hello everybody and welcome back to love English the channel where we want to
make you fall in love with learning English today I'm going to take you on a
whistle-stop tour which means a very rapid look at ten of the UK's most
common regional accents now the UK is wonderfully diverse in terms of accents
and we have lots of different accents in quite a small area now I am not
necessarily an expert at imitating these accents although I am going to do my best
but I do have a very good understanding of phonetics as I am an English teacher
and so we're going to be looking at some of the linguistic features of these
accents. Before we get started guys if you haven't hit that subscribe button
yet then be sure to do that and also you can follow us on our social media
Instagram Facebook and Twitter so first we're going to be looking at the London
accent or as it's more commonly known the cockney accent probably one of the
UK's most famous accent right let's look at some of the key features of this
accent if you watch TV shows like EastEnders films like Lock Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels 'get your fingers outta my soup' 'Snatch' 'Rock n Rolla' any of
those london-based films then you're going to hear the cockney accent treat
the wife treat somebody else's wife it's a lot more fun if you don't get
caught so first of all what you need to know about the cockney accent is that
th can become f or v for example today is my birthday today is my
birthday I think this accent's great I think this
accent's great the next thing you need to be aware of is that there is a
glottal stop a glottal stop is where we literally block air sound in our mouths so
that we do not pronounce that letter this is very common with the T sound so
in the cockney accent instead of saying a T often in the middle of the word we
won't pronounce this at all for example water bottle hat in those sounds you can
hear that the T is not pronounced so moving on to accent number two think about
where four very famous musical young men with slightly questionable haircuts
come from and you're going to start to get close to where this
accent is from it is of course Liverpool Liverpool is very famous for
its characteristic accent which we also called the Scouse accent right let's have
a look at some of the key features of this wonderful accent so first of all if
you're going to say words like first word heard normally that would be first
word third but with a Scouse accent first word heard so the err becomes a
err in fact this is a really common sound in general with a Liverpool
accent you're gonna see errr quite a lot and this is our hen dos have changed I
was their and there was a girl in their normal stuff she was dressed up like a
fairy the intonation is also very up-and-down it's quite sing songy actually
the Liverpool accent the second thing I want to talk about is the scouse k-k and h
go together for the scouse kay particularly at the end of words and it
becomes a k-h for example so you would say talking working, work , walk
I walked to work right I'm going to teach you some key phrases that you can
practice with a Liverpool accent so one thing that's really great to say in Liverpool
is that's boss la that's boss la which means that was great
also in Liverpuddlian if you want to say go for a drink you can say go for a
bevvy let's go for a bevvy let's go for a bevvy okay next we're going to
nearby Liverpool to Manchester where the accent is actually very different even
though geographically they are very near to each other
however it also does have a lot of character it's been made famous by bands
like Oasis who are from there and of course our very famous British soap Coronation
Street so the Manchester accent is a lot
flatter you really have to flatten your words a lot more I'm going to talk about
some of the key features of the Manchester accent now one thing that
really stands out about the Manchester accent is words like bath laugh giraffe
in a southern accent these words would be bath laugh giraffe and this is quite wide
across the North that the 'aah' usually it becomes an 'a' so the phoneme change you
can see it there Owen you won't do anything daft will you about Phelon
I never do anything daft another very key feature of this accent is that words
like up and put which in southern English have a different phoneme up put in
the Manchester accent this will be the same up
put shut shut the door okay I have a couple of sentences for you to practice
with a Manchester accent here we go where are you off to sat on the sofa why
are kids okay now we're moving to a West country accent the West country is quite
a loose term which covers quite a large geographical area so Cornwall, Devon
Dorset and Somerset now not everybody in the west country
has this accent but it's perhaps more prominent in places like Devon and Somerset
it's often associated with farmers however you can also hear it on Harry
Potter as Hagrid has a Somerset accent if that dope of a cousin of yours Dudley
gives you any grief you could always threaten 'im with a nice
pair of ears, the West Country accent has lovely rounded vowel sounds
Harry Potter they tend to drop their hs from the beginning of words are go
boil your eggs both a yer right some of the key features of this accent are
of course the 'r' the rhotic r is that the R is actually pronounced whereas in
a lot of British words particularly at the end the R is not pronounced it's
silent for example car water teacher we would say the schwa sound the uh or the
ahh sound for example however with a West country accent you will say an r
teacher water summer butter I am exaggerating a little bit however you
will hear the r being pronounced in some of the west country a great way to
learn the Somerset accent is of course by watching TV shows like broadchurch I'm so
upset with you Mark or you could watch The Lord of the Rings films and focus on
characters like Sam I can't wait to get back to the Shire mr. Frodo
do you remember the Shire Mr.Frodo?
Right the next accent we're going to be looking at is the southern Irish accent
a lot of gentlemen in the United Kingdom find this accent very attractive as it
does sound rather nice first of all I would just like to say that this is the
southern Irish accent not the Dublin accent and not the Northern Irish accent
this is more of a generic southern Irish accent so the southern Irish accent is a very
beautiful accent or is considered to be a very beautiful accent it's singsongy
and sometimes it can be a little bit difficult to understand as it has got
some quite specific features the tongue is actually tucked back a lot into the
mouth when you're speaking in a southern Irish accent one of the main reasons for
this is again they have the Rohtic R so this means in some words the r is
pronounced for example let's listen to this sentence i have to go to work
i have to go to work you can hear that the r is pronounced in work i would say
for example work work Irish accent work so you can hear there
is a little r there another thing about the Irish act is that the i sound
becomes more of an ie I becomes ie for example I think you're right about
that the last thing I want to mention about this charming accent is the th the
th can be said (however I'm told by Irish friends that this is less and less) as
just a T so instead of it being think it can be said tink I think so
this number can be said as 33 okay so the next accent is the Welsh accent
we're going to look today particularly at the southern Welsh accent as North
Wales Mid Wales all have very different accents so we'll look at the southern
Welsh accent however broadly speaking the Welsh
accent does in general have the features which I'm going to identify now . The Welsh
accent is a beautiful accent it's a very up and down sing-songy accent they do tend
to go up at the end of sentences but also up and down throughout the sentence
another thing that you'll notice about the Welsh accent is that words with many
so syllables so three or four syllables you'll find
that often two syllables are stressed not just one so for example let's look
at the word beautiful of course the first syllable is stressed in the Welsh
accent you might almost feel like two syllables are stressed beautiful
beautiful you might think that ful was also stressed let's look at the word
unusual unusual unusual you'll hear that the U is stressed however if you listen
to the Welsh accent unusual unusual it's still the same syllable stressed but a
significant raise happens at the end as well which almost seems like the final
syllable is stressed another thing to mention about the Welsh accent is
that there is a tapped r a tapped r means just one roll of the R this is not
the case in all words but particularly the R that is following a consonant
for example words like great right have you seen it's bright today it is just one
roll of the r great okay the next accent is of course RP or received
pronunciation we do tend to talk about the RP accent rather a lot but actually
only 2% of the population speak it it's a little bit of a dying accent I suppose
we would call R P the posh British accent or the accent of the top drawer or
the aristocracy if you'd like to hear the RP accent more then of course you
can watch the television show the crown, any of the Queen's speeches or BBC
dramas such as Pride and Prejudice and things like that
vowels are over pronounced in this accent for example your caaaar is your caaar is it
faaar this is faaaar so RP is really about pronouncing as much as you can of the
word that being said some vowel sounds can be cut for example i is quite
swallowed in an RP accent the i sound and that is why you might hear the Queen
saying Philip instead of Philip he will say 'i' and go up slightly in pitch
there, right the next accent is Birmingham it's got quite a flat
intonation and you can sound a bit down if you've got a Birmingham accent if
you've been watching the TV show peaky blinders then you might know a little
bit about the Birmingham accent people from Birmingham are known as Brummies and
this was apparently because the first city of Birmingham which was created in
about 700/ 800 AD was known as Brummagem and therefore from that the people from
there became known as Brummies things that really stand out about this accent
are the 'i' sound we would say it I for example pie, right, life, they would say it
i, I'd like to have a pie, if you want to hear a very thick Brummie accent then if
you're watching peaky blinders you can listen to the character Arthur Shelby so
get it right right next accent is Yorkshire and when I say Yorkshire I do
also mean some of the surrounding area so some parts of Lancashire now this
accent is quite a full warm accent but it does have a flatter intonation a
little bit like the Manchester accent so some vowels really change in the
Yorkshire accent so for example in words like take cake late that becomes more of
a an e take, cake, late becomes more of an e sound so very
different also when there is a y at the end of words in this accent it's not
said as an e so for example in a very generic perhaps southern accent you
would hear funny 'e' however with a Yorkshire accent you
would say funny money have ya got any money that's real funny
you'd give here the baby but not the money another thing that I can teach you about this accent
is that words that start with a vowel and then have for example a word like
the in front of them can get pushed together the other can become 't'other'
it's t'other way ' Cricket's our national game. I thought it was football not in Yorkshire it int'
Right the final accent that we are going to look at today is the
Geordie accent and the Geordie accent comes from Newcastle which is a city
very far north in the UK now native speakers will understand why I delayed
this accent until the end as it is famously one of the most difficult
accents to imitate the only way I can do a Geordie accent is if I think about the
lovely Cheryl Cole I have to think about her and how she talks and then I
get the Geordie accent so perhaps a person who has made this accent
more famous and perhaps has encouraged people to love the Geordie accent more
is the singer and X Factor star Cheryl Cole
the Geordie accent does have a glottal stop on a lot of words meaning that we
will close our airway and we will not pronounce those sounds for example words
like water complicated something it has also got quite a distinctive up-and-down
intonation let's listen to Cheryl Cole speaking here is really rude when you
two are talkin behind as I'm trying to speak they've just sung will you stop
taking the mick out of how I speak it's where I come from that's how we talk get
over it if you listen Cheryl goes up and down on a lot of their words that's how
we talk get over it although the I sound in right will
become more of a ee sound for example listen to words like alright are you
alright? Right guys that is the end of our whistle-stop tour of UK accents I do
hope that you've enjoyed this journey and learnt something about how to
understand our vast array of characteristic accents you might have
noticed that the Scottish accent wasn't featured and that is because there are
different accents in Scotland for the different regions however I am planning
to do a special on the Scottish accent with a Scottish friend of mine and we
will talk you through the different accents from the different regions so
look out for that also please let me know guys if there are any of these
accents that you would like to know more about or you'd like me to make a video
specifically on them please comment below and tell me which is your favorite
accent so far which do you love thank you so much guys for watching and we'll
see you soon on love English bye bye