today i'm going to give you a whirlwind tour of the united kingdom in 20 different accents what's question time it's comedy do you want a wee bag with that it's hard to beat the novel this is so rude at the golden globes i met jennifer aniston i love you i'm the best emcee in the country no they're not they are i bet you any money they are i'm a massive fan of the dictionary they're quite important things i'm going to match each accent with a famous person show you a clip of them speaking and then
i'll teach you one pronunciation feature of that accent so that you can identify it more easily i just want to take a quick moment to thank lingoda for sponsoring this video later on i'm going to show you how you can study english from your own home and get 100 cashback on your english course fees an important thing to note as we go on this tour is the accents are very fluid we use umbrella terms like a northern accent or a southern accent but what we're really doing is grouping a bunch of accents together because they
share similar pronunciation features indeed accents don't just change from city to city or from town to town they can change from person to person so an approach that many linguistic experts take is to instead talk about there being an accent continuum where as you move through the country accents change and evolve and join at the edges now i've picked out 20 british english accents that i want to look at but as i say there are many many more we're going to start with receive pronunciation or rp as it's also known it's an accent associated with
education and privilege now it doesn't have a set geographical location but it is associated with london and the southeast of england but as a result you can be an rp speaker from anywhere in the uk it was once the only accent you would hear on the bbc and even to this day british english dictionaries use it as their default setting now i've broken it down to three separate varieties now let's start with the queen's english spoken by yeah her majesty the queen and other royalties don't look down to read the speech you have to take
the speech up because if you did your neck would break would it fall off an emphasis is put on clarity with every sound being articulated in its fullest form no drop t's here mom there's a tightness in the jaw the queen's lips are quite close together and the vowel sounds are articulated at the front of the mouth one pronunciation feature that we find in the queen's english is the use of the or sound instead of oh so the queen says off not off take your filthy shoes off this is not an accent you'll hear far
beyond the walls of buckingham palace but if you're curious to hear more then you can watch the tv series the crown we move on to conservative rp which is similar to the queen's english but perhaps not quite as rigid and formal now it's traditionally been an accent associated with positions of power so if i think back to all the prime ministers of my time they all have conservative rp brexit health farmers in lots of ways we'll be able to cut bureaucracy find new markets for uk produce lamb beef uh dairy produce cheese overseas now one
feature that divides rp and southern accents from northern english accents is the ah sound in rp you have a an uh whereas in the north of england it's just uh so boris johnson says cut but in the north of england that would be cooked there's also a more modern version of rp called contemporary rp speakers still place a high value on articulating sounds clearly but there is an acceptance that speed of communication is more important than accuracy so in contemporary rp you might drop a t or you might use a contraction whereas in conservative rp
or the queen's english that's less likely to happen uh they some some people are quite surprised like oh my god we actually thought you were a robot right one surprising feature is the use of the h h sound now in most british english accents actually it's not used but in rp it is used and you hear gemma chan there saying human not uman as it might be in other british english accents you'll notice that her jaw isn't as rigid as the other two rp speakers her mouth is slightly more open and the vowels are a
little bit wider and she articulates her vowels a little bit further back in the mouth other speakers of contemporary rp include emma watson daniel radcliffe and ed sheeran right let's have a look at the accents of london now as i've already said you will find received pronunciation in london and the south east of england you'll also find cockney the traditional working class accent of london originally it was found in the east end of london but now you will hear it throughout london and as people have moved out of the city you'll find it in surrounding
counties like hertfordshire essex and kent you watch question time it's comedy well you know clearer when jeremy corbyn is no i got a clue no one knows what she is it's like this mad riddle that no one knows what it is right so what's happened to that david now there are many interesting features of a cockney accent the classic one that probably you know already is the glottal t so that's when you turn water into water or daughter into door now danny dyer uses another feature that i find really interesting he uses the vocalization of
the dark l so with the word called called we're using a dark l oh but he vocalizes it so it becomes a cool chord uh he also says riddle riddle right not riddle riddle uh to me it's like almost like a war sound so tall becomes tall ball becomes bull now you'll also notice that the vowel sounds are articulated with a wider mouth right so it's bull tall right it's like that okay so wider vowel sounds now if you want to dive deeper with the cockney accent then i suggest you throw danny dyer's name into
youtube check out any clips with him speaking or you can check out the long-running british soap eastenders next we're going to look at multi-cultural london english or mle as it's also known personally i find this the most fascinating but it doesn't get as much attention as other accents now that could be because it's quite a new accent it's sort of evolved in the last 30 to 40 years as the name suggests this accent reflects modern day multicultural london it's spoken by london's young multi-ethnic citizens it draws its influences from cockney and also from the large
immigrant groups in the city like the caribbean community and the south asian community you put all those influences in one beautiful melting pot and you get mle well as as a rapper and mcs you you always kind of get the side of like yeah like i'm i'm the best mc in the country and all of that that and then and then but but a lot of the time you don't like it's it is very heavy like is is the duty that i sometimes feel like i carry can feel overwhelming the one feature that we heard
there from stormzy is the d sound instead of the so he says that's not that other speakers of mle include raheem sterling the england football player and a carla and if you want to watch a tv series with multicultural london english then i recommend top boy on netflix and of course if you want to go deeper with this accent there's a whole section in my book dedicated to multicultural london english let's quickly skip east to the county of essex where the accent is quite similar to cockney due to the large number of people that moved
from the east end out to essex after the war now the two accents share many pronunciation features including those wide vowel sounds but essex speakers tend to close off the ending for them to write that about us essex scales we are not happy no so keep us in the dictionary but please change the meaning and i think it should say an essex girl is smart sassy fun and striving hard in life like everyone else you can hear gemma collins there using that vocalized dark l on girls and also that glottal t on about about if
you want to hear any more of the essex accent there is only one place to go the tv series the only way is essex easterly dreamers i want to take a quick moment to talk about our sponsors lingoda 2020 has been a terrible year for everyone so i want us to start 2021 the best way possible and lingoda right here to help us they are an online language learning platform that i've been working with for three years they help english learners develop their real conversational skills and build confidence in their speaking ability but the best
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up to the lingoda sprint and take your english to the next level make sure to hit the link below and use the offer code win 18. all right let's get back to the video over in the west we have the beautiful counties of somerset dorset devon and cornwall all with their own subtly different accents one famous exponent of the west country accent is hagrid from harry potter the owl that delivered my release papers got all lost and confused some ruddy bird called errol one unique feature that you will hear with this accent is that rhotic
r now in most british english accents it's non-rhotic so we don't use that r but in the west country that r is pronounced so car and far this pattern is mirrored in the city of bristol where ours are also articulated oh i'm such an aquarium i can never let things go so we'll have a we'll talk and then i'll say remember when you did this listen listen listen back in 1985 you did this so um yeah is that why you're single now probably you just broke up again recently didn't you no he um we ran
off with another bird and then anna yeah did you hear how she said bird day it was bird bird i would say bird sort of er sound but she pronounced that our bird to hear more of the bristolian accent i really recommend checking out gogglebox and in particular mary and marina some fantastic characters moving into the middle of the country we've got britain's second largest city birmingham where the accent is brummie now it's known for its nasal quality due to the heavy industry that used to be there and also its sing-songy intonation so funny but
the last time i saw you was really really in 2002 and you were the first person to interview me coming out of the house we couldn't find that clip but don't worry i've found an amazing clip of something i'm going to show you a little bit later shall i show it you know the way alison hammond says last there is a great indication that we are moving further north through the country because these a and r sounds divide the country so in the south of england you would have r it would be last but in
the north of england it's last and because birmingham is in the middle it actually goes with the northern pronunciation so it would be last so in birmingham you would hear last bath and chance other brony speakers include footballer jack grealish and comedian lenny henry as we edge further north we get to the east midlands cities of derby leicester and nottingham and because of their geographical location these accents sit somewhere between the midlands and the north let's just get some young players in here who actually love playing for arsenal actually loved the shirt loved the badge
and actually prepared to die for it almost by going out there and as you said mike or putting in tackles i'm like you know just showing that they they you know that they care one feature that i found in germain genesis accent is the diphthong air so he says he kind of elongates it and he sort of widens the mouth a little bit so it's kind of air so it's uh there okay that's a bad impression let's get jermaine to do it again and actually prepared to die for it almost by going out there as
we move into yorkshire we encounter accents that are characterized by the squashing and omitting of certain words and sounds so i'm going to the shop would be i'm going to shop let's start with south yorkshire and louis tomlinson northerners probably are better than southerners southerners are great people but it's hard to beat the northerner you've seen hd dream english before you know that i love louis thomas's accent it's so rich with different pronunciation features one that i want to pick out is the way that he uses v on the th the sound so instead of
northerner it's novana instead of southerner it's souvenir northerners probably are better than southerners southerners are great people but it's hard to beat the northerner as we move to west yorkshire we've got zayn malik from bradford and he elongates the diphthong a so he says stare and wear and pair rather than stay away and pay so he loved uh like dressing up in suits and like wearing like specific ties on a certain way then if we move to east yorkshire we've got jenny and lee from gogglebox national health service cat getting their masks so how are
we gonna get him i've met one what i love hey it's really clever and you don't need no sewing no nothing it's like you can make it within a minute right oh you can make me want that i'll show you so here you can hear the elongation of another diphthong oh it becomes no and sure very typical of a yorkshire accent you'll also notice that that sound is articulated at the front of the mouth so no and go if you want to dive deeper with the yorkshire accent then of course gogglebox genuinely is fantastic there
are also two sisters from leeds who have a fantastic accent of course game of thrones is a fantastic place to hear the yorkshire accent as well if we hop over the pennines we find two huge cities manchester and liverpool now despite being only 30 miles apart their accents are very very different mancunian tends to be quite nasal and borrows lots of pronunciation features from other northern english accents you know it's the first game um and i think the concentration and intensity that we showed today we have to take forward into the the next games also
in the premier league here we hear marcus rashford using one of the most typical mancunian sounds and that's the e sound of words ending in y so he said intensity intensity not intensity so that sound in other words would be like city and pretty the accent in liverpool is known as scouse owing to a local dish there served to sailors now it's an accident that has been heavily influenced by the irish community that settled in liverpool in the 19th and 20th century that's how i was star trek at the golden globes i met jennifer aniston
this feature is uniquely scouts it's that fricative ke sound so she says star struck stroke is that sound so in other words it'd be like bach and very different from any other british english accent moving up to the north east we find geordie in the city of newcastle and the surrounding area now this has numerous pronunciation features that are different from anywhere else so we changed it a little mix and we hated it at first we were like oh it's game over our career is over little mix it's the worst name ever but now we
absolutely love it and we wouldn't ever change it one really distinctive feature of this accent is on the words that end in er and or they are pronounced with an ah sound not an er sound so jade says over and ever not over and ever other jewelry speakers include tv presenters ant and deck and cheryl from x factor and of course you can check out the tv show julie shaw as we move over the border we encounter numerous scottish accents perhaps the most recognizable accent is the glasgow accent a personal favorite of mine it possesses
wildly different vowel sounds to most accents in england and the r is tapped meaning that the tip of the tongue hits the alveolar ridge the roof of the mouth as you are articulating it here's actor james mcavoy with an example david percival has gone feral uh i think he represents a breed of operative who kind of gets way too seduced by the environment instead of the job other glaswegian speakers include legendary football manager alex ferguson and comedians billy connolly kevin bridges and frankie boyle 50 miles east we find edinburgh where it's said that the accent
is a little bit softer than the accent of glasgow they literally go and hide and they stop trying and they stop competing and they allow themselves to be shrunk a feature that we find here is the common use of the dark l so shirley manson here says a light a light not allowed so it's a dark l not a light l on the l of allowed another word would be like look look so it's coming from the back of the mouth with the tongue down rather than allow at the front of the mouth scooting back
down south and across the border to south wales we find an accent that is much more sing-songy in nature than other british english accents it's almost musical in its intonation and this is in part because of the influence of the welsh language onto welsh english it wasn't the nicest it was it was it was quite a cheap bnb and i think i was only i was the only resident so when i turned up the guy in like sort of tracksuit bottoms he's like right there you're in room number one ground floor a feature that can
be found in south wales is the doubling or extension of a consonant sound that comes between two vowel sounds so ellis james here says bottom bottom um i think about the word city city again terrible impression i apologize but as you can hear it's a kind of doubling of that consonant sound that t sound that's very distinctive to the welsh english accent finally let's hop over the irish sea to northern ireland and belfast in particular now this is one of my favorite accents in britain it has such character to it northern irish english is heavily
influenced by scottish english and that's due to the number of scots that moved over and settled in northern ireland as a result there are many similarities between the accents perhaps the most distinctive feature of northern irish english is the diphthong ow as in how let's hear how jamie dornan says it i once tried to do a whole conversation with these builders who were working at my dad's house by only saying boys a deer to them right jamie dornan said house house so it's a kind of slightly more closed shorter sound isn't it house house so
how would be how and now would be now it's a very distinctive feature of the belfast accent i love it so much let's hear jamie dawn and say another phrase like hi about you like how are you doing like how high are you basically in the comments below i'd like you to tell me which of the 20 british english accents you just heard you love the most and why okay put it into the comments below also tell me which one would you like me to do a longer video for i can deep dive into any
of these accents which one would be most interesting for you but thank you so much for watching guys and until next time this is tom the chief dreamer saying goodbye
