- Which of the English accents is the hardest to understand?
(electronic crackle)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening,
I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com.
Recently someone asked me a very good question.
"Julian," they asked,
"For you, the native speaker of British English,
"which of all the accents do you find the
"most difficult to understand?"
Aha, yes, yes, yes, a good question indeed.
You see when it comes to the English accents,
variation is the rule, not the exception.
In the United Kingdom alone, there are 56 main accent types,
and each one of those accent types
has infinite numbers of sub-accents.
To the extent where we really don't actually
know quite how many accents there are.
Of course the situation is exactly
the same in America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand,
there are a lot of different English accents.
Some of them far trickier to understand than others.
Take for example, the Irish English accents.
I spend a lot of time in Cork,
and the Cork accent is really clear
and really quite easy to understand.
In fact, the Cork accent is pretty high up on my list
of all time favourite accents.
I absolutely love it.
But when I spent time up in Dublin,
oh my God, a completely different kettle of fish.
Twice I took a taxi and twice I had no idea
what the taxi driver was rambling on about.
Their accents were as thick as mud,
and it sounded like they were speaking
really, really, really fast.
Which of course, they weren't,
it's just that my brain was unable to keep up
with trying to process the sounds that it
was taking in as words of English
when they really didn't sound like words of English,
or at least not as I know it.
Then of course there are parts of Scotland.
The Scottish Highlands for example, or Glasgow.
Now just a stones throw away in Edinburgh,
no problem what so ever.
The Edinburgh accent is really clear
and quite precise, and isn't really gonna challenge anybody.
But Glasgow,
oh
my
God!
Not a chance in
Hell.
And then of course, we can't forget
the rural communities down in deepest darkest
Devon and Cornwall.
Here I have a slight advantage because I
grew up in those areas,
and I do kind of understand what 'E be sayin'.
But
yeah, it's still tricky at best.
And if you're not used to some of those accents
down in Cornwall, you would swear
they were speaking a separate language.
Which of course, once upon a time,
they actually probably would have been
because Cornwall did used to have
it's own language, Cornish.
Which went extinct and has undergone
some sort of revival, so it hasn't completely disappeared
but anyway, I digress.
Now if you're interested in why there are
so many different accents in England,
the United Kingdom, and well, the British Isles,
check out this video right here
where I talk about the history of accents
in well, England, the United Kingdom,
and the British Isles.
But the point is
that you have to learn
a lot of different accents and that
they can sometimes be quite difficult to understand
is not a problem limited to you, the English learner.
No, no, no, us native speakers have exactly
the same problem.
But it turns out that learning to understand,
and indeed learning to speak
with these accents if you want to
is actually pretty simple and pretty easy
to do.
Not automatic to be sure if you're one of these people
who have been living in say, the United Kingdom,
for a long long time and have never picked up the accent,
pay attention, but fairly simple.
And if you wanna know how to nail your English accent,
or indeed, English accents plural,
because there's no reason why you can't
learn as many as you like,
you're gonna wanna check out my new,
or at least, new soon to come,
book.
Nail Your English Accent.
Over the years I've had the opportunity,
privilege, and pleasure to interview
various people on the topic of accent.
For example, my good friend Jade Joddle and Amy Walker,
the one and only accent chameleon, among others.
What I've decided to do is to take
everything that I've learned from doing
those various interviews and talking with various people
and experts about
the topic of accents
and compile it all into one volume
that you can take away and use to,
well nail your English accent fast.
This isn't gonna be another one of my
40 page very, very short Kindle books,
although I do absolutely love those,
this is actually gonna be a full length book.
Similar to Master English Fast,
it is coming out on Kindle and the publication date
is September the first.
And that is a hard publication date.
It's already out for pre order,
and you can, and should if you like,
pre order it by heading over to
NailYourEnglishAccent.com, or clicking on the link
in the description.
I haven't actually decided on the price of the book yet,
so if you pre order it, you're almost definitely
gonna get a slightly better deal
than other people.
Again, it's coming out September first.
NailYourEnglishAccent.com,
or click on the link in the description.
With that my friends, this is me, Julian Northbrook,
done from another video.
Do you have any questions about accent,
pronunciation, or indeed, anything related to that?
If you do, bang it in the comments down below,
and I'll check it periodically
and I'll try and include as many of 'em
as I can in the book.
The first draught of the manuscript is already done,
but I am now revising and adding things that I missed.
So if you do have questions about accent,
pronunciation, all that good stuff,
put 'em in the comments ASAP,
and I will see you tomorrow,
or whenever the next video is coming out.
Same time, same place, as always.
Take care, don't get caught doing anything
that I wouldn't do, and I'll see ya soon.
Bye, bye.
(upbeat music)
Stop, stop, stop, wait right there
before I go, if you wanna know why there are
so many different English accents in the United Kingdom,
you're gonna wanna check out this video right here.
And if you wanna learn to speak in smooth,
crisp British English, check out the overview
of my British Stories course by clicking right here.