15min drive that you’ve moved into a new area
Yes its still like that in the northeast
I'm from Sheffield and can tell if someone is from Barnsley 15min away
Yep, a prime example is Sunderland and Newcastle, we have a very different accent from Gerodies and we're not even 10 miles apart.
Not many of the accents in the video were actually very strong representations.
Yeah, there's plenty of much thicker clips available. For Norn Iron, for example, I would have gone with the 'frost bit kid'.
Yeah, they were mostly mild, diluted versions of the accents.
My husband and I are from the south east, one of my lovely daughters in law comes from Newcastle in the north east. My husband jokes that he hasn’t understood a word she says in 30 years!! (She then hits him!!!!)
They used a clip of a Black Country girl speaking rough Yam Yam as an example of the Brummie accent :(
Fact, these were the most diluted examples you could find
As a British citizen, I didn't think the examples shown were that great or shown off the accents in a particularly obvious way to an outsider. Thinking about it, I wished they had shown clips of the eighties drama, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, as the mixture of different characters clearly demonstrates the diversity and broadness in UK dialects.
Very true, there were lots of different accents in that.
@@EtherealSunset Funny thing was, only the Geordie characters accents were authentic because the actors actually were Geordies, but all the other actors actually weren't from the region their character was from.
i am not British and i agree with you, anyone could understand what was said that was not the best video to show the British accents
Jump, loved Jimmy Nail in it!!!
Why aye!!! Geordies 😇
Honestly think some of the clips didn't represent the accents enough 😂 but it was hilarious.
I agree.
Yes, many of the examples were pretty mild, and didn't really give a good representation of how some of those accents really sound.
Totally agree
Most accents on tv are toned down so people can understand
Birmingham has so many ascent from the black country to Wolfhamton to Dudley even Yam Yam .and
Newcastle is just as bad the softest is the midleland
Yeah i thought that also.
Proud West Country boy here. You would know this accent from Hagrid in Harry Potter, Sam Wise in the Lord of the Rings and Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean
Stephen Merchant and Russel Howard
I like Stephen Merchant because his name alone is brilliant to showcase his accent @@samhasnoplan7631
A lot of the accents you heard in the video were accents for TV shows, so an element of a variety of different viewers being able to understand it would be taken into account. The everyday accent you hear across different towns and cities in real life are usually a bit stronger and the differences tend to be greater.
Many by actors who are not even from that area. Including the RP one with a Australian playing the part.
I don't think this was a very good representation of any of the accents tbh
@@neilgayleard3842 So many of these vids use Peaky Blinders as an example of Brummie - when the actor is actually Irish.
No representations of British accents at all in the video. Missing the real accents via actors.
Missing Yorkshire, The Midlands, East Anglia, Scottish other than Glasgow. All areas have slightly different accents.
The shown video is nowhere near representation.
Just to put the record straight, don't attempt to reproduce. It's offensive.
You enjoy our melodic English speech. Maybe the odd exceptions.
I disagree, accents are much more diluted now and tend to be exaggerated by actors
Lindsay's got a point: it would be MUCH more interesting to have a SINGLE passage rendered in different regional accents.
You mean something like: “Where have you been since I saw you?”, as opposed to “Wheir 'ast tha bin sinc'ah saw thee?”.
@@allenwilliams1306
"“Where have you been since I saw you?”"
Now that _is_ an interesting dialect (whatever it means). Where's it from? ;-)
@@marvinc9994 On Ilkley Moor.
Gerald from Clarkson's farm is probably the hardest person in the uk to understand 🤣
100%!! Not a clue what he's saying, but he's hilarious!! 😂
they should definitely check out clarksons farm
they should definitely check out clarksons farm
There is a youtube video that basically teaches you to understand Gerald (I think it's "This is what gerald said"). Once you watch it, everything suddenly makes sense. (If you grew up around it, no need to watch the video)
I disagree the strongest English accent very broad Scottish.
When you think of Scotland, you should start with Billy Connolly.
Before they invented the bicycle and the train, most country folk lived, worked and married within a few miles of where they were born. There were also many different local dialect words, as well as different accents.
Its fascinating to look at old maps before the motorcar, market towns were like the hub of a spoked wheel with roads leading to the next settlements, they normally worked out about 13 to 15 miles in-between, a comfortable distance for a man to travel there and back in a day on a horse and cart. So they noticed speech variations about that distance apart.
Even after their invention, most people couldn't afford to use them
They chose the wrong video to react to. You only get to hear a couple of words of each accent. Absolute waste of time.
After the invention of the the bicycle, young men in rural England were able to roger young women they were not even related to.
@@ianbeddowes5362 What are you on about...? Roger? Do you mean fuck?
I don’t think the video gave lengthy enough clips or examples of these accents. I LOVE accents!
Agreed!
I'm from Wakefield, went to school in Leeds, went to university in Hull, worked in Harrogate, now live in Barnsley and my girlfriend is from Sheffield. All Yorkshire towns and cities. Every single one has a completely different accent to the others.
I'm from Sheffield lived in Leeds, hartlepool, Wolverhampton and now barnsley
A know what thar on abart theer mate. Tintintin tha knows
I'm from Pontefract and there's even a slight difference between here and Wakefield.
From Huddersfield to hull there’s a good 4-5 accents and from Sheffield to Richmond the same. Yorkshire is a massive county.
I’m a Scouser living in Barnsley, I’ve been here 4 years and I’ve noticed that Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster accents are all so different yet there’s only a few miles separating each place.
The old joke is:
You drive two hours in the US you're in the same state.
You drive 2 hours in the UK the accent has changed seven times and bred rolls are called something new.
😂 true! Had a barm mile back a cob here and morning roll later
@@xanderjames8682and a bread cake and bap. 😊
I'm quite surprised the Broad Yorkshire accent isn't on there. The modern Yorkshire accent for most areas is now fairly watered down, but older generation of people have some truly amazing broad yorkshire accents, they're also the only people that can sing the Yorkshire Anthem with any real hope! The accent local to Sheffield in South Yorkshire, was recently voted as Britain's favourite accent.
Received pronunciation does indeed sound 'stuck up' to people here, its generally associated with people who are wealthy, as well as stereotypically the accent of broadcasters, giving it the nickname of BBC English.
I know exactly what you mean! My dad is 65 and is a West Yorkshireman. His accent is pure and broad. I live in Glasgow and my father-in-law has a very strong Glaswegian accent and speaks pretty much pure Scots. My dad and father-in-law actually have trouble understanding each other hehe
@@goose300183Sweet, I'm in West Yorkshire myself. Have a wild mix of accents here, all entirely different twangs & local words. Doesn't matter if you're in Halifax, Bradford, Leeds or Wakefield, you'll always not understand 100% of the conversation with anyone from the other places. I have considered getting elocution lessons to try making my accent broad, but oof, pricey! Gonna have to live with my 'modern' Huddersfield one with plenty of input from the Holme Valley & Halifax.
@@BritishAdam aye, my family is originally from a pretty rural place in the Keighley/Skipton area. A lot of farmers and rural folks still have the traditional accent, especially the older generation like you say. To outsiders, it sounds like people are speaking Old English or something with phrases like "see ya anon" and "you laikin out t'night?" "as't bin man bin?" "hows yasen?" etc lol
@@BritishAdamHey up lad, shout out to Halifax. Nice one, that's weer ahm from.
I grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire and love the accent there. But since I last live there 30 years ago, I've lived in south Africa, south Wales,Essex, Hereford, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Chester and also worked with a lot of scousers and Geordies. I've lost most of my original accent and people in Yorkshire don't believe I'm from there, but people everywhere else still say I sound northern.
The Yorkshire accent is one of the friendliest accents in the world (4th to be exact) and I'm from the South of Yorkshire and the irony is that the worst, most aggressive sounding accent in the world is only 100 miles from Yorkshire. This accent is known as Liverpudlian and sounds like someone with no education trying to speak with a mouth full of spit. It's nice to see some Americans finally embrace and learn about British culture without automatically resorting to insults and criticisms ❤👌
What a downer on scousers!
As a Geordie myself, I can talk with a strong accent when I'm talking to my family, however I'm also a radio presenter so can talk relatively accent-free! I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and am a true Geordie, however just about 12 miles away, there is a city called Sunderland, and their accent is completely different to Geordie! They are known as "Mackems" because they pronounce the word "make" as "Mak"! I love accents, and the huge variations just a few miles away!
As a Londoner I looooooooove a Geordie accent 😂😍 (that and Edinburgh are my favourites)
Yep! I have my normal accent and my "phone voice" for the rest of the World. I think it's something all of us with stronger regional accent have had to develop so those from other areas can understand us.
And yep, I have relatives from Sunderland and Teesside and they're very distinctly different to mine (along with my friend from County Durham). Last time I met my elderly Mackem relative I could barely understand her for a few mins until my brain shifted.
I went to in uni in Hartlepool. One of my classmates was a geordie. One was mackem. The were besties but fought like cats and dogs. Especially about pronunciation.
And ‘phone voice’ is weird. I grew up being forced to speak ‘properly’ so rp or a very relaxed rp is my normal speech pattern but I still manage to slip into a Goole (close to the doncaster accent?) accent when I’m stressed.
Aye thiv got a canny accent in the Toon like! 😅
Haha loads of people are like that. My Mrs is from the black country moved to Somerset with me and she lost a lot of her accent. Stick her on the phone to her family and it all comes flooding back 😂
Given what a tiny country we are, it’s insane how many different accents we have. 😂
Yeah, kinda blows our minds :)
@@reactingtomyroots Steve if you want to show your wife a real Geordie accent watch a show called
Spender.(starring Jimmy nail). Jimmy is a Geordie
We also have four languages remember 😁
Welsh, English, Scots Gael and Cornish.
I think part of the problem with a lot of these accents is they’re using actors so a lot of them aren’t native speakers of the accent. There is a really good accent video where they use celebrities speaking in interviews so they’re talking in their own accent which is better to help you hear them
Agreed!
And if they are native speakers of particularly broad accents like Paul McCartney, Limmy, Billy Connolly or Cheryl Cole it's quite a watered down version of their accent that is toned down for telly
The thing is in the UK. There tends to be an accent for each county. Although Norfolk is similar to Suffolk, there will be very small changes and bearing in mind there are 230 something counties. Each county is very different to the other.
That film is RUBBISH, it's all actors, many of whom are not getting the accents right. Everybody in the UK makes fun of Mel Gibbs and Dick van Dyke because they got it excruciatingly wrong.
(I had to check your comment twice! I thought I had written that & forgotten!😂💜)
Hilarious!
🙏🏻💜🇬🇧💜
Can't upvote this comment enough!!! Feel sorry for the reactors because these all sound the same. (UK born linguist). We have so many beautiful wild accents. These are all tamed (and there's WAY too much narration from someone who knows nothing!)
Hey, Scotsman here. Per every 15 minutes or so of driving, you’ll find another accent. For example, where I’m from we speak a dialect of Scots called doric. Just in my area if you drive 15 minutes west, you get a slightly different accent, 15 minutes east, different accent, 15 minutes south a different accent, if you drive 15 minutes north then you’ll just be in the moray firth lol. The same principle applies to cities and major towns, so that comment about changing in every village certainly does apply :)
Etymology
From Glasgow, modelled after Galwegian (“inhabitant of Galway”), itself modelled after Norwegian (“inhabitant of Norway”). The noun is from the adjective.
Thanks for explaining!
I am a mancunian and also Scottish. I can do both!!!!!!
My Uncle is a Cornishman though and though. He has spoken the Cornish Language from a child.
He speaks at a million miles an hour with a very heavy Cornish accent.
The Cornish Language was almost lost but is making a big comeback. People think it's just like Welsh but it really isn't its very similar to Breton spoken in Brittany in northern France. These two languages are the closest to Brittonic the language of the Celts.
I'm from Devon and had a Dutch girlfriend and she asked me to slow down my speaking when we video called lol
Yeah it doesn't sound much like Welsh. There are two branches of Celtic in these islands ... Brythonic and Goidelic (from 'Goidel' = Gael). Strangely, Celtic is related to Latin, both belonging to the 'southern indo-European' language group. In France, as well as Breton, they also have 'Gaulish' which was the language the Gauls spoke and isn't really related to Gaelic. So 'Gallic' and 'Gaelic' are not the same thing.
@@hardywatkins7737Dydh da.
@@susanwestern6434 I must admit to not being a Cornish speaker, although i live in Cornwall now and have alot of Cornish ancestry but ... Dohajydh da! 🙂
@@susanwestern6434
Dydd da I chditha hefyd 😁
Received Pronunciation used to be frivolously called BBC English all newsreaders and presenters were expected to speak that way
Scotland, Wales and Ireland don't just have different accents, they have different languages.😱
Ever tried Anglo-Saxon?
They all speak English with an accent .
@@CliveAdlam-yn8uz.. a lot of people in wales don’t speak English but instead speak Welsh. Same with Scotland idk what the language is but please check if you’re correct before commenting something like that.
I’m from the north west of England and worked for a lot of my life in the south east. When I was at work, people thought I sounded like a northerner, when I went home people thought I was talking like a southerner. We all have our base accent but pick up from all the other places we live and work.
I'm from Dublin and there are many accents in the city alone. You can tell what part of the city someone is from simply by their accent. There are also hundreds of accents all over Ireland and again you can easily tell where someone is from. 😅
Amrcns All think they "Know!" Irish ppl..😅
(You know this!)
🤭💜🙏🏻💜🇮🇪💜
🏴💜🇬🇧💜
The most challenging accent not mentioned, 'Doric' from Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Want a phrase to copy? See the Disney film 'Brave" and try to say, "It's nae richt tae mak us fecht fae th' haund o th' quine." Phrases include, "Foos yer Doos?" and Aberdeen is known in Scotland as "Furry Boots City" because of the dialect question, "Fur aboots?" = "where about's." I'll bet ye dinnae ken fit 'a loon' is eethur?"
This vid is people with one accent doing somebody else's accent, it's mostly actors playing a part and they are showing bad examples 😄👍
😂
Hear, ear! ☺
Agreed!!!!
And barely any of it to listen to anyway. It's mostly narration.
I live in Glasgow, Scotland :) Limmy’s a legend
If you're saying accents and dialects, they pretty much do change every village, coz we refer to tings differently, rhyming slang is a good example
My Father was born in London with a neutral accent, moved to the West Country, for one of his jobs he acted as a translator between an agricultural employment agency and the local farmers. So this is an Englishman translating for Englishmen because the accent is so thick. :)
Hi Steve, The woman you saw speaking in the west country clip was not from the west country, her accent was all wrong, she was only playing the part in the tv drama Broadchurch which was filmed mainly in west bay Dorset, It was a type of Dorset accent but spoken really badly, in fact i think her home town is up country somewhere.
there are around 170 dialects in the UK, even more if you start adding the British Isles (Channel Islands, Isle of White, Isle of Man etc)
Liam Neeson is from Ballymena, Co Antrim, N.Ireland. Northern Ireland is made up of six counties and is only a part of Ulster which is made up of nine counties. The remaining three are part of Ireland.
@@matt01506 SLF fan?
@@matt01506 what type of conservative, what are you conserving?
@@matt01506 Conservative is relative to something. You might be socially conservative but relative to what period or state? For instance Old Tory, New Tory. If you mean slow incremental change that is another definition, but again is still relative to some kind of status quo.
I'm just wondering what is it about liking punk you are embarrassed about?
All 9 are part of Ireland, one would imagine, heg head.
A Derry accent is quite different from a Belfast accent or an Ulster country accent.
Glaswegian (Slang) is a throwback to the vikings who were prominent in the area, Norwegian. The welsh village has the second longest name the Longest is found in New Zealand.
Americans will not notice the west country accent so much - as it is one of the main sources of the standard American English accent.
I can hear similarities in there, I'm from Somerset. We pronounce some words very similarly. I had to do an American accent for a school play some years ago and we had Americans visiting and heard it. They actually thought I was American haha
@@rustynail1194 Exactly, if you asked an American to say "Somerset" - they would almost sound like a local!
As a Brit from Manchester UK, I’ve just discovered your channel, you too are so lovely, and I love your enthusiasm for learning all things Brit ❤ love your channel x
Trust me, if you heard old school Brummie or Black Country accents, you’d have a hard time understanding it. It’s said to be closest to the old Anglo Saxon and it’s not just an accent, it’s a dialect.
It's horrible (the black country accent and dialect 😂 Birmingham not so bad to me, that sounds better. And in this video the one "brummie clip" (Jeremy kyle) was the black country, which many often mix up. The black country dialect is ridiculous I really dislike it and sadly I live there 😂
I’m from the black county originally totally different to Birmingham I love our accent very proud of the people of the Black Country , I’m now living in Cornwall ( perranporth ) took them awhile to get used to my accent but I do work with a couple of brummies lol that helped abit .
@@kaycresswell6179 oh brilliant. I’ve been going to Cornwall, near Newquay, for over 40 years on holiday. Absolutely love Cornwall. Often people down there would ask if I was from Liverpool. That happens less often these days since Peaky Blinders as people have recognised the accent. 😂
@@kezlana6907 I don’t hate it at all as it’s known by linguistic Professors to be the closest to old Anglo Saxon. It’s more authentic than every other accent and King Richard III whose bones were found under a car park is believed to have had the accent. Very difficult for people outside of the West Mid’s to distinguish between Brummie and Black Country accents.
Was on Perranporth beach quite a few times last holiday and finished off the day with a drink at the beach pub and watched the sun set. Bliss!
Geordie is very specific to Newcastle upon Tyne where I'm living, but down the river in South Shields you have Sandancer, and Sunderland and Durham are Makems.
Makems and takems
The west country isn't one accent, but it's a gradient of a similar sound
I'm from the West Country. All you have to do is exaggerate the "Rs" at the end to sound like a pirate and throw in a few colloquial words lol
Yes I agree with you. I am from Devon originally and the accent varies slightly over the whole West Country.
@@rachelpenny5165I be a Devon bey too, me luvver, an I cans tell doze vurriners in zummerzit apart from us lot
The 'West Country' accent examples were from actors who did not come from the West Country. Hardly any actors get it anywhere near right. Let alone the differences fom Cornwall to Somerset.
Then there are the accents from Wiltshire,Oxfordshire and Hampshire etc.
Bill Bailey is from Somerset - he is a good example of the West Country accent.
I'd personally say the Yorkshire accent is difficult to get simply because there's alot of variation of the accent. Barnsley, Sheffield, Doncaster, and Rotherham are all places in the same area and all have different variations of the Yorkshire accent.
Don’t forget guys, the video was demonstrating accents that are hard to imitate, not necessarily hard to understand. 😊
Lol they're hard to imitate because they're barely there. Most of these sound like rp to me. A proper broad accent is always easy to imitate.
The Glasgow accent varies depending on which part of Glasgow you live in . Glasgow is a large City . North, West, South,East.The accent can be very different . I frequently baffle my English colleagues at work with my Glasgow accent 😂
Keep up the good work
And "how" means "why"?
The Dundee accent is like someone speaking backwards inside a coal sack which is underwater
😂
😂😂
I'm not sure I've heard a Dundee accent before, but I now will be looking for one on YT after this amazing description. I need to hear that 😂
Scotland, my dad was Scottish from St. Andrews- I could understand him except when he went home.😘 Sean Connery was great too. I lived in London so that was okay. But Geordie and areas of Dublin, no. 😅😊
Naaaaah. They're fine!
Love how you get your family involved now. I hope things continue to go well for you all
My wife’s family come from Hamilton south of Glasgow and after 40 years I still cannot get half of what they say!!!
Michael Caine (good bloke!) isn’t really doing a cockney accent. His is more Essex / Thames Estuary.
The Northern Ireland accent is truly one of the my favourites. And the people are really lovely.
If you want to do an Ulster accent instead of saying Nothern Ireland say NORN IRON. Then you’ve got it!!
All lot of those accents in TV shows were really parodies of the real thing as the actors are themselves putting it on!
There are differences between a Derry, Belfast, Armagh, Derry Linn. Subtle but discernible.
That's no even a hard Scottish accent 😂
Since Caine's from South London he's definitely not doing an Essex accent.
@@eddhardy1054 more like Kent I'd say
@eddhardy1054 Yep, he was born and raised in inner South East London.
As someone from the Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, I can confirm that the Barnsley accent is one of the UK's hardest to translate.
I'm a few miles away, born near Wetherby and have lived in Harrogate most of my life. But that strong west Yorkshire accent hangs on no matter . That Barnsley accent is one of my favourites as its so warm and friendly. Its so identifiable and always reminds me of Charlie Williams.
I'm from South Yorkshire as well, Swinton, Rotherham, and it's fairly easy to tell Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster accents apart even though there isn't more than half an hour driving between us. The Barnsley area is definitely the biggest hold out for the broad Yorkshire accent tho.
"Put wood in' oil on' way art." Might be tricky to translate.
Biggest divider is the O vowel. Sheffield would generally pronounce tongue "tong" Barnsley and Rotherham would say "tung"
They didn't use very good examples in the video to be honest, but it's really true that in some parts of the country, people only twenty miles apart will have a noticeably different accent. Apart from the South-East where accents have got more blended, we know pretty well straight away where someone was brought up.
(It's not often mentioned that there's a whole bunch of very different Irish accents too - some of them reeeally hard for foreigners to understand.)
Sometimes way less than that. The dialects are homogenising these days, but get a bunch of men from my mother's generation and every colliery in my area has a noticeably different accent. One of my lecturers in University was able to guess which village I was from by my accent alone.
yeah it was crap.
Yeah, using 'actors trying to do the accent, some good some bad' isn't a great idea.
When the British Library's website is fully back up (they had a cyber attack), they have a great resource on regional British accents so you can hear the difference say from South Edinburgh to Stornoway and Aberdeen within Scotland for example. It's called 'Accents and dialects - Sound Archive'. Worth having a listen and looking at a map just to see where things are from.
That's awesome to know! We'll have to see what we can find. :) Thanks
I was in the city one day an some Americans where asking a guy for directions, and the guy in his best Glaswegian accent was telling them how to get to there destination, and the look on there faces was oh my god lol they had no clue what he was saying. And when he finished and walked off I asked them did you get all that and they all said no. And yes I did explain it to them slowly lol xoxoxox
😂 you're a saint!
That happened to me once. I was 20 years old and drinking with some friends somewhere in Greece, two Scottish women said something to me and I was totally lost and caught off guard. There's a point where an accent sounds like someone is putting on an act, like pranking you. Haha. I've seen a ton of British TV shows but that Glasgow accent is just on a completely other level. The accent is so tough that I bet they're fully aware of it when speaking to foreigners.
Oh yes, often when I’ve been abroad and didn’t want to be understood by the local population, we spoke in very strong Weegie accents 😂
Don’t watch Braveheart if you want to hear a Glasgow accent (btw it’s pronounced “Glaz-go” not “Glass cow”) first of all, William Wallace was born in either Paisley or Kilmarnock, and Mel Gibson isn’t good at a Scottish accent! You want anything with Billy Connolly, Taggart, Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game, Scotch and Wry, Sweet Sixteen or The Wee Man both with Martin Compston. There’s plenty of Glasgow accents around if you want to hear them.
Loved her look of sheer puzzlement when the weatherman uttered Llanfair etc. Priceless.
Us Scots and a few other accents talk much more quickly than other accents in the UK!
As a Geordie I agree with the Geordie being number 1 because anyone trying to imitate always does it badly 🤣
I totally agree, they're also inclined to mix up Geordie and Northumbrian.
@@frankgibson1335 And even Geordie and Cumbria. Loads of people think both Hairy Bikers are Geordie, when Dave Myers is from the Lake District, only Si is from Newcastle.
Agreed. I'm from County Durham, so not far away and still can't do a Geordie accent. I have no idea what goes wrong, but it ends up sounding like a weird combination of Geordie, Welsh and Jamaican (I have no clue why or how that happens). I can't do accents at all. I have my own and my telephone voice and that's it.
@@AndrewBroadhead-kb7ocSi isn't from Newcastle either. He's a County Durham lad. Neither of them are from Newcastle.
Yes, we get our slang and colloquialisms directly from Norwegian viking invaders. "Gannin doon the ruaad" is almost identical to the Norwegian for Going down the road. 🤗
Actors are not going to give you a genuine example of the accents as they have watered it down
Im from Warwickshire and my husband is from Leicestershire, although we grew up only about 8 miles away from each other our accents are quite obviously different and because I spend more of my time with our son than him, his accent is closer to mine even though we now live in a village in Leicestershire. Its wild.
How I say beer or deer, as someone from the west midlands it sounds like 'beeya' or 'deeya', and my husband makes jokes about it, but now our lad says it the same and he finds it hilarious.
It's mad how towns or cities just over the border can sound so different!
I'm curious now, how does he pronounce those words?
there really are so many accents, i live in a 3000 person city in scotland and we have a completely distinct accent to any other place in scotland, it isn't really exaggeration to say every city has its own accent lol
I am a "Wessie" from Wakefield Yorkshire, Yorkshire folk have their own sayings that are completely understood by most Yorkshire folk, just like Cocknys understand theirs, it just is mostly the Yorkshire accent where folk don't understand a word we say! never mind what we are saying. "Sithie"😁
Nah then!
Yoreyt? 😂
@@michellerice606 eye love!
Actually Ulster English is predominantly Scottish influenced, being that the people who came to Northern Ireland during the plantation period were mainly lowland Scots and some English from the border region. So your Mrs was right.
You should react to a better UK accent video! this was not a good one, find one that does more and gives better examples.
My husband of 34 years is a Macam. From Sunderland. When he moved to Peterborough in the 1970s, his name was Tom, so everyone said ‘rock on Tommy’ from the comedy show Cannon and Ball. lol x
There is a change in accent about every 30 miles in England some are a slight change and others are a drastic change it is kinda crazy
Thirty miles! Ten miles, more like. I could tell which part of town someone came from when I was growing up, and it was only five miles from one side to other. Same in the valleys, you can tell which side of the valley they live.
I remember travelling on the boat train which ran from Harwich to Liverpool. The train made many stops en route and it was fascinating to hear the accents change as passengers boarded at each stop.
@@PedroConejo1939totally agree with you. I'm from the North East and when I was a child every village sounded different
In London, the distance between accent is even shorter.
Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield in West Yorkshire all have differences and are within 10 miles of each other
My late mother was welsh, I learned how to pronounce this long place name about 60 years ago and have never forgotten it 😀👍
Yes, I've got to Lanfair PG.
@@mickleather2119 😀👍
I live in torbay in devon and love it here in the summer being the english riveria and a tourist spot we get folk from all over the uk on holiday the shops restraunts bars are just full of wonderful uk dialects. Im a massive fan of a liverpudlian accent especially from a female. 😂
Believe me guys there are far more accents than this. Some parts of the States are considered to have the most authentic 17th century English accents left. Especially in rural New England.
Hi Steve & Lyndsay,
Egian comes from the word Region or area. So Glaswegian is an accent from the Glasgow Region. GLASgoWrEGION. The same for Norway Region NORWayrEGION.
Accents often change within ten or so miles here but to people from outside the area this can be more difficult to hear. It is generally safe to assume that each county throughout the UK has it's own distinctive accent alough the bigger counties will have notable differences within the North, East, South and West of their areas.
The reason that you both find the westcountry accent easier to follow is that the early settlers in the states had an accent very similar to the Gloucestershire and the Somerset accents we heve here today.
Cheers from Trev & Jane from across the pond here in Devon.
Definitely, people outside of the areas don't notice the differences. I'm from south County Durham. If I go to the next county south (North Yorkshire) or anywhere further south, they say I've got a Geordie accent. If I go to Newcastle, they say I'm from North Yorkshire 😂 (unless they're a bit more familiar with the accents in between). I understand it though as if I go two towns north, they sound a lot more Geordie than here (although not proper Geordie) and a couple of towns south and they sound fully Yorkshire to me.
That's pretty cool to know...and when you break it down like that (i.e. that it comes from the word 'region') it makes much more sense. :) Thanks
Ironically, one of the actors they used to demonstrate RP is actually Australian! 😂
I think the easiest English accent is the perceived “upper class “ accent - and you both got it pretty close!!!
I think it's the non-rhotic R's that were tripping them up
Remember Scots isnt just an accent , its different words altogether .
The “egein” suffix just means where it comes from. Mel Gibson is Aussie and sounds nothing like a Scot. Braveheart was a truly bad film. It was Mel Gubson’s view of history. Not what actually happened - ignore!
My wife’s family don’t say Glasgow. They say Glazgay. !!! “I’ve seen it” is “I sin it”.
South Wales accent is also lovely really musical!
And I can understand every word you both say!
Cheers Steve and Lindsay.
I’m from just outside Glasgow in Paisley and we say what sounds like Glez-gah lol
You need to listen to the western isles of Scotland accent also orcadian(someone from the orkney islands). I myself hail from north east Scotland we have our own accent called the Doric it's a brammer 😘🏴
I reckon doric would leave them flabbergasted😂
Yip Doric is my fave Scottish Dialect, Scotland the What is hilarious!
Shetland 😄
Doric leaves even people from other parts of Scotland bemused 😂
Gerald Clarkson’s farm… amazing, also true Yorkshire, it’s not really around any more, but please!
The Barnsley accent in Yorkshire is the strongest accent in that region I went to secondary school in Barnsley and it took me a good two years to understand it I'm not kidding 😂
the Land of Sir Geoffrey and Parky (Geoffrey Boycott - former Cricketer and Michael Parkinson- Journalist and Chatshow Host)
@@steveclarke6257 ayup lad itiz Indeed
Yep thas reyt anorl 😂 (translated = yes you are right as well) 😂
@@michellerice606 haha 😅 still got family in Barnsley I revert back to the accent on the phone with them ☺️
I’m in a small town surrounded by 5relatively large and some small cities, nobody speaks at all the same from where I’m from and from the surrounding areas
That isn't a really good choice of how cockney sounds, Dicky Van Dyke isn't English so they should have had a proper cockney speaking. You really need to listen to people who actually come from Liverpool, Birmingham, Wales, Scotland etc, because they are speaking how it really is, it's no good listening to actors who are imitating the accent because they don't always get it right.
I'm impressed. At the 7 minute point you were starting to break into an Ulster's accent. You been practising?
The change in village to village is not at all an exaggeration, in fact in some areas it changed every couple of blocks
We don’t have blocks in the UK .
What are 'blocks'?
The old man in clip seven says “A hedge is a hedge, I only chopped it down because it spoilt my view what’s people moaning about?”
Lindsay's RP accent could be good with some practice, well done!
My recommendation for videos on accents would be "Anglophenia - One women 17 accents" It's fun but informative.
Other recommendations are "Map Men videos on Jay Foremans channel" Educational and very entertaining
Also the channel "our Travel Place" for videos on York, Whitby, The Yorkshire dales. Includes good footage of many sights with handy information. From the hills to the village shops, its a great look into what to add to your visit list :)
I don't think the video didn't emphasise enough is the difference between an accent, and a dialect.
The west country - Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, Wessex, have a dialect a distinct variation of English that is very old, dating back to the Saxon times of King Alfred in the 6th Century,
it has a more Germanic grammar, pronunciation, and tenses compared to modern "standard" English.~
There's also the accent - the way west country people speak "standard" English
It's often derided as a simple farmers / peasants way of talking
Yeah the amount of different dialects and accents we have are staggering considering the size of us. The changes between places that are close to each other is indeed a real thing, mainly I think due to slang mainly.
I live in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. It’s a medium sized town and it’s origins lie in markets, coal mining and glass production. The town is surrounded by villages, and we can generally tell which village someone is from by their accent. It’s harder to do since I was a youngster, because people are moving more nowadays, but it still works as a rule.
It would be good for them to make a video with the actual people from those areas, rather than actors who are picked or speak more clearly and less strong in a way, so that viewers can understand it better. Some people even we can't understand from a few towns over 😂
A geordie is from newcastle, A Glasweigan is from Glasgow, a scouser is from Liverpool, a Manc is from Manchester, a brummy is from birmingham
Glaswegian is just somebody from Glasgow. Same with Norway as you mentioned. I'm from Fife in Scotland so I'm a Fifer. Love your Channel. I really hope you make it over here. Yes accents change every few miles here xx
I love the two of you doing reactions together ❤.
I feel your reference video is not really meant for non-British people but more for those who can laugh at what they already know. A lot of the references are not ‘real’ accents but from TV shows. Exceptions are those who were actually born and bred in their regions, but some of t6em are very dated by how old they people are. I am actually from Birmingham my brother says I am very brummie, but I am probably not, and many accents presumed to be brummy are Black Country which is a thing of its own. With very diverse immigration to all of our major cities you also hear hybrid accents, British south Asian accents for instance, or British Caribbean….. but then the very regional are also quite distinct too, West Country are just as diverse as any city accents. Live here long enough and you can place them. I was brought up and schooled in RP, it was drilled into us, but my school friends were from all over the country and from different classes of people too, you only briefly touched on that, how accents define where people are in the pecking order.
I live in Manchester, and quite literally the accent changes after about 15 miles away. It's not that much, but it is distinct, even to us.
Scotland has many regional accents, as does Ireland. Wales has fewer I think. But England has many many regional accents.
Wales, believe it or not has many… I’d say fifty plus, easily.
Correction Scotland has its own language as well as English
Correction Scotland has its own language as well as English
@@janice506 I didn't say it didn't. Your remark is an addition, not a correction.
@@janice506 I know, but this video was about accents.
Liam Neeson is from Ballymena in Northern Ireland, Ulster is a Provence in the North of Ireland it includes all 6 counties of Northern Ireland and 3 more countries from the Republic of Ireland but can sometimes be used interchangeably as a term with Northern Ireland.
So you are right in Ulster English is English in a Northern Irish accent. There is also a dialect called Ulster Scots which is a mix of English and Scottish which is maybe what Lyndsey was thinking of.
You don’t normally watch tv on here but you should watch Derry girls to really hear a strong northern Irish accent. 😊
The West Country farmer from the film 'Hot Fuzz' was given a particularly tricky accent for comedic effect.
Nobody could bloody understand him.
nope what i sound like . cant even get understood in southampton my son has to translate for them lol
So glad you said that I thought I was dumb not being able to understand my own language
The last sentence said by the farmer is 'what's he moaning about'.
I grew up in a farming area in rural Devon.
@@tonibaker3823 That's how they roll in Hampshire.
Oh, crap. I've just dissed my own crew.
@@grahamstubbs4962
Accents change every village and in some cases you can tell whereabouts in a town someone was raised by the words they used.
In the part of the world I'm in the accent can change valley to valley!
I'm Yorkshire and my aunt told me once that when she was young, the accent would change from literally street to street. Obviously as time went on and there's a lot more moving around the area/country, things got a little more diluted...so that village to village is not that far fetched to be fair. Not so much these days but definitely used to be the case. You only need to drive half hour or less to come into a completely not accent zone...
In the old days you didn't get on TV unless you spoke received pronunciation (RP or Queens English). Now you see a few more, but many still don't go on air because many wouldn't understand it without subtitles...
I live in Yorkshire and there are some really heavy accents you really have to concentrate to understand...
On a telephone you could struggle without visual clues, maybe pick-up 60% and construct sentences from that.. It's a skill requiring the understanding of context and syntax with a healthy amount of guess work.
The versions of the accents shown in this video were ALL very mild versions. If you heard BROAD Geordie, broad Glaswegian, broad Bummie, they would sound very different to the voices we heard. And accents WITHIN regions can differ.
For example people talk about a Yorkshire accent, yet most people from Yorkshire or futher away would have no difficulty in distinguishing a speaker using the accent from part of North Yorkshire (say Middlesbrough), from the accent of another person from Leeds in West Yorkshire, or from Sheffield in South Yorkshire or from Hull in East Yorkshire where some say they can distinguish between 3 different Hull accents.
And when the Police were looking for the Yorkshire Ripper a few decades ago, a hoax "Geordie tape" was sent to the Police which many might have thought came from someone from Newcastle (Geordie) but which experts said came from a (Mackem) man from a particular part of Sunderland - Newcastle and Sunderland are 14 miles apart and have a fierce rivalry. They could even say it came from an area within Sunderland.
North Wales (where there is a high percentage who speak Welsh) have a very different accent to the people from the South Wales valleys. It's all part of Life's Great British Mystery....
The first west country bit was from the movie Hot Fuzz, and was specifically a joke about varying accents accross a small area. The main characters had to bring another copper to translate him, who himself had to be translated by the local copper, Danny.
I'm surprised that they didn't mention every pirate movie accent ever when talking about the West Country! The West Country has always been a major sea faring part of the UK and was the home to many famous pirates from history - most notably Blackbeard.
Bristolian in particular. Not actually the accent of pirates, but just one famous actor who played Blackbeard happened to be from Bristol and his accent stuck as what people think pirate sounded like. When in reality ship crews were full of people from all over the country and all over the world so there would likely have been many different accents around at one time.
Accent changing every town, but even in the same town the accents arent the same. Scottish is the same as England. The accents are different. The man on the picture of mancunian is Karl pilkington, related to my family. the Cornwall you showed on here is nothing like the real Cornish accent. Glaswegian is glasgow. One of the hardest accent ever to understand, next is a real strong Liverpool accent. Glaswegan means Glascow region. All of these accents are toned down. You need to see the real accents like the woman you couldnt understand. Heres a nice Welsh accent, and he speaks Welsh . He can say the longest place name too. Hes well known . ruclips.net/video/8KeGMedWgE4/видео.html. Ive a sort of geordie accent. Like haway man, (come on) some of them geordie accents were pee takes, not the real one. Americans cant do an English accent. Im English and cant understaant west country. The woman isnt speaking west country. Its too pash lol. None of these are real accent, theyre accent fpr tv. None of them, apart from the woman losing it, are real. Theyre toned town accents done by opeople who have different accents. For gwordie maybes watch biker grove. Its still toned down Geordie, but it is done by geordies