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Regional accents of English speakers
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The regional accents of English speakers show great variation across the areas where English is spoken as a first language. This article provides an overview of the many identifiable variations in pronunciation, usually deriving from the phoneme inventory of the local dialect, of the local variety of Standard English between various populations of native English speakers.
Local accents are part of local dialects. Any dialect of English has unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
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The regional accents of English speakers show great variation across the areas where English is spoken as a first language. This article provides an overview of the many identifiable variations in pronunciation, usually deriving from the phoneme inventory of the local dialect, of the local variety of Standard English between various populations of native English speakers.
Local accents are part of local dialects. Any dialect of English has unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term "accent" describes only the first of these, namely, pronunciation. See also: List of dialects of the English language.
Non-native speakers of English tend to carry over the intonation and phonemic inventory from their mother tongue into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English.
Among native English speakers, many different accents exist. Some regional accents are easily identified by certain characteristics. Further variations are to be found within the regions identified below; for example, towns located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Manchester such as Bolton, Oldham and Salford, each have distinct accents, all of which form the Lancashire accent, yet in extreme cases are different enough to be noticed even by a non-local listener. There is also much room for misunderstanding between people from different regions, as the way one word is pronounced in one accent (for example, petal in American English) will sound like a different word in another accent (for example, pearl in Scottish English).
Great Britain
English accents and dialects vary widely in Great Britain. This may be related to the fact that the language has its origins there and has been evolving there for many hundreds of years. The varieties of English in use in Great Britain are also influenced by the fact that it consists of England, Scotland, and Wales.
England
The main accent groupings within England are between the Northern England and the Southern England; the dividing line runs roughly from Shrewsbury to south of Birmingham and then to The Wash. The difference may reflect the settlement of Southern England by Saxons, while Central and Northern England were settled by Angles.
For many years, the BBC and academic bodies employed Received Pronunciation as a 'standard', although this is no longer a requirement for broadcasting. Received Pronunciation has its roots in the speech patterns of the counties just north of London, where many of the monied classes in London originated from during the 16th and 17th centuries, but is now more a marker of a particular social class than a region.
The South East England derived Estuary English is now growing in importance as an effective standard form in the south east.
There is considerable variation within the accents of the English. Notable geographical accents include West Country (the counties of Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Avon (Bristol) and Cornwall); North East England (Northumberland, County Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sunderland); North West England (Lancashire, with regional variants in Bolton, Manchester, Blackpool and Merseyside); Yorkshire (which has differences between the North Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire); West Midlands (The Black Country, Dudley, Birmingham and Wolverhampton); the accents of the counties comprising the East Midlands (Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and Kettering) and East Anglia (Norfolk,Suffolk and Cambridgeshire). Even within these broad categories there are considerable differences in inflection and pronunciation.
The arrival of large scale immigration to England has produced another layer of regional accents that have merged with the accents of immigrants. Such examples include London-Caribbean, West Yorkshire mixed with Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi.
Scotland
With respect to phonology, Scottish English generally has the following characteristics:
- Scottish English is rhotic; is most often an alveolar tap , but a continuant similar to that of RP is also heard.
- For most speakers, the short vowels are kept distinct before , so that burn, earth, and bird have three different vowels, unlike in most other accents.
- The contrast between and before (as in hoarse vs horse) is preserved.
- The contrast between (as in which) and (as in witch) is preserved.
- There is no contrast between the vowel of pull, foot and that of pool, food; the merged vowel is typically a short, central .
- For many speakers, the vowel of cot and that of caught are merged, usually to .
- For many speakers, there is no short A-broad A distinction, so that palm, trap and bath have the same vowel, typically .
is dark in all positions.
- Due to the Scottish Vowel Length Rule, crude contrasts with crewed, need with kneed and side with sighed, the latter item in each pair having a longer vowel.
Wales
The accent of English in Wales is strongly influenced by the phonology of the Welsh language, which more than 20% of the population of Wales speak as their first or second language. The North Wales accent is distinct from South Wales and north east Wales is influenced by Scouse and Cheshire accents. South Wales border accents are influenced by West Country accents. The Wenglish of the South Wales Valleys shows a deep cross fertilisation between the two. Cardiff also has a different accent influenced by that of the South Wales Valleys.
Ireland
The differences between accents in the province of Ulster and the remaining three provinces of Ireland are significant enough that it is best to treat them separately. There are, of course, differences within each group as well, but these are often noticeable only to locals.
Ulster
The Ulster accent has two main sub accents, namely Mid Ulster English and Ulster Scots. The language is spoken throughout the nine counties of Ulster, and in some northern areas of bordering counties such as Louth and Leitrim. It bears many similarities to Scottish English through influence from Ulster Scots, which is has many distinct characteristics and is often seen as a variety of Scots.
Some characteristics of the Ulster accent include:
- As in Scotland, the vowels and are merged, so that look and Luke are homophonous. The vowel is a high central rounded vowel, .
- The diphthong is pronounced approximately , but wide variation exists, especially between social classes in Belfast
- The vowel is a monophthong in open syllables (e.g. day ) but a rising diphthong in closed syllables (e.g. daze ). But the monophthong remains when inflectional endings are added, thus daze contrasts with days .
- The alveolar stops become dental before , e.g. tree and spider
often undergoes flapping to before an unstressed syllable, e.g. eighty
Connacht, Leinster and Munster
The accent of these three provinces is relatively similar throughout, and often distinguishable only by locals or those with experience. To people within the nine counties of Ulster it is more commonly a "southern accent".
Dublin and Cork are notable for having accents different from most of the rest of Ireland (although certain other accents are quite distinctive, for example Kerry, Wexford and Offaly). There is also stereotypically a difference between the accents of the Northside, Southside and Westside of Dublin.
Irish Travellers
Irish Travellers have a very distinct accent closely related to a rural Hiberno-English. Many Travellers who were born in parts of Britain have the accent, despite the fact that they do not live in Ireland. They also have their own language which strongly links in with their dialect/accent of English, see Shelta.
North America
Most North American English accents differ from Received Pronunciation and some other British dialects by being rhotic; the phoneme /r/ is pronounced before consonants and at the end of syllables, and the "r-colored vowel" is used as a syllable nucleus. For example, while the words hard and singer would be pronounced and in Received Pronunciation, they would be pronounced and in General American. However, there are exceptions: certain accents of New England, the Southern United States and the West Indies are non-rhotic.
Another feature distinguishing North American English dialects in general from British Received Pronunciation is the voicing or flapping of /t/ before an unstressed vowel, causing the word better to sound like "bedder" or . Many North American accents have broad phonemic mergers that are absent in Received Pronunciation: the vowel phonemes of "caught" and "cot" ( and in RP) merge in many North American accents; and those of father (RP ) and bother (RP in almost all. Similarly, the stressed vowels of "Mary", "merry" and "marry" are the same in most North American accents, despite being different in RP ( , , respectively).
Canada
Three major dialect areas can be found in Canada: Western/Central Canada, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland.
The phonology of West/Central Canadian English, also called General Canadian, is broadly identical to that of the Western U.S., except for the following features:
- The diphthongs and are raised to approximately and before voiceless consonants; thus, for example, the vowel sound of
out is different from that of loud . This feature is known as Canadian raising. There is no contrast between the vowels of caught and cot (cot-caught merger, as above); in addition, the short a of bat is more open than almost everywhere else in North America . The other front lax vowels and , too, can be lowered and/or retracted. This phenomenon has been labelled the Canadian Shift.
With respect to phonemic incidence, the pronunciation of certain words has American and/or British influence. For instance, shone is ; been is often ; process can be either or ; etc.
Words like drama, pyjamas, pasta tend to have rather than . Words like sorrow, Florida, orange have rather than ; therefore, sorry rhymes with story rather than with starry.
United States
West Indies and Bermuda
For discussion, see:
Southern Hemisphere
Australia
The greatest variation in Australian accents is along educational and occupational lines, expressed as three class-based accents: Broad Australian, General Australian and Cultivated Australian. However, some regional variation has been documented. Generally, accents are found to be broadest in the more remote and rural areas.
A 1995 survey by D. Crystal of the usage of /a?/ ("long a") and /æ/ in the same words ("graph", "chance", "demand", "dance", "castle", "grasp" and "contrast", across five cities, found that /a?/ was generally strongest in Adelaide, where it was used on average 88% of the time, and weakest in Hobart at 39% (Crystal, 1995, Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language).
Some people in Victoria have a tendency to pronounce the vowel in words like dress, bed and head as /æ/. As a result, the words "celery" and "salary" are pronounced alike.
In Western Australia, a tendency to pronounce words such as "beer" with two syllables (/bi?.?/ or "be-ah"), in cases where other Australians use one syllable (/bi?/), has been noted.
According to anecdote and stereotype, Queenslanders tend to use Broad Australian more and to drawl, although this does not appear to have been verified by research, and General and Cultivated accents are also widespread in Queensland.
New Zealand
The New Zealand accent is distinguished from the Australian one by the presence of "clipped" vowels, slightly resembling South African English. Phonetically, these are raised or centralised versions of the short "i" and "e" vowels, which in New Zealand are close to and respectively rather than ands . New Zealand pronunciations are often popularly represented outside New Zealand by writing "fish and chips" as "fush and chups", "yes" as "yiss", "sixty-six" as "suxty-sux". Scottish English influence is most evident in the southern regions of New Zealand, notably Dunedin.
Geographical variations appear slight, and mainly confined to individual special local words. One group of speakers, however, hold a recognised place as "talking differently": the South of the South Island (Murihiku) harbours a "Celtic fringe" of people speaking with a "Southland burr" in which a back-trilled 'r' appears prominently. The area formed a traditional repository of immigration from Scotland.
The trilled 'r' is also used by some Maori, who may also pronounce 't' and 'k' sounds without aspiration, striking other English speakers as similar to 'd' and 'g'. This is also encountered in South African English, especially among Afrikaans speakers.
South Atlantic
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands have a large non-native born population, mainly from England, but also from Saint Helena. In rural areas, the Falkland accent tends to be stronger. The accent has resemblances to both Australia-NZ English, and that of Norfolk in England, and contains a number of Spanish loanwords.
Saint Helena
"Saints", as Saint Helenan islanders are called, have a variety of different influences on their accent. To outsiders, the accent has resemblances to the accents of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Television is a reasonably recent arrival there, and is only just beginning to have an effect.
Southern Africa
South Africa
South Africa has 11 official languages, one of which is English. Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers, tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection, which is very similar to Dutch.
Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles British Received pronunciation modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection (caused by the Afrikaans influence). Native English speakers in South Africa also insert varying numbers of Afrikaans and Bantu loanwords into their speech.
British people often confuse South African English with Australian English while Americans often confuse it with an Upper Class British accent.
The accents of native English speakers of Johannesburg differ. Those from the northern suburbs (Parkview, Parkwood, Parktown North, Saxonwold, etc) tend to be less strongly influenced by Afrikaans. These suburbs are populated by persons with tertiary education and higher incomes. The accents of native English speakers from the southern suburbs (Rosettenville, Turffontein, etc) tend to be more strongly influenced by Afrikaans. These suburbs are populated by tradesmen and factory workers, with lower incomes. The extent of Afrikaans influence is explained by the fact that Afrikaans urbanisation would historically have been from failed marginal farms or failing economies in rural towns, into the southern and western suburbs of Johannesburg. The western suburbs of Johannesburg (Newlands, Triomf, which has now reverted to its old name Sophiatown, Westdene, etc) are predominantly Afrikaans speaking.
In a similar fashion, people from predominantly or traditionally Jewish areas in the Johannesburg area (such as Sandton, Linksfield or Victory Park) may have accents influenced by Yiddish or Hebrew ancestry.
Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe, native English speakers (mainly the white minority) have a similar speech pattern to that of South Africa. Hence those with high degrees of Germanic inflection would pronounce 'Zimbabwe' as zom-baw-bwi, as opposed to the African pronunciation zeem-bah-bwe.
Namibia
Namibian English tends to be strongly influenced by that of South Africa.
Asia
Hong Kong
The accent of English spoken in Hong Kong follows mainly British, with rather strong influence from Cantonese on the pronunciations of a few consonants and vowels, and sentence grammar and structure. In recent years there are some Canadian and Australian influences, attributable to the return to Hong Kong of persons who had emigrated to these countries.
South Asia
A number of distinct dialects of English are spoken in South Asia. There are many languages spoken in South Asia like Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi, Pashto, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayam, Kannada, Rajasthani and many more, creating a variety of accents of English. Accents originating in this part of the world tend to display several distinctive features, including:
- syllable-timing, in which a roughly equal time is allocated to each syllable. Akin to the English of Singapore and Malaysia. (Elsewhere, English speech timing is based predominantly on stress);
- "sing-song" pitch (somewhat reminiscent of those of Welsh English).
Malaysia and Singapore
English is the lingua franca of Malaysia and Singapore, two former British colonies. It also is the most frequently used language in the homes of about 23% of Singaporeans.
The Singaporean and Malaysian accents are fairly similar and the distinctions between the two are analogous to those between the American and Canadian accents. The Singaporean/Malaysian accent is so distinctive that it is one of the ways Singaporeans and Malaysians recognize one another when they are overseas.
The Singaporean/Malaysian accent appears to be a melding of British, Chinese, and Malay influences.
Many Singaporeans and Malaysians adopt different accents and usages depending on the situation; for example, an office worker may speak with less colloquialism and with a more British accent on the job than with friends or while out shopping.
- syllable-timing, where speech is timed according to syllable, akin to the English of the Indian Subcontinent. (Elsewhere, speech is usually timed to stress.)
- A quick, staccato style, with "puncturing" syllables and well-defined, drawn out tones.
- Non-rhoticity, like most varieties of English language in England. Hence
caught and court are homophonous as ; can't rhymes with aren't, etc. Simplification of final consonant clusters: must becomes "mus'", cold becomes "co'", etc. The "ay" and "ow" sounds in raid and road ( and respectively) are pronounced as monophthongs, i.e. with no "glide": and .
is pronounced as [t] and as [d]; hence, thin is and then is .
- Depending on how colloquial the situation is: many discourse particles, or words inserted at the end of sentences that indicate the role of the sentence in discourse and the mood it conveys, like "lah", "leh", "mah", "hor", etc.
- The main shibboleth for distinguishing a Singaporean and a Malaysian is the pronunciation of the word
Malaysia. A Singaporean is more likely to say "Malay-zhuh", while a Malaysian would more likely say "Malayss-syuh."
Philippines
Philippine English is heavily influenced by American English but it is also influenced by Tagalog and other Philippine languages.
Philippine English is a rhotic accent.
Many vowels and consonant sounds such as [f] and [v] or [e] and [i] are interchanged frequently in Philippine languages so they are realized differently by Filipinos. Philippine English does not distinguish [f] and [v] or [e] and [i].
- Filipino: [pilipino]
- Victor: [biktor]
- Family: [pamili]
- Varnish: [barnis]
- Fun: [pan]
- Vehicle: [bihikel]
- Lover = [laber]
- Find = [paynd]
- Official: [opisyal]
- Fever: [piber]
- Very = [beri]
Currently, Filipinos are more sensitive to pronunciation as a result of their large exposure to English-language movies and books. English is also the second language in the Philippines and it is used as the medium of around 80% of school subjects. Also, owing to the vast entry of business processes outsourcing (BPO) companies such as call centres, English tutorial schools and medical transcription companies, it has become an avenue to the improvement and utilisation of the English language and its pronunciation.
See also
Bibliography
External links
- 633 audio samples of people with various accents reading the same paragraph.
- — Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
- Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world - instantaneous playback online
- Searchable free-access archive of 681 speech samples, England only, wma format with linguistic commentary
- An article on the connection of class and accent in the UK, its decline, and the spread of Estuary English
- Homepage of the telephone survey of North American English accents
- A site for non-linguists, by Barbara Johnstone of Carnegie-Mellon University
- by Claudio Salvucci
- A newspaper article on Philadelphia speech
- Includes class handouts describing Cockney, Scottish, Australian, and Scouse, among other things.
- A series of web pages by PBS that attempts to discuss the differences between dialects in the United States
- A continuously-updating map based on users' responses to quizzes
- Fun site that translates phrases into the different dialects of the British Isles.
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