Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Welcome to Smashing English!
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Today, we are talking about accents, in particular British accents, in particular
the five hardest British accents to understand.
Now a few disclaimers, okay. We have many, many, many different accents in the UK.
Some of them are so far away from each other that they don't even sound like they're from the same country.
So when people say "I love the British accent" or "I want to learn a British accent",
it doesn't really make sense because a British accent can sound like this:
"And then I messaged her back and then she messaged me back and it was pretty glorious"
But also a British accent can sound like this:
"Can I ask the Honorable Gentleman, what work is being done to make sure that this place
is more accessible, particularly for some of our colleagues who have a disability?"
Or like this:
"Oh and she went 'that's lucky I'm going that way, I give him a lift!'"
So if you are at all interested in British English, you really need to get familiar with the accents of the UK.
If by a British accent you mean how I'm speaking right now, you actually mean an RP accent or a Standard English accent.
So, it's really good if you can start calling it 'Received Pronunciation' (RP) or 'Standard English' rather than 'British Accent'
because as we've seen it doesn't really work that way.
So I have made a list of what I think in my opinion are the five hardest British accents to understand
for people who aren't from Britain.
This is because I think they are the furthest away from what people expect
and they have sounds in the accent that are very different from say
RP, how I'm speaking now.
Okay, let's start with the one that is closest to my heart:
the Black Country/Birmingham.
My homeland, the place of my people.
"I mean you'll be familiar with the Brummie accent. Are you familiar with the Brummie accent?"
'Brummie" "Uhhh..." "Brummie, sort of like that, alright"
"I don't understand a word you're saying."
"Oh, you should go to the Black Country, that's where it's real fun!"
Now, I have lived in the Black Country all my life.
Now the Black Country is a small area in the West Midlands.
It's near Birmingham and it has places in it like Dudley. You might have heard of Dudley.
"In the Black Country they they've got proper like... Dudley...they sort of talk like that"
And the Black Country accent and the Birmingham accent are different for people who live here,
but for most people who live outside of the UK they sound very similar so i'm going to put them in one group.
Don't attack me if you're from Birmingham or the Black Country. I know the accents are different okay but they're very similar.
The thing that's tricky about the Birmingham accent is the vowels, alright.
So it's not exactly the vowels you'll expect, okay.
For example, the word 'bus', okay, you might expect in Britain for people to say 'b-uh-us', 'bus' 'uh'.
However in Birmingham or the Black Country they'll say b-oo-s, 'oo'
Or for example this word, 'right'. You might expect someone from the UK to say 'right'.
However, in Birmingham or the Black Country they say 'raaa-eet', 'raa-eet'. It's a completely different sound.
Now if you want to practice listening to the accents of Birmingham and the Black Country, a good place to start is a TV show like Peaky Blinders,
very worldwide famous it's a brilliant tv show and they speak with Birmingham and Black Country accents
to varying degrees of success!
"Nevertheless John, despite the bad blood, I'll have none of it on my carpet."
And I've made a whole video on the Birmingham accent if you want to learn more about it and it's in the description down below.
So the thing you want to watch out for with the Birmingham and Black Country accent are the different vowels.
It's completely different.
Next up we have Geordie and Geordie is a term that we use to describe the accent from Newcastle.
I am not going to attempt to do the Newcastle accent because I can't do it but here are a few examples.
"It's like a bad marriage isn't it. Like you fall in love with them initially, and it's like, it's really great. You're infatuated. You can't wait to see them"
"Ironman, Spiderman Superman! Why did that get so Geordie?"
Again, we have a lot of different vowel sounds here.
For example, this word, 'away', okay.
You might have learned to pronounce this word 'away', 'uh-way'.
However a Geordie person, please forgive me if you are Geordie. I'll try my best..
might say 'are-wee, are-wee'.
It's a completely different sound. It's like a different word.
Or let's take a word like 'better', okay.
You might think this is either pronounced like 'bet-uh' or 'bet-err' if you've learned American English.
However a Geordie might say something like 'be-ta', 'be-ta'.
So the t's get split up into two sounds 'bet-ta', 'bet-ta',
and the ending is more of a 'ah' sound.
The t sound is actually one of the sounds that is most different in the Geordie accent.
If you want to listen to a Geordie accent, there are loads of great recordings and great resources on the dialects archive
and I'll leave a link for that down below.
"In the time it takes this cat to shake off the tape, name five delicious foods...
sunday roast, bangers and mash, shepherd's pie..."
I love the Geordie accent. I think it's so melodic, so cheery sounding.
I think it's very hard to sound miserable if you've got a Geordie accent.
It's very sort of bouncy. That was terrible, I'm so sorry if you're from Newcastle. I can't do this accent!
Okay, moving on to another accent, another place that is so close to my heart, Liverpool.
And people who are from Liverpool their accent is often called Scouse. They have a Scouse accent.
Now when you think of Liverpool, you might think of The Beatles, that's the first thing you think of.
And yes, The Beatles do have a Scouse accent.
"Yeah but there are four of us and we'd like it open, that's if it's all the same to you, that is"
But actually, because they are a lot older, um...because maybe they've travelled around a lot,
they've maybe not lived in Liverpool all their life, their accent isn't as strong as some Scouse accents can be.
Have a listen to this example. This is a really good example of a strong thick Liverpool accent.
"Them things, you know, the things that dangle and that but I didn't go I just sort of stayed at the uh...
we wasn't...do you know what I mean, did I?"
So I think the most defining characteristic that makes Scouse very different from something like RP is the 'k' sound.
This doesn't happen with every k sound
but for example, let's take the word 'chicken'.
You may hear some people from Liverpool saying 'chicken' with a 'chhhh' sound in the throat.
This is very unique to Liverpool. You don't really hear it in many other places in the UK.
It's wonderful. I love how different it is. It's amazing.
So that is something to be aware of if you travel to Liverpool or you know someone who's from Liverpool and has this accent, this is going to be a sound that you will hear.
So you just have to be aware that if you hear a 'chhh' that's in place of a 'k' sound.
There's a very stereotypical sentence that people use to do a Scouse accent
and they tend to say something like "chicken and chips and a can of coke".
Whether or not people in Liverpool actually speak like that I don't know but it's a good way to illustrate the 'k' sound.
Scouse also has a very distinctive melody and a very distinctive intonation which can also make it a bit harder to understand from people outside of the UK.
I recommend listening to someone like John Bishop to hear more of that Scouse accent.
"I was always, always busy. I was always liking a laugh but I actually enjoy just being with people and talking to them a little bit more."
There are other celebrities from Liverpool for example Jodie Comer:
"Thank you so much BAFTA. Sorry, I'm the only one who's turned on the water works!"
She's from Liverpool but I think her accent isn't quite as thick as John Bishop. So, if you want to listen to a really thick one - John Bishop.
Okay, let's move to an accent from Scotland. Now obviously lots of different accents in Scotland as well.
There's not just one Scottish accent but i think one of the hardest to understand for non-UK residents is the Glaswegian accent from Glasgow.
Here's a little example of the Glasgow accent, because I can't do it:
"In Glasgow, how means why. I don't know why that is. You don't say '£1.70 why?' You say £1.70 how?'
See what I mean? I'd say everything is very different here from RP.
From the vowels, the consonants, the melody, the intonation, it's a whole different thing.
So I can't really single out one thing to focus on with the..with the Glasgow accent it's just a case of listening.
"Well very popular today. Um...I'm saying that a number of parliamentary colleagues who have
disabilities do find it quite difficult getting around certain parts of the estate."
If you want to get better at understanding this accent, listen to someone like Kevin Bridges, Billy Connolly,
"And it goes on and the guy starts punching the bit of perspex to get to the driver and over years I've
taken the bus I have familiarised myself with the on-board safety instructions."
You can watch with subtitles to begin with and then try and take them away and see if you still still understand what's going on.
But I highly, highly recommend getting to know the Glaswegian accent because I feel like if you can understand that one
the rest of the Scottish accents you should be able to grasp as well as well.
And finally we got Cockney, all right. Cockney is one of the accents found in London
and it has been widely done in Hollywood, sometimes terribly, see Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins:
"Number 17 Cherry Tree Lion, you say? Alright!"
And then we have delicious Cockney accents like Michael Caine in pretty much anything he's ever done.
"I suppose you think you're going to see the bleeding titles now. Well you're not so you can all relax."
I'd say one of the reasons that cockney is so difficult to understand is the linking, the words get very mushed together.
There's not a lot of separation in there. It tends to be a long strain of words with different vowels in there which makes it even harder to understand.
So the more you learn about linking sounds and how we link words together in the English Language, it'll help you massively.
Good people to listen to, like i said Michael Caine:
"So we went looking for the stones but in six months we never met anyone who traded with him."
Or someone like Micky Flanagan:
"You can pop out to go to the shops. Couple of bits.
That's the way I pop out you can do whatever way you like."
And there you have it. There are five accents in the UK that I think are quite difficult to understand if you are not familiar with them.
But like I said there are so many variations of accents in the UK.
Some people have a mix. So if they lived in Glasgow for half of their life and then they moved to London they've got this mix.
There are accents in between the major cities. There are so many so immerse yourself in all these different accents.
It will help you so much if you're planning to visit here or live here.
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Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time! Ta-ta!