| 1 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ello_govna_tee_shirt-r8238effdd18b4b85ac0ac3089ef30c32_804gs_512_4569.jpg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ->'''ComicBook/{{Zatanna}}:''' Speak English, can't you?\ |
| 4 | '''ComicBook/JohnConstantine:''' I speak perfect English. So does Tim. It's you that's got the funny accent. |
| 5 | -->-- ''ComicBook/TheBooksOfMagic'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | 'ello, Guv. You want me to describe British Accents 'ere, you do? |
| 8 | |
| 9 | As anyone who knows the basic facts of the place will tell you, ''there is no such thing as a "British" accent''. Of course, any accent variety encompasses a ''family'' of different accents,[[note]]as Noam Chomsky once said, no two people speak the same language[[/note]] but in the case of "British accents" some of them aren't even related. It's especially odd when the speaker uses both the phrases "British accent" and "Scottish accent", given UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} is part of UsefulNotes/{{Britain}} ([[UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion and let's not forget]] UsefulNotes/IrishAccents). Presumably, they mean "English", but England also has a ridiculous number of very markedly different accents -- in some areas, people can tell which ''village'' one comes from by listening to one speak -- and each has its own distinct stereotype. These stereotypes are sadly hard to escape on British TV. American TV largely avoids this by not distinguishing between different regions of Britain at all. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | As well as being local, accents are an indicator of [[UsefulNotes/ATouchOfClassEthnicityAndReligion social class]]. Until the 1980s the "received pronunciation" aka "BBC English" was the speech of the upper-middle and upper classes, with any regional accent marking the speaker as being working or lower-middle class. This led Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw (an Irishman) to comment in the preface to ''Theatre/{{Pygmalion}}'' that it "is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." This led social climbers to hire elocution tutors to [[Main/OohMeAccentsSlipping iron the kinks]] out of their local accents. These days things are more egalitarian and TV companies have consciously tried to hire presenters with accents previously heard only in Main/KitchenSinkDrama. Incidentally Creator/TheBBC didn't pick Received Pronunciation merely for snobbery, but because at the time it was the only accent that could be reliably understood by the vast majority of the British people. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8 Here is just a small sampling of the diversity of accents used in Britain and Ireland]]. Yet in American-produced media this is usually oversimplified to the point where every English character speaks with one of two accents: [[IAmVeryBritish Received Pronunciation]], aka "Posh" (traditionally associated with the aristocracy and the pretentious: "I say, old chap, let's play croquet, then have tea and scones. Pip pip!" — think [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9b08J2KrA Jacob Rees-Mogg]]) and Cockney (the accent of East London: "Cor blimey guv'na! Gi' 's a pint!" — think Creator/RayWinstone). Okay, also occasionally [[TalkLikeAPirate pirate]] ("Aaar! Shiver me timbers!") -- in other words, the "West Country" accent. The latter is also the accent stereotypically associated with farmers. However, keep in mind that these are not the only ones that are used in England. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | When we say "British Accent" here, we don't mean a single accent but rather one of the deluges of them recognizably from Britain. With that in mind, it's pretty much a given that, the further back into the history of Anglophone civilization (until you hit [[TheMiddleAges medieval times]] and then [[DarkAgeEurope the dark ages]], at which point it's not recognizable as modern English anymore), the more likely you are to have spoken with a British Accent. Hardly surprising, given that even in the mid-nineteenth century half of all English-speaking people still lived in the British Isles and the bulk of the other half had only left them a couple of generations ago. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | These stereotypes even extend beyond characters that are not supposed to be British. Despite the fact that the dialect should be irrelevant, the cast of the show ''Series/{{Rome}}'' is entirely British (and Irish), and their actual accents are used to reflect their characters' positions in [[TheQueensLatin the social hierarchy of Ancient Rome]]: the lower class soldiers usually speak with rougher accents whereas the noblemen speak with more refined accents. On the other hand, this might be considered a more "refined" TranslationConvention (which translates stereotypical accents of THAT area and region to the same in Britain). Taken to logical extremes in ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'' (in which everyone in Jerusalem has various London accents, with a smattering of Welsh ones) when the title character is arrested by Roman centurions. The head Centurion proclaims "[[StockBritishPhrases You're fuckin' nicked, me old beauty!]]" |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Most fictional depictions of the Romans and Imperialists in general tend to have British accents which has even spawned [[TheQueensLatin its own trope]]. We can probably [[JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples blame Shakespeare]] and the fact that the Roman Empire has a substantial influence on Western civilization alongside the British Empire. It is almost impossible to find an example of UsefulNotes/JesusChrist being depicted without an English voice, too, even though the man was a Jew from Judea. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | The posh British accent is also very often associated with bad guys of a certain type -- brainy mastermind bad guys, bad guys with a taste for unusually sophisticated kinds of evil. Usually, these are played by Creator/JeremyIrons or Creator/TerenceStamp (and going even further back, Creator/JamesMason) rather than, say, Creator/MichaelCaine or Creator/BobHoskins. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Of course, Administrivia/TropesAreTools, and performance, casting, and character are more important than accuracy with accents. Nevertheless, any number of people from the UK are such extreme sticklers about this trope as to fly off the handle upon hearing the very words "British accent" without pausing to consider that the user of the words was probably using an umbrella term because specifics were unnecessary in the context of what he/she was saying, instead of claiming or implying that in all of Britain there is only one accent. That does not, however, excuse writers or actors their carelessness if they don't invoke the trope deliberately and for a reason. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | In what may be the finest British Accents twist of all time, author Bernard Cornwell revised the {{backstory}} of his star character [[Literature/{{Sharpe}} Richard Sharpe]] to reflect Creator/SeanBean's portrayal. The books had established that Sharpe was from London, but Bean is from Sheffield and has a distinct Northern accent; Cornwell [[RetCon established in later novels]] that though Sharpe had indeed been born in London, he fled to Sheffield for a life of crime to avoid being sold as a chimney sweep by the person that ran his orphanage. Creator/IanFleming did this as well, making Literature/JamesBond's father a Scot after Creator/SeanConnery's success in [[Film/JamesBond the movie role]]. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | The phrase most likely to give away someone trying to bluff any British accent is "Bloody Hell" and, especially its more gutterspeak variant, "Bloody 'ell." This phrase may be the most flexible in British English and can be used to express a staggering array of emotions, dependant on context, syllable stress, syllable length, volume, whether teeth are gritted or not, the social class of the speaker, and so on. Everything from mild surprise to absolute outrage, from slight irritation to an overwhelming sense of awe can be expressed with these two simple words. It is often the first "swear" that children learn, each region has its own subtle variants and there really isn't an "RP" way to use it. And that's before the ''Australian'' variants come into play. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Most people are far better at distinguishing their own accent from other accents than they are at distinguishing two accents they don't hear often, and the average American may not be exposed to a non-American accent until well into adulthood (when complaining about the supposed inability to distinguish between certain accents, many Brits rather stupidly forget that America's closest point to the UK is nearly 3,000 miles of ocean away and that with this distance comes far fewer opportunities for exposure to British accents). |
| 30 | |
| 31 | One of the big differences between the accents most commonly heard in England and those most common in North America is something called ''rhoticity'': in a nutshell, American and Canadian accents are ''rhotic'' (except New England, New York, and urban Black American accents; Southern American accents used to often have this trait but the modern-day Southern United States is almost completely rhotic) and British accents (except Scottish, Northern Irish and the West Country) are ''non-rhotic''.[[labelnote:More information]]See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents the Wikipedia article for rhotic and non-rhotic accents]] for more information on rhoticity and which regions of the United States and United Kingdom have rhotic or non-rhotic accents.[[/labelnote]] People with non-rhotic accents do not pronounce the letter "r" as a consonant when it ends a word or syllable, whereas those with rhotic accents pronounce it in almost all situations. (Instead, a syllable-final "r" is pronounced as an alteration of the vowel: thus ''bat'', ''Bart'', ''bet'', ''Bert'', etc. all have different vowels. The typical non-rhotic accent has roughly twice as many vowel phonemes as the typical rhotic accent.) Within the rhotic dialects, Scottish English is notable in that its "r" is typically tapped, or "rolled." |
| 32 | |
| 33 | An important note at this juncture: Non-rhoticity is a relatively new feature in British English. Although there were traces of it as early as the 16th century, it only became a noticeable feature of the dialects that had it in the mid-17th (mainly in Essex and East Anglia), and only took its contemporary form at the end of the 18th. Even then, it was restricted to the South-East; it only spread beyond there because the South-East is of course where London is, and given London's cultural power it was inevitable that people would start following London's lead.[[note]]Southern accents that led to modern Black American accents became non-rhotic: the Southern planters consciously aped London aristocratic styles and went whole-hog, whereas the interior and Mid-Atlantic didn't do so that much. Non-rhoticity in New England, on the other hand, probably arose from the fact that the people who colonized it were already starting to lose rhoticity in England.[[/note]] As recently as 1950, rural accents in most of England were rhotic--even those close to London, such as in Berkshire, Kent, and Sussex. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | This can sometimes create confusion in written communication. For instance, an English writer on an online linguistics forum described children's attempts to pronounce letters as sounding like "ar, ber, cer, der", which confused the North Americans on the forum. It turned out that the kids were saying "ah, buh, kuh, duh"; the English writer added an "r" to every syllable because she expected the "uh" sound to end in the letter "r". In addition, this has influenced the spelling of foreign names and words such as Park[[note]]from Korean surname ''Pak''/''Bak''[[/note]], Parcheesi[[note]]from Hindi ''pachisi''[[/note]], Burma/Myanmar[[note]]from Burmese ''Bama''/''Myanma''[[/note]] and char siu[[note]]from Cantonese ''chaa siu''[[/note]]. That being said, it's important to recognize that rhoticity isn't the only difference between British accents and American ones. An old-style North [[UsefulNotes/NewJersey (New) Jersey]] accent[[note]]More recent North Jersey accents are rhotic, and South Jersey's accent is attached to the rhotic UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} accent.[[/note]] and a London accent are both non-rhotic, but they're obviously very different. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | The biggest difference is probably in vowels. The "short O" sound of words like "lot" is very different; in most British accents it is aid with the lips rounded, whereas in American accents it is said with the lips unrounded, and is in fact [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_open_back_vowels#Father%E2%80%93bother_merger merged into the "ah" sound of "father"]]. This can cause confusion when Americans try to represent the pronunciation of words with this "ah" sound by spelling them as "o", for example claiming that Kamala Harris' first name is pronounced "comma-la". Vowels followed by an "r" are also very likely to sound different; Brits pronounce "marry", "merry" and "Mary" very differently, but most Americans pronounce them all the same, which can lead to bewilderment on both sides when Americans accuse Brits of pronouncing ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]'' as "merry-o" and ''Maryland'' as "merry-land", to which Brits respond "no we don't"![[note]]Brits pronounce ''Mario'' as "marry-o" and "Maryland" as "Mary land"[[/note]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | These written issues are also a major reason why various proposals to make the spelling of English more phonetic (or at least rational) have never taken off -- it would ignite major regional and class-based conflicts over which pronunciation should be reflected. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | For the closest English-speaking neighbours, compare UsefulNotes/IrishAccents. For English-speakers further afield, compare and contrast UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents, UsefulNotes/CanadianAccents, and the UsefulNotes/AustralianAccent page. See also FakeBrit, OohMeAccentsSlipping. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | ---- |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:''Inglend (England)'']] |
| 48 | !![[IAmVeryBritish Received Pronunciation (Posh/Educated/BBC/Queen's English/RP/Oxford)]] |
| 49 | Nobles, [[SmartPeopleSpeakTheQueensEnglish geniuses]], snobs, the BattleButler, the QuintessentialBritishGentleman, the EvilBrit, and people who studied in UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}} or worked for Creator/TheBBC. The "tapped r" sound (used in a few other British accents) is commonly but inaccurately parodied as "veddy" (for "very"). American media often makes the mistake that [[IAmVeryBritish all Brits speak RP]]. It should be noted that, in simplistic terms, there are two forms of RP in everyday use -- ''Moderate'' and ''Heightened'' (or, as some people tend to call it, ''Trad''). Both follow the same rules of pronunciation, but Moderate is more relaxed and tends to be encountered more amongst the young, whereas Heightened is far more strangulated, plummy, and generally only encountered in older people. UsefulNotes/ElizabethII used Heightened RP, whereas her grandson Harry uses Moderate, for example. It is also important to note that almost ALL upper-class people in the UK, regardless of the region they live in (from UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}} to Scotland), speak RP -- it is an accent of social class, as opposed to region. There used to be an American equivalent called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent Mid-Atlantic English]] which was entirely affected -- very few people naturally spoke that way -- but it was phased out starting in the mid-20th century. |
| 50 | * Creator/TheBBC used to insist on everyone speaking a modified version of RP ("BBC English" did discourage some distinctive upper-class pronunciations that were seen as erroneous, such as pronouncing "ng" at the end of words as a simple "n"), but this is no longer the case (generally using "Estuary" with a tinge of their native regional accent if it isn't Estuary), although some of the old announcers still use the accent. |
| 51 | * In US media this accent is most commonly associated with the WickedCultured (see also: EvilBrit). Although not always -- Alfred Pennyworth of ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' used to speak in RP. |
| 52 | * This is Creator/RowanAtkinson's accent. At least for general usage. Atkinson also does a very good Geordie accent (mostly used on older [[Series/NotTheNineOClockNews NTNON]] sketches) on account of being from County Durham. |
| 53 | * Also the accent of UsefulNotes/RichardDawkins. |
| 54 | * ChapHop artists Music/ProfessorElemental and Music/MrBTheGentlemanRhymer have made this accent popular of late. |
| 55 | * Creator/TerryThomas' RP accent was so famously affected that most people today who pretend to do an RP accent are probably just doing a bad impression of Terry-Thomas without realizing it. |
| 56 | * "Posho" JP from Series/FreshMeat. At one point he states proudly, "I have the kind of accent that makes foreigners shit themselves." |
| 57 | * '''The Hon. JACOB REES-MOGG'''. Also, the late, lamented Bryan Sewell. Both speak a version of RP known as Heightened or Trad(itional). It is also jokingly known as "posher than the Queen" -- but note, it is ''not'' the same as Sandhurst (which see) because the latter is strictly a ''military'' accent (and Army in particular). In Rees-Mogg's case, this--along with his political views--has led to his being occasionally dubbed the "member of Parliament for the eighteenth century."[[note]]Ironically, Rees-Mogg is Catholic, and thus would not have been eligible to become an MP until after the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act... in 1829.[[/note]] |
| 58 | ** Before getting into the attributes of Trad RP, it's worth noting that Dr Zev Cohen in ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' speaks it flawlessly (to a Briton's ears). Strangely (and ''amazingly''), he is played by a Canadian, Creator/DwightSchultz. Listen to him [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n81wThGlxJY here]]. |
| 59 | ** Juntao in ''Film/RushHour''. Listen to it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxZ1ivh8bgs here]]. Likewise, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuIwyNO3JQ4 Pendrew]] in ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs2012''. Both played/voiced by Tom Wilkinson. |
| 60 | ** Pandemic comes out pen-demic. Quarantine comes out quad-enteen with something between a d and an r. |
| 61 | ** You can instantly tell a Trad RP speaker by the so-called "-our ''glide''". This applies to words that rhyme with ''hour''---'''not''' words that rhyme with ''honour'' or ''colour''. For instance, "only for an hour" can come out "''e-wnly for an aaaaaah''" (the ''e-w'' sound is like in the name "Edward" without the ''d''). By the same token, ''year'' comes out ''yah''. Trad RP speakers also "glide" the final ''y'' in words like "''history''", which comes out ''histor-rear''. Creator/TerryPratchett once described this as "organised yawning"---which to be honest isn't far "orf"! |
| 62 | ** Craig Brown, in his hilariously waspish biography ''Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret'', phonetically transcribes the late princess' 1981 ''Desert Island Discs'' radio interview, where her pronunciation of the word "yes" is brilliantly (and accurately) written as "ears". |
| 63 | ** Conversely, Trad RP speakers "tighten" the ''ou'' sound when it's by itself. ''Mouse'' is almost indistinguishable from ''mice''; a fairly faithful Main/FunetikAksent would be ''meice'', but note that the ''e'' sound is the one in ''met'' (if you're speaking proper English). |
| 64 | ** Finally, "''moss''" comes out ''morss'', "''cross''" likewise ''crorss'', "''off''" becomes ''orf'' (''or'' sound as in "''bore''"). Some, but '''not all''', Trad RP speakers will 'tap' certain ''r'' sounds (the ones between two vowels); the sound used is the same as the ''t'' in "''better''", pronounced Yank-fashion. |
| 65 | ** The accent can be listened to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1M9ipiZfPk here]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1M9ipiZfPk here]] (political content alert). Creator/AlanRickman also spoke a variant of RP midway between Standard and Trad. |
| 66 | ** A fairly popular drinking game in the UK is to bite down on a pencil or cigarette lighter inserted in one side of the mouth (Main/CigarChomper style) and say one of the usual elocution exercises. In increasing order of difficulty: "''chubby bunnies''", "''round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal rudely ran''", "''amidst the mists and fiercest frosts, with barest wrists and stoutest boasts, she thrusts her fists against the posts, and still insists she sees the ghosts''" (thank you Creator/StephenKing). The idea is to talk and still be understood -- if you can't be, take a drink. This essentially ''forces'' you to speak Trad RP or the American equivalent; try it without the pencil or lighter and see. |
| 67 | * 'Oxford' RP is reasonably distinguishable from 'standard' RP, at least for those of us who live in Oxford, anyway. Might have been caused by a slight mixing with the 'Rose Hill'/'Jericho' accent. |
| 68 | ** To clarify: Jericho is a small area of Oxford, which used to be a bit of a slum (and it's still not got a great reputation). Many inhabitants moved to Rose Hill (another small area of Oxford) and brought their accent (and unfortunately, the reputation) with them. The accent might indicate someone being lower-class, rough or criminal. |
| 69 | ** For an example, Lyra in ''Literature/NorthernLights'' associates with people from the Jericho area, and Philip Pullman transcribes some of the way she therefore speaks into her dialogue. Note the use of 'ent' for 'haven't' and 'isn't', particularly: 'That ent right!' or 'I ent got it!'. |
| 70 | * Also known through out the country as 'The Telephone Voice'. Anyone with a strong dialect who expects to speak to a non-local over the phone will most likely attempt to speak with RP. Also used by customer facing workers and anyone else who wishes to be understood first time. It's not uncommon to be served in a shop by an assistant who sounds like they could be serving the Queen herself who will then turn to a colleague and instantly start speaking with the broadest local dialect you've ever heard. This explains the aforementioned American misconception. Almost all Brits CAN speak RP, they just may choose not to. |
| 71 | * An exaggerated form is used by the Red Arrows aerobatics team. Commands are issued in a metronomic and modulated manner that emphasize the vowel in each syllable, resulting in radio communications sounding incredibly posh. This is done to be as clear as possible and to help the pilots anticipate upcoming maneuvers. Other British aerobatic teams mimic this way of speaking over the radio when performing. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | |
| 74 | !![[MilitaryAcademy Sandhurst (the REAL posh accent)]] |
| 75 | Essentially an exaggerated form of Heightened RP, this accent is almost never heard in fiction, the only exceptions being British made war films of the 30s, 40s, and 50s... and Creator/MontyPython. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | The accent of the British Main/BlueBlood, RP with a blocked nose and a mouthful of marbles. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | So-called for its use by the product of the Elite Military Academy of the British Army, for the longest time an institution that you joined because Daddy was a General. Accordingly, because this accent is localised to one particular branch of one particular profession, there aren't many opportunities to hear it; by the same token, if the "example" doesn't have a military rank, he/she's probably not an example. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | Examples: |
| 82 | * Tim-Nice-But-Dim, the creation of Harry Enfield |
| 83 | * Any number of sketches by the Pythons, all of who spoke BBC RP (at least on stage) but as a product of Footlights had plenty of exposure to real life upper class twits |
| 84 | * Captain Music/JamesBlunt of the Life Guards (part of the British Army's elite Household Cavalry, the Main/PraetorianGuard that protects His Majesty the King) has '''the definitive''' Sandhurst accent. (No shit. That's where he got his education.) Not an upper class twit -- more Main/RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething. |
| 85 | * It's hinted that Rear Admiral Michael Oversteegen in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books talks like this, in Main/FunetikAksent. Although, technically, he's ''Navy'', and not British. |
| 86 | * In the Series/TheTwoRonnies sketch "Crossed Lines", ginger Gerald (played by Ronnie Barker) wears a striped regimental tie, carries his hand in his blazer à la UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, and talks in a comically thick Sandhurst accent (implying he's ex-military). |
| 87 | |
| 88 | !![[UsefulNotes/{{London}} East London (Cockney)]] |
| 89 | ->'''Creator/SethMacFarlane:''' "Cockney British, back then, really wanted you to make sure that they knew what you were talking about."\ |
| 90 | -- ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' |
| 91 | |
| 92 | A character with an East London accent will very often be involved in some form of criminality. They can either be {{London Gangster}}s (such as anything played by Vinnie Jones [[note]]although he is from Watford in North London[[/note]]) or a LoveableRogue. The more Cockney the accent, the more likely to be the latter. Double that if he uses impenetrable Cockney rhyming slang. However, there are exceptions to the rule -- Badger from ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' is a bad Cockney and Ray Winstone has played good (although often aggressive) East Londoners on a number of occasions. |
| 93 | * Strangely, on Canadian television Cockneys tend to be light-hearted, street-smart small businessmen -- fruit vendors, gardeners, and the like. A gangster Cockney would be considered about as likely as a pearls-and-china culture maven hailing from Yellowknife. You do get characters like this in the UK, but they tend to be found in period works. |
| 94 | * There is also "Mockney", putting on the accent for effect. |
| 95 | * A good fictional example is 2-D from the Music/{{Gorillaz}}, whose accent is thick [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMZ0tFWXZB8 to a comical degree]]. |
| 96 | * Interestingly, we know a lot about the development of Cockney thanks to Creator/CharlesDickens -- he was using a FunetikAksent for Cockney characters as early as 1837 writing ''Literature/ThePickwickPapers'', so we have a written record of how it sounded two hundred years ago, including the fact that proto-Cockney had a rather German-sounding W-V substitution. |
| 97 | --> '''Weller:''' "Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list cos his mother's uncle's vife's grandfather vunce lit the king's pipe vith a portable tinder-box." |
| 98 | * In ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', the [[UrbanSegregation proles]] tend to have Cockney accents ([[FunetikAksent or an approximation thereof]]) while the Party members tend to speak something closer to RP, in keeping with Creator/GeorgeOrwell's socialist views of [[SlobsVersusSnobs the hardworking and industrious working people versus the snobby, power-hungry elites.]] |
| 99 | * Bit character Constable Smiley in ''{{Series/Reno 911}}'' has something between this, Estuary and mild touches of Brummie. His brief existence in the show had the main characters thinking of him as a kind Film/MaryPoppins sort of character due to his accent and niceties when he first met them. In actuality though he verged much closer to being a EvilBrit criminal type being underhanded, violent and self-serving in all he did (though only Garcia is aware of his brutality) all with a chipper Cockernee accent. |
| 100 | * The English comedian Russell Kane has noted that whereas in most British accents, talking loudly is perceived as being threatening whereas talking quietly is regarded as friendly and non-threatening, in Cockney it's the other way around; Cockneys who shout are merely being exuberant, whereas Cockneys who talk quietly are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU6y-tmtB9U very, very scary]]. |
| 101 | * Bizarrely, UsefulNotes/JosefStalin has a Cockney accent in ''Film/TheDeathOfStalin''. According to the director, he didn't want fake Russian accents distracting the audience from the story, so every cast member [[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent kept their normal accent.]] As strange as it sounds, the accent somehow makes Stalin (for the brief time that he's [[ForegoneConclusion alive and onscreen]]) both more human and more intimidating. |
| 102 | * Creator/MichaelCaine has a Cockney accent, and so does almost every character he plays. |
| 103 | * Music/TheSmallFaces were from east London, and several of their songs (most notably "Lazy Sunday") feature singer Steve Marriott using a theatrically exaggerated accent. |
| 104 | --> "Loyzee Sundee ahfternoon\ |
| 105 | I've got no moind ta worry\ |
| 106 | Clowse my oyes and drift awaiiiyyyyy..." |
| 107 | * Music/{{Cream}} drummer Ginger Baker's Cockney accent was clearly apparent in the few songs he sang (or, more accurately, spoke) with the band. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | !![[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Estuary]] |
| 110 | A fairly recent development. Think of it as the compromise between the refinement of RP and the palatal easiness of Cockney. The London middle class, so to speak. Based on RP, but also incorporates a number of elements traditionally associated with Cockney and other plebeian southeastern dialects (notably, pronouncing "t" as a glottal stop, fronting "th" to "f" and "v", and pronouncing a hard "g" in "-ing" words). Mostly spoken in southeastern England on the estuary of the Thames, but increasingly co-opted by people with higher levels of income and education who mock Received Pronunciation as too [[BritishStuffiness stuffy]] and [[DelusionsOfEloquence pretentiously ridiculous]]. As a result, it (or a slightly more refined variant thereof) has increasingly become the default "newscaster" accent of media based in London (ie most of it). Has risen in profile in recent years to the point where it's become more-or-less "neutral" and may replace RP completely. |
| 111 | * Creator/RussellBrand is a good example of this accent. Music/{{Adele}} as well. |
| 112 | * Michael Caine approximates this in most of his roles. It was much stronger in his youth: his performance in ''Theatre/{{Sleuth}}'' was one of the first times an actor had used the accent in a film. |
| 113 | * Creator/DavidTennant, a native Scot, adopted the Estuary accent for his portrayal of Series/{{Casanova}} and the Characters/TenthDoctor. |
| 114 | * South East England, specifically the county of Kent, has its own, fading, country dialect ([[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]] has it in modified form, almost certainly derived from Dartford natives Music/MickJagger and Music/KeithRichards, who both sport the Kentish lilt); a cousin of the 'Mummerset' below. However, this is quite different from Estuary English--among other differences, the former is rhotic; the latter is not. |
| 115 | * In the Medway towns area another accent is discernible; sometimes called 'Chav' (derived from a UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} word for 'child') or locally 'Chathamese' (from the town of Chatham, where its worst excesses are spoken). It includes local words like 'chaw' for 'to take', and is itself replaced by another accent on the Isle of Sheppey in the Medway estuary. |
| 116 | ** A variation of the chav accent originated in East London and has spread elsewhere, which sounds like that associated with Black London accent combined with the white chav accent. This is often known as '[[UsefulNotes/{{Jamaica}} Jafaican]]', or in politically correct terms 'Multicultural London English'. This accent has some unusual variations compared to started English -- for instance 'you' may be pronounced like 'yoor', and 'like' be pronounced like 'lack'. In that sense it is closer to a [[UsefulNotes/{{Nigeria}} Nigerian]] or Scottish accent. Like a lot of accents, it varies in how strong it is depending on the area. The garage and grime genres of music often feature people with this accent; a notable example is Music/DizzeeRascal. |
| 117 | |
| 118 | !![[UsefulNotes/EastAnglia East Anglia (The Bootiful East)]] |
| 119 | * Famous turkey magnate Bernard Matthews sums up the whole region for many people. His catch-phrase ''Bootiful!'', from the TV adverts for his turkeys, is pure ''Naaarfuck'' |
| 120 | * Speaking of ''Naaarfuck'',[[note]] ''Norfolk'', to the perplexed.[[/note]] you haven't lived until you have heard a denizen of ''Narridge'' [[note]]Norwich[[/note]] pronounce the word "road". It comes out sounding almost but not completely like "rude". |
| 121 | * Norfolk people use their placenames as traps to catch the unwary. Thus: |
| 122 | ** '''Costessey''' - pron. ''Cossey'' |
| 123 | ** '''Wymondham''' - pron. ''Windham'' |
| 124 | ** '''Happisburgh''' - pron. ''Hazeborough'' |
| 125 | * Anyone meeting Suffolk accents for the first time might close their ears to the actual sense of what's being said, listen to the rising and falling cadences of the intonation, and hear Dutch more clearly than English. You might just as well be in Flanders or Holland. As with Yorkshire and Denmark, this speaks volumes for the centuries of contact and trading links with the nearest landfall on the other side of the North Sea. |
| 126 | * Oddly, frequently confused by actors for the West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar. This is probably due to the fact that both are considered to be the two main "yokel" regions of England. Stereotypes common to both is that a lot of the people are rustic farmers. |
| 127 | * The vast majority of the first settlers of New England in North America were from here. As such, the accents of the northeastern United States still bear some resemblance to their East Anglian ancestors. |
| 128 | |
| 129 | !![[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry The West Country (Mummerset)]] |
| 130 | Stock accent for a broadly defined region stretching from UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}} through to Somerset and old Wessex. Plenty of "oo-ar", while chewing a stalk of hay (stalk, not stack); associated with intellectual challenge, broad ignorance and depthless cunning, and usually used as comic relief. In the US, it is mostly associated with "Pirate-speak", due to its proximity to seafaring towns like Bristol and Plymouth. The dialect actually has a very distinct history, as it is probably the most purely Saxon speech found in England (which is to say, relatively unaffected by the Viking and Norman invasions). Indeed, several features of the dialect would be familiar to German-speakers, such as the use of the words "be" and "bist" instead of "am" and "is" (for example, "I be" instead of "I am"). Two notable features of the accent include ''strong'' rhoticism and the voicing of "f" and "s" consonants, which therefore become "v" and "z." The classic example of the latter feature is the county name of Somerset, which would be pronounced "Zummerzet." Cornish English, and to a lesser extent Devon English, carry some influence from the Celtic Cornish language. |
| 131 | * In Somerset can be found explanatory T-shirts with local expressions: 'Where zat to? Yer tizz' ('Where's that? Here it is.') or proper job (pronounced 'pruppar jaab') 'that's been done right'. Familiarity is marked by the expression 'my love'. |
| 132 | * The exception being Wiltshire-born Phil Harding, an archaeologist who appears on the long-running ''Series/TimeTeam'' archaeology programme, speaks with a broad West Country accent, looks like a poacher, has a worrying affection for digging very, very big holes (he's the one most likely to call for the JCB) and knows pretty much all there is to know about ancient pottery. But he ''still'' gets used as comic relief. |
| 133 | * TV star zookeeper Johnny Morris came from Bristol. On his show ''Series/AnimalMagic'' it showed. |
| 134 | * More accurate programs set in this area will contrast working class Mummerset with upper-middle class RP. Associated with much fearful pointing at planes, shunning of cameras in fear of their soul, etc. |
| 135 | ** Careful observation will reveal a "Yokel Belt" stretching from Cornwall to [[UsefulNotes/EastAnglia Norfolk]], with a generally common sort of drawl but of course the usual regional variation. Ooh-arr is Somerset and Dorset for example. Cornish tends to be more piratical sounding. Softer consonants to the east (suff-uhk vs zummerzet). |
| 136 | * Despite not really being part of the West Country proper, the UsefulNotes/IsleOfWight was heavily influenced by the region, and shares more in common with its accent than with the Received Pronunciation and Estuary accents seen in the rest of the South East; in addition, the Isle of Wight dialect shares much of the regional words familiar to people from the West Country, and even has quite a substantial number of their own; for example, you're likely to hear the phrase "Somewhen" ('at some time'/'at some point') quite a lot, which is almost never seen anywhere else, though it does have an approximate equivalent in German. |
| 137 | ** And while the Isle of Wight is the most pronounced example of this, western fringes of the South East still preserve some West Country features, particularly in working class speakers. A good example is Creator/RickyGervais, whose accent has a mixture of Estuary and West Country features. He had a modest upbringing in Reading, a town roughly equidistant between London and the West Country. |
| 138 | * There's a good reason for Cornish accents being "{{Pirate}} sounding"; the connection was sledgehammered into the public consciousness by Robert Newton's depiction of Long John Silver (originally not even "Captain", mind) in the 1950 film version of ''Film/{{Treasure Island|1950}}''. He refrained from putting on a more classy RP acting accent and used his native Kernow drawl instead to make the character a little more low-class and exotic... arrr, an' so 'igh profyle a depikshon 'twere, Pirates 'ave shared what be 'til then a rougher brarnch o' the classic farrmurrs' (an' tin-miners') acsent to this 'ere day. |
| 139 | ** However, it's actually an interesting example of TruthInTelevision. Estimates for the regional origin of pirates actually put the plurality (note, not the majority) as being from the West Country. This presumably because of the amount of press-ganging which went on in the region and the tendency of press-ganged sailors to desert or mutiny and take up as pirates. For example, the legendary Blackbeard was probably born in Bristol. Black Sam, meanwhile, who is thought to have been the richest pirate of all time, was from Devon, as was privateer Sir Francis Drake. |
| 140 | * Most of the characters in ''Radio/TheArchers'' have accents from this part of the country. |
| 141 | * Hagrid has a Somerset accent in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series. In fact, his classic line from the films "Yer a wizzerd, Harry" may be the most familiar bit of West Country English to non-UK viewers. |
| 142 | * Wheatley in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' has a West Country accent (as with his voice actor, Stephen Merchant, who is from Bristol, no FakeBrit here), which fits with his character as being well-meaning but [[TheDitz rather dim]]. |
| 143 | * ''Film/HotFuzz'': |
| 144 | ** Most of the cast displays the accent, being that the movie is set in a fictional West Country town. Star Creator/SimonPegg was born in Gloucester and director Edgar Wright grew up in Wells, Somerset. |
| 145 | ** Taken to its logical extreme where one scene features three people with varying strengths of accent, so that Nick needs Danny to translate the barely understandable PC Bob, who in turn is translating for the even more incomprehensible local farmer. |
| 146 | * Samwise from ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' has a West Country accent, with an underlying flavour of Creator/SeanAstin's native UsefulNotes/{{California}}. |
| 147 | * A really local example can be heard in the original TV version of ''Series/TheSingingDetective''; the flashback scenes to Marlow's childhood are set in the Forest of Dean, where the series writer Creator/DennisPotter grew up. It's a small area to the north of the West Country and bordering Wales where the accent is/was similar to the West Country accent, but which in other ways was seriously idiolectical; at one point, the main character's father says "Him cont hurt tha'", meaning "He can't hurt you", and elsewhere the main character as a boy says "Better show our Dad, ant us?" meaning "We'd better show this to dad, hadn't we?" Potter noted that his own dad used to ask him "'Ow bist thou, o' butt?", meaning basically "How are you, buddy?" |
| 148 | * In ''Film/SolomonKane'', James Purefoy used his natural Somerset accent to play Devon native Solomon Kane. Reasonably appropriate, at least by Hollywood standards. |
| 149 | * Ever since the switch from pure narration to voice acting in ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'', Duck and Oliver have had thick West Country accents, which makes sense given where the Great Western Railway ran. |
| 150 | * The Wurzels' "Combine Harvester," a 1970s UK novelty hit, makes good use of the accent. |
| 151 | * Joe Talbot of the punk band Idles sings in his native Bristol accent. |
| 152 | * ''Series/ThisCountry'' is set in an unnamed village in the Cotswolds, where people speak in thick Gloucestershire accents. Show creators and siblings Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper grew up in Cirencester, which is the main village of the Cotswolds. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | !![[UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands Black Country (Yam Yam)]] |
| 155 | Often confused with the Brummie accent (Black Country folk can be resentful of this). Preserves many traits of Middle English and Early Modern English. Therefore, can be difficult for people who are unfamiliar with it to understand. Doesn't appear on TV much. If you were wondering, the ''Black Country'' is a loosely-defined area in the English West Midlands, to the north and west of Birmingham and to the south and east of Wolverhampton, so-called because the area was heavily polluted during the coal-mining days of the Industrial Revolution. |
| 156 | * It is worth noting that there is no such thing as a real 'Black Country accent' in the same where there is no real 'British accent'. Black Country is a dialect that varies from town to town. People from Halesowen for example, can be distinguish from those of Netherton just down the road. |
| 157 | * Simon Templeman's character in ''Series/JustShootMe'' had a Black Country accent. Many American viewers [[RealityIsUnrealistic complained that it was an unrealistic attempt at a British accent]], probably because when Black Country(wo)men speak in full on "yam yam", it sounds like they're making it up. Even if they're long-term friends of yours. There's some element to it that makes it sound like they're about to crack a joke and go back to their "real" voice any second, in all but the most sombre situations. |
| 158 | * ''Anita and Me'' is probably the best fictional example of a Black Country accent. |
| 159 | * "Doris Day" "No, she didn't" ... only funny if you're familiar with Black Country Dialect. |
| 160 | * I bin (been) and I bay (be), I was and I wor (wasn't), I have and I hate (Haven't), I con (can) and I cor (can't), I will and I wo (won't), I dew (do) and I doe (don't), I sholl (shall) and I short (shall not), I must and I mo (mustn't). |
| 161 | |
| 162 | !![[UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands Birmingham (Brummie)]] |
| 163 | The Birmingham accent. Sounds whiny and unattractive to many other Brits, so is often given to whiny or nerdy characters, e.g. Barry from ''Series/AufWiedersehenPet''. Interestingly, a poll has revealed that this is considered to be the least attractive British accent. Weirdly, a scientific (somewhat) study has found that the accent is the funniest and the best to use when telling jokes, and it polls as popular with foreigners. It should also be noted that many people from Birmingham insist that what the rest of the country considers to be a Birmingham accent is in fact a Dudley accent. |
| 164 | * Music/OzzyOsbourne, whose singing in his natural accent was cited as a reason Music/BlackSabbath's music sounded much darker than most music at the time. Sometimes practically unintelligible, as [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m3PGdAsD1c phone network ad]]. Though his (non-singing) [[TheUnintelligible unintelligible voice]] is most likely due to him being so brain-fried. |
| 165 | * Particularly Jeremy Clarkson's take on it, or Barry himself (his actor isn't even from UsefulNotes/TheMidlands, for crying out loud -- it's FAKE Brummie). Neither sound anything more than a shallow mocking of the actual one; typically far too flat/monotone, and the vowels are all off -- nowhere near mangled enough! They manage a reasonably good Midlands accent, but it's probably more off towards Bromsgrove or somewhere (JC's take on it -- and probably Barry too -- is seemingly based on that of British Leyland workers being interviewed while on strike at the Longbridge plant, which is about as close to Bromsgrove as it is to the major urban/innercity areas of Birmingham, with the classier areas of Edgbaston et al in-between). That, or it's actually a Staffs/Stoke/Coventry twang (all of them also on the M6...). Dudley is more "Black Country", fiercely distinct in itself. Real Birmingham-area accents, as found on people such as Carl Chinn or (ugh) Tony Butler, are far more animated, sing-song (though not quite as much as Geoorrwwdie or Liverpoo'ool), and occasionally hard to decipher when the words stray too far from RP either in pronunciation or straight-out dialect. Just try to get them give a reasonable reading of "I wanted to go home, but they wouldn't let me take my bike on the bus". Also, there's an overemphasis on G's when we try to speak proper instead of slurrin' it. |
| 166 | * Oddly enough, these assumptions can be averted outside of England if tropers of a certain age think back to all of the Music/DuranDuran interviews they remember and recollect how Nick Rhodes and John Taylor spoke. Both of these people are born-and-bred Brummies with definite and distinct Birmingham accents, yet they drove girls (and gay men) crazy throughout the world, in part because of how they spoke. John Taylor was even one of the biggest teen idols of the '80s, with millions of teen girls plastering his posters all over their bedroom walls and hanging onto every one of the words he spoke. Nick and John -- two childhood friends making "Brummie" sound sexy around the world since 1981. |
| 167 | * Timothy Spall has perfected this accent, and most appearances of his play off British stereotypes of a working class Brummie "twonk" (idiot), particularly his appearance in the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Back To Reality" as the video game engineer. |
| 168 | * Creator/JRRTolkien, who grew up in Birmingham. Surviving recordings reveal that he spoke with an ''upper-class'' Brummie accent, a kind of cross between the Midlands accent and Oxford-style RP. Creator/IanMcKellen's line delivery as [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf]] was consciously modeled after Tolkien's voice. |
| 169 | * Although Jeremy Clarkson likes to mock it, ''Series/TopGear'' and ''Series/TheGrandTour'' have a better star for representing the Brummie accent: Richard Hammond actually ''is'' from Solihull, a suburban town just outside Birmingham, and it becomes obvious whenever he talks. |
| 170 | * Well-known comedians such as Jasper Carrot, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, and Creator/JohnOliver, and rock stars such as the afore-mentioned Ozzy Osbourne and the founding members of Black Sabbath, Jeff Lynne of Music/ElectricLightOrchestra, and Music/JudasPriest frontman Rob Halford, all hail from Birmingham and have distinctive working class Brummie accents. |
| 171 | * Professional wrestler and former WWE UK champion Pete Dunne is from the Chelmsley Wood area (which is technically in Solihull, if you want to get picky, but it's considered part of Birmingham) and has a fairly thick Brummie accent. It's much easier to hear in shoot interviews, as he usually tempers it a bit for promos and the like (probably so the non-Brits watching can understand). |
| 172 | |
| 173 | !![[UsefulNotes/FootballPopMusicAndFlatCaps Liverpool (Scouse)]] |
| 174 | The stereotype of criminal activity is fairly common, often involving stealing car wheels or stereos. Also often portrayed as Roman Catholic as in Carla Lane eighties sitcoms like ''Series/{{Bread|1986}}'' or serious movies like Antonia Bird's ''Priest'' or the work of Terence Davies. Hence, the city has one of the highest percentages of Roman Catholicism in the country -- it was often first port of call for Irish immigrants particularly from the early 19th century onwards. The connection between Ireland is still strong today -- as Dublin has often been used for movie locations set in Liverpool and vice versa. Scousers are portrayed as fun-loving and highly likely to be the comic relief (see ''Film/LockStockAndTwoSmokingBarrels'', which in itself came from ''HarryEnfield'' sketch -- which also came from the soap opera Series/{{Brookside}}). ''Series/TheBill'' is notable for the fact that four out of five Liverpool-originating regular characters have ended up dying violent deaths. Also, you know, Music/TheBeatles. |
| 175 | |
| 176 | "Scouse"--essentially a blend of Lancashire English with strong Irish and Welsh influences--has changed a ''lot'' over the years, adding to the confusion. The word now can refer to a ''whole range'' of accents. What used to be closer to a Midlands accent has gotten higher in pitch, faster in delivery, and a touch more nasal. For example, if the Beatles said "That's not fair," ''fair'' comes out as "''fur''." If a contemporary Liverpudlian said, "She's wearing a fur coat," ''fur'' comes out as "''fair''." |
| 177 | |
| 178 | * Dave Lister in ''Series/RedDwarf'' is a Scouser, as is Creator/CraigCharles. |
| 179 | * Just mentioning Music/TheBeatles would've sufficed for 99.9% percent of people reading this... |
| 180 | ** Of the four, Music/GeorgeHarrison and Music/RingoStarr are probably the best examples of the dialect. Music/JohnLennon was raised in a relatively well-off household, and Music/PaulMcCartney's mother specifically wanted him to speak a less regional variety of English, so they never has particularly strong accents. Harrison and Starr, on the other hand, came from lower-class families and carried their Scouser speech with them well into the Beatlemania period. Reportedly, Lennon's aunt was horrified by the strength of Harrison's accent upon first meeting him. Eventually, years spent in America (Lennon and Starr) and southern England ([=McCartney=] and Harrison) greatly dulled their accents. |
| 181 | ** The best examples of the accent in the band's songs probably come from those sung by Harrison, specifically those from 1963 to 1966. However, Lennon, a talented mimic, affected a ''very'' thick Scouse on "Polythene Pam," from ''Music/AbbeyRoad''. |
| 182 | ** However, the Beatles are also a big exception to your average Scousers in that you can understand them. |
| 183 | * Wakko Warner from ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' has a UsefulNotes/{{Liverpool}}-ish accent despite being ostensibly American, because Wakko's voice actor, Creator/JessHarnell, modeled the character's voice after Ringo. [[note]] They later got told by an English fan that Wakko's accent was a perfect.... Birkenhead! The large town over the Mersey from Liverpol is very similar in accent, as you'd expect (but NOT the same - it can be a BerserkButton for some Birkenheaders). Harnell was philisophical about the this, remarking that "Close only works in horseshoes - and accents, apparently!" [[/note]] |
| 184 | * One of the vultures from Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967'' had a heavy Liverpudlian accent. Of course, he was ''also'' a send-up of Ringo. The vultures were designed based on the Beatles, and Disney even [[WhatCouldHaveBeen wanted the Fab Four to voice them.]] |
| 185 | * Another rather famous Liverpudlian is Anne Robinson of Creator/TheBBC's consumer affairs show ''Watchdog'' and subsequently (and much more infamously) ''Series/TheWeakestLink'', although her accent is effectively indistinguishable from RP. |
| 186 | * A more common appearance of the more 'genuine' Scouse accent is in interviews given by local born [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball footballers]] playing for Premier League clubs Liverpool and Everton FC, since it's not altered by speech training. Notable examples include pundit and former Liverpool vice-captain Jamie Carragher; his former captain and current [[UsefulNotes/ScottishPremierLeague Glasgow Rangers]] manager, Steven Gerrard; and former Manchester United and [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer D.C. United]] captain (currently manager of Derby County) Wayne Rooney. While they're fairly comprehensible, one of Liverpool's former Dutch players, Dirk Kuyt, once remarked that when a group of Scouse players started talking to each other, it was practically gibberish to everyone else. This includes other English players. |
| 187 | * Pat Phelan from ''Series/CoronationStreet''. |
| 188 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaccLMuLa7o Cam down, cam down]]. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | !![[UsefulNotes/FootballPopMusicAndFlatCaps Manchester (Mancunians/Manchestrian/Manc)]] |
| 191 | Associated with Creator/{{ITV}} Granada and ''Series/CoronationStreet'', along with general mouthiness. |
| 192 | * A very similar accent is {{Creator/Christopher|Eccleston}} "Lots of planets have a North!" [[Creator/ChristopherEccleston Eccleston's]] Ninth Doctor from ''Series/DoctorWho''. |
| 193 | * A very notable example is DCI Gene Hunt from ''Series/LifeOnMars2006'' and ''Series/AshesToAshes2008''. |
| 194 | * Practically the entire cast (except for the main character's first girlfriend, who is from Wales) of the drug-dealing sitcom [[PunnyName Ideal]]. It was made and set in Manchester. It displays quite a range of Mancunian accents -- from very broad to very subtle. |
| 195 | * Almost the entire cast of ''Series/WaterlooRoad'', as the school is set near Manchester... again a variety of accents, including a few outside accents. |
| 196 | ** Though most of the local characters speak Mancunian, the typical Rochdale accent in real life is a variety of East Lancashire (see above) and can sometimes be picked up in background chatter. |
| 197 | * The South Manchester accent is rarely seen in media; it sounds upper (or at least middle) class to most other Mancunians by association because a lot of the more upscale districts of Manchester are south of the city, and has more of a Midlands sound to it than a typical Manchester accent. |
| 198 | ** Probably the nearest you'll get to South Mancunian accents in TV drama is Emily Bishop in ''Series/CoronationStreet''; her actress comes from a south west suburb of Greater Manchester. |
| 199 | ** While not prevalent in the ''Film/HarryPotter'' films (due to having next to no dialogue), Afshan Azad, who plays Padma Patil, comes from Longsight, itself roughly in South Manchester. |
| 200 | ** This is probably what Daphne Moon was striving towards in ''Series/{{Frasier}}''. To people living in Stockport, Sale or Wilmslow, it wasn't a bad stab at a South Manchester accent. (Which has ''plenty'' of downmarket scallie areas for the roguish Moon clan to come from; Ardwick, Wythenshawe, Brinnington, Hattersley...) Had Creator/JaneLeeves opted for a ''North'' Manchester accent, American viewers would have needed subtitles! |
| 201 | * ''Series/ShamelessUK'' is another series set in Manchester and includes many authentic accents within the cast. |
| 202 | * Bet Sykes in ''Series/{{Pennyworth}}''. |
| 203 | * A notable real-life example is Creator/KarlPilkington, the ButtMonkey producer of ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'' and presenter of ''Series/AnIdiotAbroad''. |
| 204 | |
| 205 | !![[OopNorth Lancashire]] |
| 206 | Sounds a bit like Yorkshire (a ''lot'' like it to most). Rhoticism varies throughout -- Eastern and Pennine areas more prone to rhotic accents like Jane Horrocks in ''Series/AbsolutelyFabulous'' or most of the Northern comic characters played by Creator/StephenFry. South Lancashire is not a rhotic accent -- see St Helens comedian Johnny Vegas. Overall, vowels also tend to be a bit more rounded (especially noticeable in the 'oo' sound in words like 'book', which in Lancastrian comes out as more like 'boo-wuk'). Cricket fans can contrast the commentary of Geoffrey Boycott (Yorkshire) and David Lloyd (Lancashire). But for the love of god [[CivilWarcraft don't get them mixed up]]. |
| 207 | * The bungling stop-motion animated inventor [[WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit Wallace]] speaks like this (no surprise, considering he apparently lives in or near Wigan). |
| 208 | * A notable example of a Bolton accent is the sitcom ''Series/PhoenixNights'', which also happens to be where star and co-creator Creator/PeterKay hails from. |
| 209 | * Jon Anderson, the lead singer of the legendary progressive rock band Yes, came from Accrington. His rhotic northeast Lancashire accent was plainly obvious in many of the band's songs. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | !![[OopNorth Yorkshire (Tyke)]] |
| 212 | Rural with a twist of lime and 256-bit encryption. Noticeably archaic ("thee" and "thou", somewhat altered, are still used in conversation in rural areas) with broadly shifted vowels compared to Received Pronunciation, Yorkshire dialect is heavily influenced in both vocabulary and phonemes by (of all things) [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danish]], thanks to invading Vikings long ago. As a result, it can, at its worst, be absolutely impenetrable to non-Brits, to the point of not sounding like English at all. Even other Brits can have trouble. "Lighter" Yorkshire accents can still sound like the speaker is "swallowing his words" due to the rumbling, mumbling character of their voices and the changing of T to a glottal stop (see below). Americans know this accent best from the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch made famous by Creator/MontyPython (though it actually came from ''Series/AtLastThe1948Show''). For a sample, see the county song "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Ilkla_Moor_Baht_%27at On Ilkla moor Baht'at]]", though despite the aforementioned sketch the accent is most often associated with blunt speaking, with hard-headed and intractable speakers nonetheless being [[BrutalHonesty unfailingly honest]]. In this regard, Yorkshire can be seen as [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents the Texas of English Accents]]; both also tend to drop Gs from verbs ending in -ing and to use "y'all", though Texans are [[VerbalTic far more famous for it]]. |
| 213 | * The number one source for the Yorkshire accent on American television: ''Series/AllCreaturesGreatAndSmall''. The vets don't have Yorkshire accents (they all speak RP or Estuary despite the fact that the real James Herriot was actually from UsefulNotes/{{Glasgow}}), but most of the farmers do. |
| 214 | * Number two being Creator/SeanBean in ''Sharpe'' -- despite the Cockney origins of the character in the books! This actually ended up becoming an extraordinary piece of AscendedFanon, with author Bernard Cornwell loving Bean's performance so much that he went out of the way to explain the accent by writing into Sharpe's backstory that he went on the run from London to Sheffield as a boy to avoid being sold as a chimney sweep. 'Red Riding' also shows some examples of generic screen-Yaaaarkshire accents too. |
| 215 | * ''Series/{{Heartbeat}}'', anyone? |
| 216 | * If a character uses the word "reight/reet", "owt" or "nowt" (for "right", "anything" and "nothing"--the last two come from "aught" and "naught"), and greets people by deadpanning "Now then", you're in Yorkshire. Unless he's Fred in ''Series/CoronationStreet''. T' is also a good giveaway, although if the Ts are actually pronounced the actor has probably never been farther north than Portsmouth. The Yorkshire T' is actually a glottal stop, sounding more like adding a T sound to the end of the ''preceding'' word: "I've been down t'pit" is pronounced "I've been downt pit". Ts in the middle of words aren't immune, either; "butter" comes up as "buh'er". |
| 217 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTwweLJ78KE Brett Domino]] is an example of a Yorkshire (Leeds) accent on Website/YouTube. |
| 218 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3ieNhEsDY 3-year old Millen]] gives you the gist of it. |
| 219 | ** Those Americans who watch old ''Series/LastOfTheSummerWine'' episodes will recognize this as the accent of "Compo" Semmonite. |
| 220 | ** The alternative greeting is, "'Ey up," as used by certain Essex-born persons who identify as Northern in an attempt to avoid any remaining doubt in their accent. Or your choice of "Ey up pet" or "Ey up duck", if you're being familiar. "Ey up me duck" is also known to be a common greeting from those of Derbyshire and the East Midlands. "Chuck" is nice one too. Which means "chicken". It's not clear what poultry has to do with any of this. |
| 221 | * It's essentially a [[TruthInTelevision true to life]] RunningGag that a Yorkshireman can go to the next town and be instantly recognised and identified (and often ridiculed) for [[Series/TheLeagueOfGentlemen not being local]]. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Barnsley, Pontefract and Leeds all have their own dialects and accents that are immediately identifiable to someone who lives in any of them (and sometimes there are even dialect differences within different areas of those same cities), despite them all not being more than 30 miles from one another. |
| 222 | * The best reference for old English -- they still use many of the 'archaic' words, and still drop the annoying 'v' from ever. If there is a way to mangle words in order to say them quicker, in the way the Spanish squish all their words together, then a Tyke will find it. Thither, hither, and whither, though, are all still used for there, here, and where, [[SincerityMode without a hint of sarcasm at all]]. |
| 223 | * In RealLife, someone from Yorkshire will either shorten or lengthen the vowel sounds depending on the sentence. However, none actually say Yaaaaaark-shire. They say Yohrk-shuh, shortening both vowel sounds. |
| 224 | * They ''' ''all'' ''' have a low voice, possibly one which causes them to grumble. Even young girls. Girls can sing Soprano to Tenor without a problem, and some older women down to Bass. |
| 225 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'' lead Sean Bean insisted contractually on using his native Sheffield accent for Eddard Stark -- and many of the Stark household fell into line behind him, using variants of Yorkshire with hints of Geordie and Scottish. |
| 226 | * Even in Victorian times, a local cleric noted that a large part of the words which make the Yorkshire dialect unique are actually Danish. Indeed, in his time, along the coast there was often more mutual intelligibility with UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} than with the rest of England. [[http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/Misc/Books/FolkTalk/Chapter7.html As the Rev. Morris]] noted, the Danish of the Dales was dying out in his day. |
| 227 | * ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' is set at a North Yorkshire country house and a few of the servants and many of the village folk have Yorkshire accents on full display. Of particular note are Anna, Daisy, and William, whose actors all have natural Yorkshire accents (Anna is played by Joanne Froggatt, from Littlebeck in North Yorkshire; Daisy is played by Sophie [=McShera=], from Bradford in West Yorkshire; and William is played by Thomas Howes, from near Doncaster in South Yorkshire). |
| 228 | * Creator/JodieWhittaker, born and raised in Huddersfield, gets to use her full-on West Yorkshire accent as the Thirteenth Doctor in ''Series/DoctorWho''. Interestingly, she otherwise rarely gets to use her natural accent on film. |
| 229 | * The Hull accent is notable for being distinct from even the accents in the rest of the East Riding of Yorkshire, being the only major city in that ceremonial county. Notable features of a Hull accent include the ø sound replacing the "o" in words like goat (sounding more like "gurt") -- Hull comedian Lucy Beaumont's shibboleth "Er ner, there's sner on the rerd"[[note]]Oh no, there's snow on the road[[/note]] is a severe weather warning. |
| 230 | |
| 231 | !![[UsefulNotes/NorthEastEngland North East]] |
| 232 | Mainly Geordie, the urban accent of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (and by extension other regions of Northumbria, but local prejudice will mean they hate you for not knowing the tiny, local variations). Ranges from "distinctive" to "nearly incomprehensible to non-Geordies", which is often played for laughs (as in the case of Franchise/AlanPartridge's friend Michael). Associated with macho, beer-drinking, sexist guys, especially thanks to the comic strip ''ComicStrip/AndyCapp'' (actually from Hartlepool), the adult comic ''ComicBook/{{Viz}}'' and the show ''Series/AufWiedersehenPet'' and easy young women who don't wear coats (or much else) when out clubbing even in the middle of winter. Don't call someone from Sunderland a Geordie (similarly, don't call anyone from North of the Tyne a Mackem, as the two groups have quite the rivalry between them -- Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned). Another famous North-Eastern accent belongs to Marcus "Day 42 in the ''Series/BigBrother'' house" Bentley, who often exaggerates his natural accent for effect. Creator/AntAndDec are also Geordies. |
| 233 | * Geordies are depicted as constantly using the word [[LikeIsLikeAComma "like"]] as punctuation, like, and they only have one vowel, man. "[=Æ=]"... This is also the one part of England where the letter "r" is pronounced gutturally, as it is in standard French or German. |
| 234 | * A relatively famous and easily accessible example of the Sunderland accent is interviews with current Liverpool FC captain Jordan Henderson, originally from there before moving to play for Liverpool as a young man. Like previous examples involving footballers, the lack of speech training means that the accent is more or less genuine (if increasingly Scouse-inflected after nearly ten years in Liverpool) and there's lots of material. |
| 235 | * ''Series/WhenTheBoatComesIn'' set in Northumberland, features a title song sung in the local dialect and enough use of the word "bairns" (children) to make it inadvisable to use that as part of a DrinkingGame. |
| 236 | * Reality TV show judge and hair product peddler Music/CherylCole is the most famous Geordie at the moment. After her comes those cheeky Geordie homoerotic goblins, ''Creator/AntAndDec''. |
| 237 | * Gina [=McKee=] is from Country Durham. Contrast her usual accent in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Gb_g9fUPY this interview]] with the voiceover on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFlxU4nNXA this "Life in The North" BBC trailer]] where she hams it up a bit. |
| 238 | * ''QI'' had an episode "Hodge-Podge", where, after Northumberland comic Ross Noble speculated on what circular-triangle confection might look like, Phil Jupitus noted that the best three words of the English language are [[http://youtu.be/E3EYYNbdW5U "Toblerone-Rolo Combo"]] as spoken by one with the Geordian accent. |
| 239 | ** Speaking of QI, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRkkVQ6OSE this clip]] demonstrates what happens when ''Stephen Fry'' gets waylaid by Geordie. |
| 240 | * ''WesternAnimation/CreatureComforts'' has a fast-talking Geordie mouse who muses on everyone in Newcastle calling each other 'man' even if they're a woman. |
| 241 | * Teesside accents are usually grouped with other North East accents -- comedy double act Vic Reeves (Darlington) and Bob Mortimer (Middlesbrough) have pronounced Teesside accents. |
| 242 | [[/folder]] |
| 243 | |
| 244 | [[folder:''Norn Iron (Northern Ireland)'']] |
| 245 | UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland offers three main flavours of the local accent: |
| 246 | * Belfast accents tend to be harsh. |
| 247 | * Western accents ((London)Derry/Tyrone/Fermanagh) tend to be softer. |
| 248 | * [[TheDeepSouth Irish Sea/North Channel coastal]] accents which are a mix of two with a hint of [[UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} Scottish]] for good measure. The Scottish connection is explained by the fact that in the seveteenth century, a great many Scots--mainly from Ayrshire, as well as the Borders and Galloway--settled in the region. In fact, some people in County Antrim still speak a dialect of Scots. |
| 249 | Some natives of counties of the Irish Republic which border NI have accents that sound recognisably more "Northern" than "Southern", because they're in the geographically north part of the island. See also UsefulNotes/IrishAccents. |
| 250 | |
| 251 | One of the most notable sounds in the Northern Irish accent is "ar". People speak into their jaws, again audible when the "ow" sound is used. So when you next meet a Northern Irish person ask them to say "An hour in the power shower", and it comes out as "An arr in the par shar". Also, "ow" is pronounced more like "oi", leading to HilarityEnsues when it comes to "how now brown cow". This sound is particularly distinctive because it tends to be retained by Northern Irish people even when otherwise they are toning down their accent (such as newsreaders presenting national news): in the middle of an otherwise RP-sounding sentence (which might also be Trad RP as spoken by Sewell or Rees-Mogg) we will be told that the Prime Minister has announced that interests rates will come "dine". Although again, this is not the same all over Northern Ireland. People from (London)Derry do tend to pronounce power -- "Pau-yer". Also see "k-yar" for "car", "say-vin" for "seven" and "fill-um" for "film". The key to speaking Irish Sea Coast Norn Irn -- talk through your nose and drop the middle out of every word, or drop half the syllables. Spaces are optional. "I went to see the doctor" becomes "Aahwentuh se thu doc'er". You can ''see'' English people's brains stop dead as they try to decipher it. Trying to talk to anyone from Pakistan, Africa or Jamaica is a lost cause. |
| 252 | |
| 253 | Long story short -- we have the same amount of regional variations in accent, in an area smaller than Wales, as in the rest of the UK. |
| 254 | |
| 255 | '''Stereotype:''' Inevitably, WesternTerrorists taking random elements from the Villain tropebook. |
| 256 | |
| 257 | '''Fictional examples:''' |
| 258 | * Jim [=McDonald=] in ''Series/CoronationStreet'' -- an alcoholic wife beater, so he was. |
| 259 | * ''Series/GiveMyHeadPeace'' |
| 260 | * How NOT to do a Northern Irish accent -- the infamous ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'' episode "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw If It's Doomsday, It Must Be Belfast]]". |
| 261 | * Rory Flanagan in ''Series/{{Glee}}''. It isn't distinguished as Northern Irish by any characters in show, probably due to the writers not wanting to get into [[UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland complicated politics]], but it's a Derry accent like the actor's. |
| 262 | * A large portion of the cast in the BBC drama ''Series/TheFall2013'', which makes sense, as it's set in Belfast. |
| 263 | * The majority of the cast of ''Series/DerryGirls'' speak with Derry accents, save Gerry ([[UsefulNotes/IrishAccents from the South]]), and James (English). |
| 264 | |
| 265 | '''Real-life examples:''' |
| 266 | * Jackie Wright, Belfast-born sidekick/ButtMonkey on ''Series/TheBennyHillShow''. |
| 267 | * Ian Paisley -- "criminality" used to be one of his favorite words. |
| 268 | * James Nesbitt of ''Murphy's Law'' fame, who commonly subverts the NI accent stereotype by regularly playing good guys. |
| 269 | * Nadine Coyle of Music/GirlsAloud has an exaggerated Derry accent. |
| 270 | * As mentioned above, Damian [=McGinty=], who rose to fame after winning ''Series/TheGleeProject'', and now plays Rory Flanagan on ''Series/{{Glee}}'', has a Derry accent. |
| 271 | * Colin Morgan, although he shifts to an English accent for ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' |
| 272 | * And of course, Creator/LiamNeeson who tends to use his natural Ballymena accent in most of his films, though his accent is quite muted and soft. |
| 273 | * James Burke, Creator/TheBBC's main science reporter in TheSixties and TheSeventies, known across the Pond as "That Guy Who Made ''Series/{{Connections}}''" speaks in what sounds like RP to an American, but upon closer listening is very clearly Derry with English schooling from the age of 11--that habit of dropping into rhoticity gives it away. |
| 274 | * Music/VanMorrison, when speaking and not singing, betrays his East Belfast roots. |
| 275 | [[/folder]] |
| 276 | |
| 277 | [[folder:''Sco'lunt (Scotland)'']] |
| 278 | !!General |
| 279 | The "generic Scottish" accent seems to appear far more in the US, especially cartoons. Often kilt-wearing. See Groundskeeper Willie in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', The Scotsman in ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'', Scotty in ''Franchise/StarTrek'', and Duff Killigan in ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible''. Stereotypes include a bad temper, a dislike of the English or being generally miserable and miserly. The latter is present in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Headcases}}'' caricature of UsefulNotes/GordonBrown. |
| 280 | * The miserly portrayal of Mr. Brown really [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescue_package isn't accurate]] (warning -- contains terror in the form of Alastair Darling). |
| 281 | * There's as much a generic Scots accent as there is an English or American (...or French, German etc) one. Put together a native each from Glasgie and Edinbrarh (i.e. Glasgow and Edinburgh) and see how much common dialectic ground there is between them. |
| 282 | ** In a Glaswegian accent, the names of the cities would be 'Glesca' and 'Embrah'. |
| 283 | * American imitations of "Scottish" may be barely recognisable to natives of Scotland. |
| 284 | ** Probably related to Mike Myers's London-ish English in ''Film/AustinPowers'' being about as accurate, and not that much different (nor either that far removed from his everyday Canadian lilt)? Also... |
| 285 | ** This may be because the American film depiction of the Scottish accent is actually closer to Welsh. |
| 286 | ** In a segment on ''[[Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver Last Week Tonight]]'', Creator/JohnOliver described Scottish as "that accent that you ''think'' you can do, but actually can't." |
| 287 | * The word "No" is detained at the Scottish border and "Naw" reigns supreme--''except'' in the West Highlands and Hebrides. |
| 288 | |
| 289 | !!Borders |
| 290 | * These are usually a bastard combination of whatever bit of Scotland is to the immediate North and whatever bit of England is to the immediate South. True examples of this dialect are harder to come by now, but it is notable for pronouncing the words "you" and "me" as "yow" and "may." |
| 291 | |
| 292 | !!Edinburgh |
| 293 | * Edinburghers have an accent that is often hard to discern. A fair few, especially from middle and upper classes, speak a kind of RP with a few Scottish idioms or odd pronunciations thrown in here and there. Others speak in a similar fashion to Glasgow. Generally, an Edinburgh accent sounds similar to a Middle England one, but with a distinctive Scots twang to it. This probably due to centuries of strong English presence in Edinburgh, as well as the city's historic loyalty to the British Crown (in the independence referendum, Edinburgh voted 61.1% "No"--one of the highest in the country, well above the national average of 55.3%). |
| 294 | ** ''Morningside'': A sub-type of Edinburgh accent. ''Very'' posh, and also ''very'' rare as a genuine first accent. What is far more common is people affecting it to lend an air of sophistication. Creator/MaggieSmith is perceived to have one, despite being born in Ilford and being the daughter of a Weegie and a Geordie (and actually speaking with an ''English'' accent approaching RP in reality), due to her featuring as the title character in ''Film/ThePrimeOfMissJeanBrodie'', who probably affected one (Brodie ''is'' native to Edinburgh, but her ''earth-shattering'' pretentiousness makes it probable that she is just putting on an MS accent).[[note]]There's actually a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AQafwx3h7A rather funny story]] about Smith's efforts to do research on the accent. (Starts at about 0:54.)[[/note]] Thus, whenever she plays a Scot, it is practically mandatory for her to have her "Brodie" accent. Professor [=McGonagall=] talks like this. |
| 295 | *** A Harry Enfield sketch sees a "Scotsman" with an affected, Morningside accent walk into a pub in England and proceed to criticize everything around him as being worse than it is in Scotland. This is then contrasted with another, seemingly drunk Scotsman in the same pub (probably a parody of Billy Connolly) with a Glaswegian accent. |
| 296 | ** The above are descriptions of middle- and upper-class Edinburgh accents. Working-class Edinburghians, as seen in films such as ''Film/{{Trainspotting}}'', have a much stronger accent than implied above: Ewen Bremner as Spud in particular has a particularly impenetrable version of it. Unlike the stereotypical Glasgow accent, which is spoken at the back of the mouth, the Edinburgh version is front of the mouth and tends to be sharper, less booming and guttural, and spat out rather than grunted. |
| 297 | |
| 298 | !!UsefulNotes/{{Glasgow}} |
| 299 | A strong Glaswegian accent can sound like a separate language to an outsider. Whenever you hear a comedian speaking drunken pseudo-Scottish gibberish, he, knowingly or not, is lampooning a Glaswegian accent. Characters with strong Glasgow accents are usually violent alcoholics. Even if the programme is set in Glasgow, the character with the strongest accent will be a violent alcoholic. In fact, the ViolentGlaswegian is a trope in its own right on British Telly. Lighter Glasgow accents usually imply much the same as Liverpool. The accent is usually referred to as "the patter" by natives of Glasgow. Once identical to the regions that surrounded it, the dialect of Glasgow changed, like Liverpool, in the nineteenth century due Irish immigration (both Protestant and Catholic). |
| 300 | * Legendary comedian Billy Connolly is probably the best-known speaker of the Glasgow patter, both in the UK and internationally, and has become a go-to as a voice actor for Scottish characters in American animated films. |
| 301 | * Much of Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser's ''Literature/McAuslan'' series -- one entire story is narrated by [=McAuslan=], and the books contain a glossary of "Glesca peculiamanarities." |
| 302 | * Jamie from ''Series/TheThickOfIt'' and ''Film/InTheLoop''. Actor Paul Higgins is technically from Motherwell, but that's part of UsefulNotes/GreaterGlasgow anyway. Malcolm Tucker is very much an educated Weegie, as is Creator/ArmandoIannucci. |
| 303 | * The Twelfth Doctor in ''Series/DoctorWho'' has a distinctly Glaswegian accent--which makes sense, given that he's played by Creator/PeterCapaldi, who played Malcolm Tucker. |
| 304 | * Callum from ''VideoGame/FarCry3'' not only holds a very heavy accent, he fits the ViolentGlaswegian trope perfectly ''right down to the tracksuit and trainers.'' |
| 305 | -->Ay! Kin we go? I'm fair scunnered waitin' on you tae stop playin' wi' yer fannies, so c'mon tae fuck 'n let's pikey the [[ClusterFBomb fuckin']] engine off the [[CountryMatters cunts]] so we can get off this fuckin' island! |
| 306 | * For a RealLife example look for any recording of interviews or panels with Creator/GrantMorrison, Creator/RobbieColtrane, or Creator/JamesMcAvoy. |
| 307 | * ''Kelvinside - The posh bit of Glasgow'': A Kelvinside accent is very clipped, and mangles vowels (most notably turning "a" into "e"). Usually only used by female characters and indicates extreme snobbishness. A common gag is for a character to drop her Kelvinside accent when annoyed, implying it's a pure affectation. A similar Edinburgh accent is Morningside. |
| 308 | ** The main female characters in ''Series/RabCNesbitt'', Mary and Ella, are prone to adopting Kelvinside voices which invariably drop when confronting their husbands -- whose Govan accent remains constant in the series. Such is the impenetrable nature of the Govan accent, many viewers used Ceefax subtitles to understand what was actually being said. |
| 309 | ** If you are wondering what a "posh" Glasgow accent sounds like then [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EGp0tb8g4I listen to presenter Anita Manning]]. |
| 310 | * And to listen to some East End of Glasgow accents watch some [[https://www.youtube.com/misterglasgow Mister Glasgow]]. And [[https://www.youtube.com/glasgowtelevision Glasgow Television]]. |
| 311 | * A huge part of the ''many'' comedy programmes that have been emanating from Glasgow over the past twenty years or so, including Series/ChewinTheFat, Series/StillGame, and Series/LimmysShow. |
| 312 | |
| 313 | !!West Scotland |
| 314 | There are various dialects in the Ayrshire area, but it's worth noting that it's very close to good old Creator/RobertBurns (who gave us many well-known poems and songs such as "Auld Lang Syne", "Address to a Haggis" and "(A Love Is Like) A Red, Red Rose"). Burns was a native of Alloway in the region and proudly used his dialect in his poetry at a time (the end of the eighteenth century) when it was considered hopelessly provincial. This sparked a resurgence of interest in it. You can get an understanding of the accent quite well by reading his poems out loud. It should be noted, however, that Burns' poems are written in Scots, which is often considered to be a Germanic language in its own right (i.e. separate from English) due to its lack of mutual intelligibility. |
| 315 | |
| 316 | !!Dundee |
| 317 | * Dundonians have a broad accent. It is perhaps best known for pronouncing the "i" sound in "my" or "lie" as "eh." This is best illustrated by this forum post "Dundonian for beginners": |
| 318 | ** '''Eh fell doon the Wellgate steps an meh peh went skeh hegh.''' |
| 319 | --->Possibly the best known example of Parliamo Dundee, the unfortunate in the example has tripped at the top of some stairs and his/her pie (a well-known local delicacy) has described an arc in the sky before descending to earth. |
| 320 | ** The next one is for those more advanced in Dundonesian studies, as it relies heavily on glottal stops. |
| 321 | ** '''Twa pehs, twa plehn bridies an'an'inyin'in'an'a.''' |
| 322 | ---> Our speaker has entered a pie shop (possibly the world-famous Wallaces {Land o' Cakes}) and proceeds to order two pies, two plain bridies, plus an onion bridie.[[note]]A bridie is a type of Scottish pasty. It is ''so'' much better than the crap they eat in Cornwall.[[/note]] |
| 323 | * There is also "BBC Scots", used on both sides of the border, which is a sort of cross between a ''very'' toned down Dundonian accent and RP. Creator/TheBBC's male Announcer talks like this, as does ''Today'' programme presenter Eddie Mair. A similar sort of accent is spoken in Broughty Ferry -- the Dundonian equivalent of Morningside or Kelvinside. |
| 324 | |
| 325 | !!North East Scotland |
| 326 | A somewhat deep accent though not as abrasive as Glaswegian, usually associated with farming, fishing and 'teuchters'. Has its own very distinct dialect. Put someone from Aberdeen, Fraserburgh or Elgin in a room with a Glaswegian and they'll probably have some difficulty understanding each other. Usually referred to as "Doric," it has an influence from Scandinavian due to historic trade links with Norway. |
| 327 | * How they speak up in Moray and Aberdeenshire is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9BtScBQaI so distinctive]] that it barely resembles the common image of Scottish dialect/accent. |
| 328 | * The "wh" letter combination is frequently pronounced with an "f." This leads to phrases such as "Fit ye daein?" ("What are you doing?") |
| 329 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott spoke in a softened Aberdeen accent, as did actor Creator/JamesDoohan even off-camera--although it was not actually his own (as an Irish-Canadian). He picked it up from a fellow soldier during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | !!West Coast Highlander |
| 332 | Only ever seen in specifically Scottish programmes. A lilting speech, very strongly influenced by the grammar and pronounciations of Scottish Gaelic. Male characters with this accent are invariably called Donald, Rory, Duncan, Murdo, Dougal, or Malcolm. |
| 333 | * Despite being set in the Scottish Highlands, the accents on ''Outlander'' are more Ayrshire than Argyll. For a true example of the accent, the man speaking at the beginning of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3MzZgPBL3Q this]] video would be a far better example. |
| 334 | * The band Runrig from the isle of Skye has many songs in Scottish Gaelic, and their Highland accents are clearly audible in English-language interviews. |
| 335 | * In Series/ChewinTheFat, the "Sluich" sock puppets are a parody of this, as are the constantly-harassed documentary presenters. |
| 336 | * In ''Series/DoctorWho'', Jamie had this accent in his first serial, but when the character became a regular he switched to a generic "BBC Scots" accent. |
| 337 | |
| 338 | !!Orkney and Shetland |
| 339 | Very rarely seen in the media, the dialects of these two island groups carry ''very'' strong Scandinavian influences. In fact, a language known as Norn, similar to Icelandic, was spoken on the islands into the nineteenth century. |
| 340 | [[/folder]] |
| 341 | |
| 342 | |
| 343 | [[folder:''Waehls (Wales)'']] |
| 344 | Often used for comic relief, but more in a Funny Foreigner-style "they have their own ways" manner. In terms of sound, some have compared it to a light [[UsefulNotes/{{India}} Indian]] accent, of all things. When it comes to ''impersonating'' the accent for comic effect, it's quite common for an attempt at one to slip into the other; this, of course, says more about impersonation than it does about the many (fine, noble, steeped in history etcetera etcetera) qualities of the actual accents in question. Often described as "singsong" or "musical", partly because of the tonal aspect and partly because Wales is associated with singing in the popular imagination. |
| 345 | * There doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement that there's a distinct difference between northern and southern Welsh, either. There's a hundred miles of mountain between each coast, or between Cardiff and Swansea and the Valleys... |
| 346 | * People from Swansea can sound very English and a family can have members with different accents, so someone with a Scottish or even Canadian accent can pop up. |
| 347 | * The grammar and usage of the Welsh language tends to influence Welsh English, even if its speakers do not speak Welsh itself. This manifests through a combination of verbal tics and a variety of 'slang' words and phrases where Welsh words pepper English language conversations, or new words that have descended from the anglicising of Welsh words have formed. The most notorious example of 'Welsh-English' is Wenglish, the English dialect spoken in the Valleys. More generally, however: |
| 348 | ** {{Verbal Tic}}s can include such things as ending sentences with it "is it?" and "look you" (basically the equivalent of "...you know?"). |
| 349 | ** A common verbal tic of Welsh people is to tag 'mun' on the end of a sentence to emphasize it. EG: 'Wales isn't in England, mun!' |
| 350 | ** A peculiar turn of phrase that confuses non-Britons and non-Walian Britons alike is the Welsh phrase 'now in a minute'. For example: 'I'll be there now in a minute!' Does the Welsh person mean they'll be there now, or that it'll be a short while before they arrive? (Tip: it means 'I'll be there as quickly as I can, but I'm not sure how long it'll take me'.) |
| 351 | * North Walians have many different accents, but if you're going for mid north Wales (Rhyl, Colwyn Bay, Llandudno), they have more of a mixed accent -- a mix of Manchester/Liverpool/North Walian Welsh. It's difficult being someone who has lived in all three, plus Bangor (north Walian version), because the person who has lived there has a strange accent that is basically Welsh, but with Scouse and Mancunian tinges. It can make people think the person is anything but Welsh, and it makes the sound of spoken Welsh all the more interesting. |
| 352 | * Flintshire is an interesting case as it is largely on the very border with England and in fact begins in the outer suburbs of Chester. Whilst the coast is Anglicised, some Welsh is still spoken in the hinterland. The town of Buckley (Y Bwcle) was built on the brick-kilns and lots of English people from the Black Country moved in to work in bricks. Although the brickworks are long since played out, the Staffordshire influence persists, and can be heard in the Buckley accent. And people from the town of Flint insist they are "off Flint" rather than "from Flint". |
| 353 | * Welsh people who have lived in both South and North Wales can end up sounding quite odd as certain vowels are pronounced slightly differently, and spoken Welsh can be pronounced slightly differently, too. It can cause confusion as to whether the speaker is from the north or south, and even make locals think that the speaker is mocking one accent or the other. |
| 354 | * North Walians tend to take the word "gog" as a name as opposed to an insult. |
| 355 | |
| 356 | |
| 357 | '''Stereotype:''' [[BestialityIsDepraved Liking sheep]]. A lot. This comes from the fact that up until fairly recently, there were more sheep in Wales than people. |
| 358 | |
| 359 | '''Fictional examples:''' |
| 360 | * ''Absolutely'': Frank Hovis, Denzil and Gwyneth and spin-off characters Barry Welsh and Hugh Pugh (all featuring Welsh comedian John Sparkes). |
| 361 | * ''Series/GavinAndStacey'': the Wests, Nessa (tidy). |
| 362 | * ''Series/HiDeHi'': Gladys Pugh (ditto her actress, Creator/RuthMadoc, born in Norwich but grew up in Llansamlet near Swansea). |
| 363 | * ''Series/PobolYCwm'': Set in Southwest Wales, where they love to mention which characters are "gogs" (from ''gogleddol'', "Northern") |
| 364 | * ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': Gwen, Ianto, Rhys, and their family members. |
| 365 | * ''Anime/HowlsMovingCastle'' has Creator/ChristianBale as the very Welsh Wizard Howl in the English dub. While he usually uses an English accent and considers himself English, he spent a large chunk of his childhood in Wales and can -- and does -- turn it on when he wants to. |
| 366 | * The redone Dalish Elves in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' all have Welsh accents, especially your resident party Dalish, Merrill, who is voiced by Creator/EveMyles (of ''Torchwood'' fame). |
| 367 | * In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'', the main protagonist Edward Kenway is from the Welsh port town of Swansea much like his actor Creator/MattRyan so naturally he has the accent. Bartholomew Roberts has a Welsh accent too since he's from Little Newcastle like his RealLife counterpart. |
| 368 | * "Sketch" (real name: Lucy) in the second season of ''Series/{{Skins}}''. |
| 369 | * Fiona Patton's ''[[Literature/TalesOfTheBranionRealm The Granite Shield]]'' focuses on an [[FantasyCounterpartCulture alternate]] Wales, whose citizens speak in questions and end half their sentences with "eh." |
| 370 | * ''Series/YesMinister'' has Joe Morgan, a trade unionist with a thick Welsh accent, who appears in the first series finale. |
| 371 | * The fairies of ''VideoGame/NiNoKuni'' speak with a heavy Welsh accent, almost always ending each sentence with "mun." |
| 372 | * Jeff on ''Series/{{Coupling}}''. The character was not written to be Welsh, but the actor, Richard Coyle, who is not Welsh, read for the part in a Welsh accent [[RuleOfFunny for some reason]], and it stuck. |
| 373 | * ''Series/{{Llanargollen}}'': The town residents have both Northern and Southern Welsh accents. Examples: |
| 374 | ** Northern: Prys, Radli, Tara, Dr. Jim, Beti |
| 375 | ** Southern: Ceri, Mrs. Tomos, the Mayor, Mia |
| 376 | |
| 377 | '''Real life examples:''' |
| 378 | * Rob Brydon |
| 379 | * Creator/CatherineZetaJones |
| 380 | * [[https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Nerys_Hughes Nerys Hughes]] |
| 381 | * Many bands and musicians, such as Music/SuperFurryAnimals, Music/ManicStreetPreachers, Music/{{Catatonia}}, Music/TomJones... |
| 382 | * Actor Peter Wingfield, who used his own accent as ''{{Series/Highlander}}’s Methos. |
| 383 | * Welsh born actor Geraint Wyn Davies of ''Series/ForeverKnight'' fame. |
| 384 | * Creator/MorfyddClark is of Welsh origins and uses her accent to speak Elvish in ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower''. |
| 385 | [[/folder]] |
| 386 | |
| 387 | [[folder:''The 'ole rest... (All the rest...)'']] |
| 388 | !!Mixed accents |
| 389 | More common in Britain than other parts of the world, due to the close proximity different regions have to each other. Usually happens when either you have two parents with different accents or when the parents are from one region but they moved to a different one when the child was still very young. Often leads to many questions along the lines of "So where are you from?" which the poor mixer will have to deal with everywhere they go. In these days of multiculturalism, this can lead to gems such as Pakistani-Glaswegian or Italian-Aberdonian. A very likely risk of attending university, there is only so long you can live with a Welshman, a Scouser and a Brummie before your accent does whacky things. |
| 390 | * Attend the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and after three years, ''at the very least'' you will be referring to the city as ''Naurridge'' and talking about a kind of street as a ''rooud''. Some people have left with full-blown Naaarfock accents. |
| 391 | * James May admitted on the Website/YouTube channel Head Squeeze that his accent is a mix of West Country (where he was born and lived as a child), Yorkshire (where he spent his adolescence) and London (where he's lived most of his adult life). |
| 392 | |
| 393 | !!UsefulNotes/{{Gibraltar}} |
| 394 | Gibraltarians have a more Latin accent than the rest of the UK (being the closest thing to TruthInTelevision for TheQueensLatin), due to their location in Southern Europe near the southern tip of Spain in the Mediterranean, a large chunk of the population being bilingual and Gibraltarians being descended more from Spaniards (especially Andalusians), Italians (especially Genoese), Portuguese and Maltese than the rest of the UK. As a result of their location and descent, they also have their own distinct language, Llanito, which is a composite of British English and various Southern European languages, particularly Andalusian Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Maltese. |
| 395 | |
| 396 | !!UsefulNotes/HongKong |
| 397 | Special mention goes to Hong Kong, a former colony of the UK. Most of the citizens speak English with a mostly British and Cantonese accent. See Creator/MaggieCheung for an example. |
| 398 | [[/folder]] |
| 399 | ---- |
| 400 | !!Notable uses of British accents: |
| 401 | |
| 402 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 403 | * In the English translation of the ''Manga/ExcelSaga'' manga, Sumiyoshi's lines are in the Geordie accent. |
| 404 | * TheNineties North American dub of ''Anime/SailorMoon'' has Luna speak Received Pronunciation. |
| 405 | ** And the original Japanese dub has ''Minako'' use Received Pronunciation when speaking English. [[JustifiedTrope After all, she]] ''[[JustifiedTrope did]]'' [[JustifiedTrope live in London for a while]]... |
| 406 | * Anime characters who sound inexplicably British are all over the place in dubs, such as Bakura from ''Anime/YuGiOh''. The idea is to make these characters sound polite and well-educated, the stereotypical RP accent being the closest the English-speaking world has to "ultra-polite Japanese". It's similar to [[AccentAdaptation how the stereotypical Southern US Accent is used]] to portray TheIdiotFromOsaka in some English Dubs. |
| 407 | * In the English dub of ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'', all princesses, their butlers and maids speak in British accents. And terrible ones. |
| 408 | * In the English dub of ''Literature/InfiniteStratos'', Cecilia Alcott speaks in a British accent to give an international feel for the series. |
| 409 | * In the English dub of ''Manga/BlackButler'' all of the characters have some form of British accent, mainly because it's set in Britain. |
| 410 | * Of course, England in the English dub of ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' has one. It's an exaggerated RP accent to go with his BritishStuffiness. However, when he gets drunk, he will lapse into a Cockney accent and start ranting at the nearest person, who is usually America. |
| 411 | * Creator/GregAyres does a fairly well-done RP accent as Negi Springfield, the child-teacher protagonist in the anime incarnations of ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi''. Well done it may be, he's actually doing the wrong accent because both Creator/KenAkamatsu and an early volume of the manga stated that Negi was originally from Wales. |
| 412 | %%* ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}'' has quite a few. |
| 413 | * ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure: Phantom Blood'' takes place in 19th century Britain, so all of the characters speak in a British accent in the English dub. |
| 414 | [[/folder]] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | [[folder:Comedy]] |
| 417 | * Actual Brit Creator/PeterSellers' 1979 album ''Sellers Market'' has a nearly 16-minute sketch, "The Compleat Guide to Accents of The British Isles", based around working in as many regions and associated stereotypes as possible: London Cockney, Received Pronunciation, Suffolk, Birmingham (as a joke, the speaker is actually Indian, something which is becoming increasingly the case in RealLife...), Yorkshire, Scotland, Glasgow, Liverpool, Wales, and the West Country. In addition, there's a FakeAmerican narrator, and [[Main/FakeNationality fake Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen]] in a montage early on. |
| 418 | * ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'''s Paul Merton has two British accents to be used at any point when impersonating someone he doesn't know: An exaggerated Cockney accent (eg: "Oi've been down the Colliadah!"), or an incredibly upper class RP accent, accompanied usually by a mimed tea cup (eg: "I'm a ferret, dontcha know!"). |
| 419 | * Creator/EddieIzzard's routine ''Definite Article'' features a bit where she goes on about Pavlov and his dogs. For whatever reason, she decides to do Pavlov as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whwiMrBNWCA an expatriate Welshman in Russia]]. |
| 420 | ** Eddie Izzard of course has a natural British Accent of her own but about the Welsh thing: She doesn't have a Welsh accent (although she did live in Skewen for a while as a child) but she has a tendency to slip into one no matter what foreign accent she's trying to do (which is how we get a Welsh Pavlov). She even did the Welsh-Indian mix thing: |
| 421 | --->'''Eddie Izzard:''' ''[as an Indian taxi driver]'' What were you talking about?\ |
| 422 | '''Eddie Izzard:''' ''[as herself]'' ''[makes awkward noises]'' The demons... they come in my mind, I've... [[LampshadeHanging What part of Wales are you from?]]\ |
| 423 | '''Eddie Izzard:''' I am from Swansea, actually. My... er... my mother's from Swansea, my father from Mumbai. I'm an Indian Welsh person and my accent is. ''[trying to do a Welsh-Indian accent]'' Somewhere. In-between. The two. Don't you know. Boyo. Probably. I understand. [[ForeignQueasine And cooking is very difficult.]]\ |
| 424 | '''Eddie Izzard:''' ...\ |
| 425 | '''Eddie Izzard:''' [[NonSequitur Would you like a steering wheel?]]\ |
| 426 | '''Eddie Izzard:''' I'm fine, thank you, I've just... I've just eaten. |
| 427 | * Scottish comedian Katia Kvinge demonstrated a selection of accents from all over the British Isles in [[https://twitter.com/bbc/status/1283839064974733314 this mock weather forecast]] (warning: NSFW language). Although [[https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/british-comedian-tries-take-dublin-18675212 Dubliners weren't impressed]]. |
| 428 | [[/folder]] |
| 429 | |
| 430 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 431 | * ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'': MadScientist Brainstorm is noted to speak with a British Accent, leading to occasional moments of hilarity when his method of pronunciation clashes with the rest of the cast's (presumably) America English styles, such as arguing with Bluestreak over the pronunciation of the word "necro". Given his dialogue otherwise shows no hint of an accent, it's most likely Received Pronunciation. |
| 432 | * ''ComicBook/TheBoys'', written by Northern Irish Creator/GarthEnnis about an American CIA team made up of an Englishman (Butcher), a Scotsman (Wee Hughie), an African-American guy (Mother's Milk), a mute Japanese girl (the Female), and a (guy probably pretending to be a) Frenchman (the Frenchman), naturally have a lot of accent distinctions. Showcased in the BreakingTheFourthWall bonus comic to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. |
| 433 | -->'''Wee Hughie:''' Hullowerr! I'm Wee Hughie, wan o' the Boys. I've turned the accent a wee bit, 'cos I ken you Yanks like that...An' lastly, fir twenty bucks a heid, mister Butcher here--\ |
| 434 | '''Butcher:''' Hello.\ |
| 435 | '''Wee Hughie:''' Accent...\ |
| 436 | '''Butcher:''' Sorry, mate. 'Ello. Cor blimey, apples an' pears, I love Lahndan town... |
| 437 | [[/folder]] |
| 438 | |
| 439 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 440 | * The author of ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'' includes a broad variety of British accents and has noted that, in cases where there's a FunetikAksent, he's tried to keep as close to it as possible -- including Hagrid's famous West Country accent. |
| 441 | ** Aside from Hagrid, the most notable example is Sean Cassidy, who -- in a reconciliation of comics and films -- is Irish-American, but has spent the vast majority of his adult life in Ireland and Scotland, resulting in a slightly strange mish-mash accent that he can emphasise or de-emphasise based on the impression he wants to give (though it thickens noticeably when he's upset). |
| 442 | ** Jonothon 'Jono' Starsmore a.k.a. Chamber, who appears in the sequel has a notably Cockney influenced accent, with the verbal tic of "luv" appearing frequently. This remains even when he's speaking telepathically. |
| 443 | ** Betsy Braddock, true to her upper-class English origins, but also in keeping with her attitude as a rebel, is written with a broadly RP/Estuary accent -- while she also uses "love", the spelling indicates a more refined accent than Jono. |
| 444 | ** Similarly, Peter Wisdom is also upper-class English by background, as [[spoiler:Regulus Black]]. However, he [[ThatManIsDead violently rejects that identity]], and consciously roughens his accent to something closer to the Cockney end of Estuary -- though RP sometimes creeps through when he's not focusing on it. |
| 445 | ** Doctor Strange speaks in a refined RP accent, though his natural accent is indicated to be Welsh (or at least, [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld considering how old he is]], Welsh is the closest approximation), and he uses a modern softened Welsh accent from time to time. |
| 446 | ** This also applies does Wanda, Strange's former student, and her father Magneto, who is written with Ian [=McKellen=]'s RP delivery in mind. Neither is their natural accent -- Wanda was raised with her Roma relatives somewhere undisclosed in Eastern Europe until she was in her early teens, and Magneto is naturally a German (specifically German-Jewish, though his ancestry is Polish, and he's fluent in Yiddish). Both are explained in text: Wanda was raised by Strange from early adolescence and learned English from him, while Magneto is noted as a natural linguist who picked up English at Hogwarts (after Auschwitz was liberated, he was assumed to be magical, so he was taken for care at Hogwarts) from its mostly upper-class faculty and studied at Oxford. |
| 447 | ** Charles Xavier, as a half-English former Oxbridge man (he studied at both), retains the refined RP used by Creator/PatrickStewart and Creator/JamesMcAvoy. |
| 448 | ** Nathaniel Essex a.k.a. Sinister speaks in a clinical RP (though not quite as refined as Strange's), which makes sense, given his canonical background as a Victorian gentleman scientist -- though here, he's indicated to be considerably older. |
| 449 | *** As a result, [[spoiler:Maddie]], who he raised as his right-hand and LivingWeapon, uses much the same accent, even after [[HeelFaceTurn she]] [[TheDogBitesBack turns on him.]] |
| 450 | ** Harry's accent is indicated to be Estuary, which makes a certain degree of sense, given that he grew up in London's commuter belt. |
| 451 | [[/folder]] |
| 452 | |
| 453 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 454 | * Various [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon Disney movies]] inexplicably lend a British voice to their villains, adhering to the EvilBrit trope, even if none of the other characters are British. [[WesternAnimation/PeterPan Captain Hook]], [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994 Scar]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}} Governor Ratcliffe]] [[note]]He and John Smith are both supposed to be Englishmen, and yet John Smith sounds more like an Australian, due to being played by Creator/MelGibson.[[/note]], [[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney Judge Frollo]]... |
| 455 | * For ''WesternAnimation/TheAristocats'' there are three characters with this accent. The goose sisters Amelia and Abigail are visitors from England who are visiting UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}. Marie also has this accent mixed with a mid-Atlantic accent, which is odd since her mother Duchess has a French accent and [[TheKidsAreAmerican her brothers Toulouse and Berlioz have American accents]] when all the cats are supposed to be French. Marie was voiced by a young Louise English, who is British. [[note]]Louise would later be featured in the British show ''Series/TheBennyHillShow'' in the late '70s and '80s.[[/note]] |
| 456 | * [[BigBad Tai Lung]] of ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda1'', likely due to the EvilBrit and RuleOfCool appeal. Most of the [[AllStarCast main cast]] are standard American, and only Monkey and Mr. Ping are voiced by Chinese actors. Viper is voiced by Creator/LucyLiu, so speaks with an American accent but with noticeable Chinese influence. Tai Lung was voiced by Creator/IanMcShane, using his normal voice. He is perhaps best known for playing Series/{{Lovejoy}}. |
| 457 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Wolfwalkers}}'' takes place in Ireland and was made by the Irish animation studio Creator/CartoonSaloon, so most characters have Irish accents. However, Robyn and her father Bill are from England and they both have distinctly Northern accents (Creator/SeanBean uses his native Sheffield accent as Bill), while the Lord Protector (a [[HistoricalDomainCharacter fictionalized version]] of the British statesman UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell) uses Received Pronunciation. |
| 458 | [[/folder]] |
| 459 | |
| 460 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 461 | * ''Film/{{Trainspotting}}'' delivers a film entirely steeped in various Scottish accents from the relatively "posh" Edinburgh dialect to the angry "Weegie" alcoholic. Justified in that the film takes place in Edinburgh for the most part. The characters even lampshade other Scottish accents such as Sean Connery. |
| 462 | * Creator/JohnnyDepp's accent in ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' is noticeably British; it's difficult to determine ''what kind'' of British, however. Analysis suggests UsefulNotes/EastAnglia, shading towards Estuary, and based on Kent-born Music/KeithRichards. |
| 463 | * Virtually all of the evil characters in ''Franchise/StarWars'' speak with British accents, while the Rebels have American accents. Some of the actors even put on accents to observe this rule -- Wedge Antilles is played by Scottish actor Denis Lawson with a FakeAmerican accent, while Darth Vader speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent rather than Creator/JamesEarlJones's natural Mid-Western dialect. There are a few exceptions though, like Admiral Motti (the first person we see Vader ForceChoke) and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is decidedly good and has a British accent. |
| 464 | ** A meta-example: The main reasons why Creator/DavidProwse didn't do Darth Vader's voice was a) he had a tenor speaking voice, and b) he had a West Country accent, which is quite possibly the least intimidating British accent there is. He [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQFho0_G1VI spoke all Vader's lines during filming]] before being overdubbed by Creator/JamesEarlJones. Apparently, Prowse had no idea his voice had been replaced until the premiere of the film. |
| 465 | *** "Ee, the force is [[Music/BillBailey strong in this 'un]]!" |
| 466 | *** Jones's real accent is a mish-mash due to his moving from [[DeepSouth Mississippi]] to UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}}, but for Vader he uses a very proper, carefully enunciated, ambiguous [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents mid-atlantic accent]]. |
| 467 | *** Creator/RickMoranis in ''Film/SpaceBalls'' manages to imitate this accent as Dark Helmet when the mask of his helmet is down. |
| 468 | ** Natives of the planet Coruscant (the cultural center of the galaxy) tend to speak with a British accent. |
| 469 | *** Grand Moff Tarkin's homeworld was Eriadu, which was not a Core World but aspired to be. |
| 470 | *** Creator/CarrieFisher makes a vague attempt at RP when Princess Leia is talking to Tarkin on the Death Star, but really only manages to pull off a stiff American accent with a British lilt. (Broken Coruscanti, perhaps?) In any case, when no longer having to appear formal to Imperial Officers, Leia drops the British attempt and speaks with a generic American accent. This somewhat infamous use of [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents Mid-Atlantic]] actually fits in well with ''Star Wars'' being a GenreThrowback to UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood. |
| 471 | *** Queen Amidala (when speaking formally, as to the Trade Federation) attempts to use some sort of stilted, ultra-formal accent that sounds RP-ish, but mostly just awkward. |
| 472 | ** It is understood in the EU that this world's RP accent is the Star Wars Universe's Coruscant accent. The Empire probably encourages the use of the Coruscant accent throughout the military. [[note]] Real-world militaries often break recruits of their accents in favor of a neutral or military-specific speech pattern. Until recently, many units were organized locally, and thus all the men of a given unit had the same accent. If an enemy read a soldier's accent correctly, they might be able to infer the identity of his unit; combined with other information, this could give away the unit's location.[[/note]] |
| 473 | ** The original trilogy of films encountered some criticism for being Anglo-centric, although the Imperial officers like Tarkin who speak with English accents are clearly meant to be "bad guys" based on the stereotype of the {{evil Brit}}ish aristocrat and Imperialist while the Rebel Alliance characters usually speak with more "homely" American accents (granted, Obi-wan was a good guy and had a British accent, but his actor Creator/AlecGuinness ''was'' British). The suspicion is that they tried to overcompensate for this during the Prequel Trilogy... an attempt which backfired in spectacular fashion. Instead of aliens speaking with British accents, they had borderline offensive Chinese accents (Trade Federation), a Middle-Eastern accent for a scrap dealer (Watto), and a nails-on-chalkboard ''high-pitched'' Caribbean accent (Jar Jar Binks). Then again, Count Dooku still had a Received Pronunciation accent... because he was played by Creator/ChristopherLee! |
| 474 | * Speaking of hooligans, Creator/CharlieHunnam's antipodean-leaning Cockney accent in ''Film/GreenStreet'' is the worst ever English accent by an actual English person. |
| 475 | * ''Film/HotFuzz'' takes place in the fictional village of Sandford in UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry; naturally, Gloucestershire accents are the norm, some so thick they require translation (sometimes in three steps: farmer to village man, village man to local cop, local cop to out-of-town cop). The village square was actually the City centre of Wells, Somerset. |
| 476 | * ''Film/TheFullMonty'' has Creator/RobertCarlyle (a Scot) playing a Sheffielder, requiring a South Yorkshire accent. Both he and the rest of the cast do a pretty good job (Creator/MarkAddy, for one, is from Yorkshire). However, it isn't a ''Sheffield'' South Yorkshire accent. Sounds more like Doncaster, actually. |
| 477 | * ''Film/MaryPoppins'' features Creator/DickVanDyke playing chimney sweep Bert with a notoriously exaggerated Cockney accent (occasionally slipping out of it during some lines of dialogue and on the occasional sung verse). Van Dyke's accent is often ranked as one of the worst attempts at a "British" accent by an American actor, a factor acknowledged -- with good humor -- by Van Dyke on recent DVD releases of the film. (It's also why he didn't use one in the later ''Film/ChittyChittyBangBang'' even though his character's father and children all had proper British accents). One English language coach in the movie industry reported that the one thing practically every director says to her in productions with English accents is "I don't want anyone to sound like Dick van Dyke." |
| 478 | * In the ''Film/HarryPotter'' films their accents conform to their place as a FreudianTrio with Hermione speaking RP (Superego), Ron with a more regional dialect (Id), and Harry being somewhere in the middle (Ego). |
| 479 | ** Each member of the Weasley family has a different British accent due to the different origins of the actors, such as the Black Country accent of Smethwick-born Julie Walters, aka Molly Weasley. Or UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands accent of her husband Arthur, played by Mark Williams of Bromsgrove, just outside Birmingham. However, this is basically TruthInTelevision: RP (or at any rate faintly Brummised RP or EE) speakers with full-on comedy Brummie parents are far from unknown. Regional accents tend to be a lot stronger in people's parents these days as RP and EE bulldoze regional accents into nothing, especially with accents generally seen as rather undesirable like Brummie and Yam Yam. Unremitting, terminal Geordies are also rarer than they were. |
| 480 | ** Luna, who lives near the Weasleys, is Irish. Rhys Ifans, who is Welsh, played Xenophilius as a FakeIrish to match Creator/EvannaLynch's accent. |
| 481 | * The 1993 film version of ''Film/{{The Secret Garden|1993}}'' features a wide range of accents, but most notable is Dickon's broad Yorkshire. (His sister Martha sounds much closer to Received Pronunciation -- which is consistent with the book, where it's explicitly noted that she is required to when she's at work and only slips back into broad Yorkshire in moments of high emotion.) |
| 482 | * Creator/AngelinaJolie adopts a rather convincing RP accent for her roles as Lara Croft in the ''Film/LaraCroftTombRaider'' films and again as Franky in ''Film/SkyCaptainAndTheWorldOfTomorrow''. |
| 483 | * Creator/GwynethPaltrow pulls off surprisingly convincing Estuary English in ''Film/SlidingDoors'', becoming one of very few Americans indeed to successfully use the word "wanker" without sounding like an American trying to use the word "wanker". Her more RP accent in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'' is perhaps less surprising, but pretty decent. |
| 484 | * In ''Film/MrsDoubtfire'', Creator/RobinWilliams' character adopts a generic British accent while dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire. Notable in that a British character [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that it's a generic sounding accent, and he's unable to tell where in Britain she's from. (It's mainly a form of Lowland Scots.) And this was a FakeBrit character as well (played by Irishman Creator/PierceBrosnan) for meta-irony. |
| 485 | ** Of course Brits all go "Why's he doing a Scottish accent?" No confusion for those who speak the language. |
| 486 | * Creator/DonCheadle attempts a British accent in ''Film/OceansEleven'' and its sequels; its bad. Really bad. But also intentionally. |
| 487 | * In ''Film/LoveActually'', pretty much every character has a British accent of some sort (it's set in London!). However, a notable mention is Colin, who is convinced he can pick up any girl in America because of his accent. It's funny because it works (to a ridiculous degree)! The point of the storyline is that it's TruthInTelevision cranked up to eleven for the sake of comedy. |
| 488 | * [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''Shooting Fish''. Dan Futterman's character (an American playing an American) tries putting on a British accent while pretending to be a local workman. He drifts across several accents in the course of a few minutes, even managing to change between two or three in a single sentence, and leaves one of the marks commenting "I think one of them was Australian." |
| 489 | * ''Series/TwinTown'' is set in Swansea, and basically works as an introduction to the accents and syntax of English as spoken in South Wales. |
| 490 | --> '''Fatty Lewis:''' You two boys behave yourselves now today now. |
| 491 | * ''Film/BramStokersDracula'' mostly has British characters played by U.S. actors while the Brit thesps get to play "continentals". Especially notable for Creator/KeanuReeves' bizarre rendition of RP outdoing both Creator/DickVanDyke and Creator/NataliePortman by some distance. |
| 492 | * Recall the special mention for Hong Kong? The Creator/ChuckNorris actioner ''Film/ForcedVengeance'' showcases this briefly as Norris is given a physical by a Hong Kong doctor. |
| 493 | -->'''Doctor:''' Right. Drop your pants, mate. |
| 494 | * ''Film/WithnailAndI'' has Withnail and his Uncle Monty speaking in RP accents, since they both went to UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}}. Website/TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withnail_and_I tells the tale]] of the [[NoNameGiven nameless]] protagonist and his accent: |
| 495 | -->''"Creator/PaulMcGann was Robinson's first choice for "I", but he was fired during rehearsals because Robinson decided [=McGann=]'s Liverpool accent was wrong for the character. Several other actors read for the role, but [=McGann=] eventually persuaded Robinson to re-audition him, promising to affect a Home Counties accent. He quickly won back the part."'' |
| 496 | * Creator/SeanConnery's elongated Scottish lilt, especially as Film/JamesBond ("Yesshhh, Misssshhh Moneypenny") has been often parodied. Most other 007s have gone for something more RP. |
| 497 | * Character actor Creator/TerryThomas was known for his affected RP accent. |
| 498 | * ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'': |
| 499 | ** When posing as [[spoiler:Chester King, aka Arthur,]] Eggsy drops his Estuary accent and gleefully picks up a posh ReceivedPronunciation one. |
| 500 | ** Coincidentally [[spoiler:as the real Arthur dies]], he ''reverts'' from a posh ReceivedPronunciation accent to a Cockney one. |
| 501 | * Almost every actor in Film/TheDeathOfStalin uses their natural accent, which meant Stalin himself has a Cockney accent and Molotov has [[Creator/MichaelPalin Michael Palin]]'s RP with a hint of his native Sheffield. The exception is Creator/JasonIsaacs who portrays Marshal Zhukov with a broad Yorkshire accent rather than his own. |
| 502 | [[/folder]] |
| 503 | |
| 504 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 505 | * Usually the way Americans are exposed to Yorkshire is through ''Literature/TheSecretGarden'', as the book transliterates the housemaid Martha's Yorkshire dialect, including "thous" and "thees" ("Canna thy dress thysen?"). |
| 506 | * Similarly Bram Stoker's ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' contains dialogue written in phonetic approximation of a North Yorkshire accent (specifically Whitby). Much of this dialogue -- written by an Irishman attempting to replicate the local turn of phrase -- is especially difficult to understand when read from a modern perspective, coupled with the fact that the book is over a hundred years old and the working class Whitby dialect suggested by Stoker is effectively obsolete nowadays. |
| 507 | ** There is a free podcasted audio version of the book produced by Librivox and read by primarily American voices. One reader's brave attempt to reproduce this Whitby accent they were most likely completely unfamiliar with has to be heard to be believed. The result sounds closer to Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger impersonating Creator/SeanConnery impersonating a drunken pirate, and is one of the most bafflingly bad accents you will likely ever hear. |
| 508 | * The ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series features accents from all over the British Isles, since that, apparently, is Hogwarts' catchment area. Accents are usually kept off the page, however, with a few exceptions, such as Hagrid's [[FunetikAksent fonetik]] West Country burr. The obviously Irish Seamus Finnigan refering to his "Mam" is less noteworthy as many dialects right across the British Isles use the word "Mam". Despite Hogwarts being located in the Scottish Highlands, very few characters in the series have broad Scottish accents. |
| 509 | * ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': |
| 510 | ** The series is absolutely packed with FunetikAksent dialogue, mostly based on real accents. Burr aye, ee molers iz ee best known. Vermin tend to be generic pseudo-Cockney/thug/[[TalkLikeAPirate piratical]], or with completely fictional accents such as Wraith's TrrrillingRrrs, though there were two in ''Salamandastron'' who spoke with a noticeable Brummie twang (especially in the audiobook) and the BigBad characters tend to use Standard English. |
| 511 | ** And in the first book, the extreme accents are {{Lampshaded}} when the sparrow's dialect is treated like a foreign language. |
| 512 | * ''Literature/TheInfernalDevices'': |
| 513 | ** Tessa's brother Nate, despite being from New York, has one of these. He uses "oughtn't" on several occasions. You know, like every American[[note]]Consider the time period, though. It's not too hard to believe that the educated Gray siblings would use what they perceive as more refined word choice--even though it isn't, but merely British English vs. American--regardless of nationality[[/note]]. |
| 514 | ** Thomas has a tendency to slip into his East End accent when outside the Institute. |
| 515 | ** Oddly enough, the Welsh William Herondale speaks no differently to any of the other characters raised in London [[note]] unless the author wants to use him to slip in some gratuitous Welsh anyway[[/note]] though this could be explained by him actively hiding his accent. |
| 516 | * The Nac Mac Feegle in {{Literature/Discworld}} speak in an approximately Glaswegian accent. Inspired, according to Pratchett, by ''Literature/McAuslan''. |
| 517 | ** In ''Literature/RaisingSteam'', Dick Simnel is written with an identifiable ''Bolton'' accent |
| 518 | * In the bodice-ripper RomanceNovel ''Whisper to Me of Love'', the hero is both surprised and suspicious to find that despite her slum upbringing and Cockney accent, the heroine can speak just as well in the King's English (as it was known back then). She explains that her mother insisted that she and brothers learn to speak properly so as to move in upper-class circles. |
| 519 | * Audiobooks of ''{{Franchise/StarWarsLegends}}'' tend to give Coruscant natives British accents. Mara Jade has one and Jaina has aspects of that combined with her dad’s Correllian accent. Many Imperials have it also. |
| 520 | [[/folder]] |
| 521 | |
| 522 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 523 | * In ''Series/{{Headcases}}'', a British political satire show (think ''Series/SpittingImage'' in CGI and you're in the right area), UsefulNotes/DavidCameron, leader of the Conservatives, is portrayed with two accents. In his press conferences, he is portrayed in a suit with a lower-class, "chummy" accent. When he returns to his house, his accent becomes much posher and he acquires a top hat and monocle (Cameron is an [[BoardingSchool Old Etonian]]). William Hague is a permanently drunk Yorkshireman (he hails from the area and the thing references his very dubious 2001 election claim that he'd drunk 14 pints of beer a day as a teenager). |
| 524 | ** Note also the differences between the "public" and "private" accents of Dames Creator/JudiDench and Creator/HelenMirren in the same show. |
| 525 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' is an interesting case, due to the [[LongRunners length of time]] it's existed and the [[TheNthDoctor number of people]] who've played the title role. There are various {{fanwank}} ideas over why the Doctor's accent changes, too. |
| 526 | ** The first six Doctors, and the Eleventh, used RP pretty consistently. (Although Creator/TomBaker, especially, could slip to his native Scouse occasionally -- see OohMeAccentsSlipping.) |
| 527 | ** Creator/SylvesterMcCoy used his native Scottish accent, a first for the series. |
| 528 | ** Creator/PaulMcGann as the Eighth Doctor is an interesting case -- [=McGann=], who's from Liverpool, makes a game attempt at RP, but it [[OohMeAccentsSlipping fades in and out]]. ([=McGann=], on the DVDCommentary, chalks it up to being tired during the shoot.) In ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'', he relaxed considerably, but you can clearly tell when he's being particularly emotional, because his accent tends to get ''more'' Scouse. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools It doesn't sound so bad...]] at all, in fact. |
| 529 | ** Creator/ChristopherEccleston has a Salford/Manchester accent and keeps it for his role as the Ninth Doctor. Rose Tyler even questions the Ninth Doctor's accent after he reveals himself to be an alien. |
| 530 | --->'''Rose:''' If you are an alien, how comes you sound like you're from the north?\ |
| 531 | '''The Doctor:''' Lots of planets have a north! |
| 532 | ** Creator/DavidTennant (from Scotland) takes on an Estuary accent and John Simm (Lancashire) takes on a similar accent with a slightly Northern influence when portraying Time Lords. (In the episode "Smith and Jones", the line "Judoon platoon upon the Moon" was put in purely to torture David Tennant because it makes him struggle to hide his Scottish accent on "oo" sounds.) Also, in "Tooth and Claw", the Tenth Doctor temporarily adopts a Scottish accent, but rather than his natural one, it's [[RuleOfFunny hilariously exaggerated]]. |
| 533 | ** Creator/KarenGillan's Amy Pond maintains a distinct Scottish lilt despite having spent most of her life in Gloucestershire -- the Doctor notes that if she's kept the accent, she clearly doesn't belong there. |
| 534 | ** Creator/PeterCapaldi's Twelfth Doctor has a pronounced Glaswegian accent; this has been the source of a number of jokes. |
| 535 | ---> '''The Doctor:''' I am Scottish. Haven't I? I've gone Scottish?\ |
| 536 | '''Barney:''' Yes, you are. You are definitely Scots, sir. I, I… I hear it in your voice.\ |
| 537 | '''The Doctor:''' Oh, no, that's good. ''[practices the 'oh' sound]'' It's good. I'm Scottish. I'm Scottish. I am Scottish. I can complain about things, I can ''really'' complain about things now. |
| 538 | ** Creator/JodieWhittaker uses her natural Yorkshire accent for the Thirteenth Doctor. |
| 539 | ** Spinoff ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' includes bi-dialectal Creator/JohnBarrowman's Capt. Jack Harkness using an American accent, as well as three characters--Gwen, Ianto, and Rhys--with Welsh accents. While Gwen and Rhys's accents change very little, Ianto's notably comes and goes from very distinctive in the pilot to more vague as time goes on, and eventually getting "more Welsh" in particularly emotional moments. |
| 540 | * ''Series/CallTheMidwife'' is set in the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s, and there is a lot of Cockney and near-Cockney accents (especially among patients, but also with Fred), but the variety of accents on display are also used to enhance characterization and denote social class. Examples include: |
| 541 | ** Sister Evangelina has a brisk southeast London accent, which suits her no-nonsense demeanor (and working-class background). Nurse Cynthia has the same accent, although she is ''far'' more softly spoken. |
| 542 | ** Shelagh Turner (formerly Sister Bernadette) speaks with a very gentle, soft Scottish accent befitting her sweet character. |
| 543 | ** Nurses Jenny, Trixie and Patsy all speak with a moderate, middle-class RP accent (Patsy's is a little more clipped and jolly-hockey-sticks; Trixie's is ''slightly'' forced), which provides great contrast with their cockney-accented clientele, and emphasizes the palpable class ''chasm'' between nurse and patient. |
| 544 | ** The same goes for Doctor Turner, who's ''very'' well-spoken, the effect heightened by being TheStoic (and MrExposition) as well. |
| 545 | ** Chummy, as the most patrician of all the characters, speaks with a marvelous ''heightened'' RP accent, and peppers her dialogue with old-fashioned, typically [[IAmVeryBritish rah]] expressions like "what-ho", and "old bean", and refers to her mother as "mater" (characteristic of aristocratic children sent to boarding school, as Chummy was). |
| 546 | ** Sister Julienne speaks with a soft, mostly-RP accent slightly influenced by her actress's West Country origins. |
| 547 | ** Patsy's girlfriend Delia is Welsh, and speaks with a pronounced Welsh accent. |
| 548 | ** Nurse Crane speaks with a noticeable Leeds accent, which initially sets her apart from the rest of the nurses. |
| 549 | * ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': |
| 550 | ** Gaius Baltar is one of the few characters with a non-American accent and normally speaks in RP. When he assumes his native Aerelon accent, he speaks in a Yorkshire accent. As Baltar explains, he grew up a farmer's son on a poor working-class planet, but always dreamed of moving to the capital planet Caprica. He got accepted to university on a scholarship, and due to his innate scientific genius and hard work he rose to become a world-renowned scientist (sort of their version of Creator/StephenHawking or Creator/RichardDawkins). Always ashamed of his working-class accent, since he was 10 years old he consciously practiced to re-train his neutral speaking accent to be more refined (to the point that he has to concentrate to speak with the Yorkshire accent). Of course, what actor James Callis pointed out is that most people on Caprica ''do not'' speak with a British accent, and the exact rules of which accent come from which planet were laughably inconsistent throughout the series. But then this is ruined when we are shown his father in season 4, who seems to speak in a mangled West Country dialect. This ''could'' be fanwanked from being from elsewhere on the [[GangOfHats planet]]. |
| 551 | ** Creator/MarkSheppard uses an Irish accent that sounds distinctively "London Irish" for Romo Lampkin. This fits quite well for the character -- he's probably from Caprica, as he had been a student of Joseph Adama, but he could have been an immigrant from elsewhere (like, erm, Joseph Adama). |
| 552 | ** Creator/JamieBamber suppresses his London accent in favor of an [[FakeAmerican American one]], to match Creator/EdwardJamesOlmos (his character's father). Olmos wore blue contact lenses in exchange. This got a bit annoying at sci-fi conventions throughout the show's run, because inevitably someone would ''always'' ask Mr Bamber about his accent and how he got used to using it. However, his father is American, so it's not really that surprising that he's at ease with it. He's also a fully qualified linguist, holding a Master's Degree in French and Italian. |
| 553 | ** In ''Series/TheSmoke'', Bamber had some trouble pulling off a working-class accent while playing a London firefighter, given that it was different from his natural upper-class one. |
| 554 | * ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': Genuine London-born Creator/MarkSheppard using a London accent as Badger. However, the actor comes from a different class background than the character, so it's an interesting case of a genuine Londoner with one type of London accent having to fake a different London accent. |
| 555 | * ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': The most famous example is Spike, played by Creator/JamesMarsters with a painful but gradually improving attempt at a Cockney/Estuary accent. During flashbacks he also uses a similarly decent RP accent. This leads to a bit of a shock when you hear him with his natural Californian accent! |
| 556 | ** On the other hand there's Giles, played by actual Brit Creator/AnthonyStewartHead with an RP accent (in contrast to his natural Estuary accent). |
| 557 | ** Drusilla's accent is admittedly a bit "Cor blimey guv!" theatrical Cockney, but she gets the actual pronunciations correct on the whole, unlike James Marsters who is far more hit and miss/jarring to a UK native with his accent. |
| 558 | ** There's also Wesley; Alexis Denisof is [[FakeBrit American]], but lived part of his life in the UK, allowing him to be fairly convincing as Wesley. |
| 559 | * ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'': Anthony Head used his own Estuary accent for Uther, while Creator/KatieMcGrath keeps her Irish accent. Creator/ColinMorgan uses a more British sounding accent than his natural Irish accent. Creator/BradleyJames doesn't seem to alter his much. |
| 560 | * ''Series/{{Primeval}}'' being set in London manages to get a wide variety of British accents in there outside of the normal RP such as Abby and Connor. But the fourth and fifth seasons were filmed in Ireland so a lot of the cast are Irish actors trying to do British accents. Ruth Bradley (Emily) and Ruth Kearney (Jess) are Irish and hide their accents very well but you do get the occasional extra failing awfully and one episode (filmed in Wicklow) had a man with a passable accent but his mother had a thick Irish accent. |
| 561 | * The British comedy ''Series/AlloAllo'' is set in France, and it's presumed everyone speaks French there. The running gag on the show is that whichever accent one is using represents the language he or she is speaking. So Germans speak with German accents, French with French accents etc. When Michelle speaks English to the British airmen, it's presented as her accent changing from comedy-French to British RP. 'Now listen, chaps...' One of the supporting characters is Officer Crabtree, a British spy with a comically inept grasp of French, despite masquerading as a gendarme. His French is represented as Britsh RP with random, jarring vowel shifts, e.g.: "Good moaning. Outside your coffee was this bunch of diffodols and dosies. Pinned to them is a nit. Pardon me if I love you but I have my dirty to do." |
| 562 | * In one episode of ''Series/Kingdom2007'', northerner Lyle is complaining about the Household Cavalry regiments of the British Army being exclusive to the upper class. We hear another northern accent -- it's one of his working-class school mates. [[note]]Lyle is from OopNorth -- Stockport -- and one episode of ''Kingdom'' sees him return there.[[/note]] More generally, ''Kingdom'' is one of the few series on television to get that there is a distinction between Norfolk and Somerset. Creator/StephenFry, who despite how he sounds grew up in Norfolk, probably insisted on it. |
| 563 | * ''Special 1 TV'' (formerly ''I'm On Setanta Sports'') used a variety of stock British accents. The Wayne Rooney puppet has a generic Scouse accent, caller "Alex in Manchester" (a.k.a. Sir Alex Ferguson) speaks with a generic Glaswegian accent, and caller "Dave in Newcastle" (a generic Newcastle United fan) speaks Geordie. |
| 564 | * The 2007 remake of ''Series/BionicWoman'' featured an episode in which actress Michelle Ryan, who in real life speaks with a rather posh RP accent, but who in the series adopted a midwest US accent, was allowed to revert to her natural accent for a few scenes in which Jaime Sommers had to impersonate a British woman. Needless to say, it was a pretty ham-fisted excuse for the lead actress to show off her natural accent. |
| 565 | * In ''Series/{{Sanctuary}}'', Creator/AmandaTapping, who normally speaks with a Canadian/Ontario accent, adopts RP for the character of Dr. Helen Magnus. Tapping almost averts the trope owing to the fact she was actually born in Essex, but she's lived in Canada since she was three and is never heard using the accent in interviews. |
| 566 | * Then there's ''Series/StargateAtlantis'', where Paul [=McGillion=] (Scottish parents) plays Doctor Carson Beckett, whose family moved to Canada when Beckett was two. |
| 567 | * Creator/DavidAnders played English-sounding villains in ''Series/{{Alias}}'' and ''Series/{{Heroes}}''. He does the accents so well that it often surprises people that he is from Oregon and speaks with an American accent in real life. |
| 568 | * Creator/PhilipGlenister, DCI Gene Hunt in the original UK version of ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}'' and its sequel ''Series/{{Ashes To Ashes|2008}}'', speaks with what is presumably intended to be a Mancunian accent, despite originating from considerably further south. However, his efforts to replicate an [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents American accent]] for a subsequent ITV drama, ''Series/{{Demons}}'', were less successful... |
| 569 | ** ''Series/{{Ashes To Ashes|2008}}'' has an interesting mix of British accents. You have Glenister, Dean Andrews (Ray) and Marshall Lancaster (Chris) using Mancunian; Keeley Hawes (Alex) uses her RP, which works because Alex is fairly posh; Montserrat Lombard is from London and speaks RP in real life, but uses Estuary for Shaz; and Daniel Mays (Keats) uses Estuary as well. |
| 570 | * ''Series/TheThickOfIt'' is a veritable smörgåsbord of British accents, but by far the most famous is Malcolm Tucker's thick Glaswegian Scottish accent. In a nod to the real-life "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_mafia Scottish Raj]]" in the Labour government, Olly remarks about how ''everyone'' in the Number 10 press office seems to be from Scotland (the most notable example being Jamie, Malcolm's assistant in the specials). |
| 571 | * ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', the noted science fiction series of the early 2000s, was produced in Australia and, except for American lead actor Ben Browder and the occasional guest star, its cast was made up primarily of Australian actors. While most actors retained their Australian accents, notable exceptions were those playing "Peacekeepers" or "Sebaceans" who often (but not always) adopted some form of "British" accent, in particular the recurring villain Scorpius, played to the hilt in EvilBrit mode. On several occasions Browder's American character impersonates Peacekeepers and also has his consciousness taken over by Scorpius; in both cases, he adopts a mild RP accent (which makes him sound rather bored with what's going on around him). |
| 572 | * Something of a RealLife example--Mark Ballas of ''Series/DancingWithTheStars'' is the British-born son of Corky Ballas (American, lived in the UK for years) and Shirley Ballas (British) who lives in the U.S. Most of the time in the rehearsal footage and interviews, he sounds more or less American, but sometimes he slips into a very odd, possibly Estuary British. Whether it's an affectation or he just switches isn't really clear. |
| 573 | * Another RealLife example: Creator/JohnBarrowman of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' fame has a US accent but was born and raised in Scotland. In a documentary he was shown visiting his parents, whom he speaks to in his original Scottish accent. |
| 574 | ** Barrowman made an effort to learn an American accent when his family relocated to America as a child because he was being bullied. He and his sister are what they refer to as "bi-dialectical" and can switch between their American and Scottish accents at will. |
| 575 | * ''Series/PobolYCwm'', a Welsh-language [[SoapOpera opera sebon]] full of accents from all over Wales, and even the occasional ''Sais'' wandering in from England and looking around in terror. |
| 576 | * ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': [[http://donyougorouninrountorero.com Don' You Go Rounin' Roun to Re Ro']] is a can't-miss British film, if you like movies you cannot understand. |
| 577 | * Creator/TheBBC's 1983 adaptation of Creator/RobertWestall's ''Literature/TheMachineGunners'' provides a sound grounding in Geordie accents and pronunciation. Notable in that virtually everyone in the serial, children and adults alike, speaks with a Geordie accent. Only a few of the Grammar school teachers have RP ones. |
| 578 | * Daphne Moon from ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' speaks with a Mancunian accent, despite the fact that Jane Leeves was born in Essex and raised in Sussex. For some inexplicable reason, most of her family appearing on the show do not have Mancunian accents. Her brother Simon, for instance, speaks with a broad Cockney accent. |
| 579 | * ''Series/LawAndOrderUK''. Set in London, featuring accents from every part of the city and the UK and all the socioeconomic classes therein. It's even a slight plot point in one episode--Matt Devlin, who is of Irish ancestry (it isn't clear if he was born there as well), noticeably thickens his Irish brogue in order to gain the trust of a young prostitute he's questioning and is able to pinpoint almost exactly where in Ireland she's from based on ''her'' accent. |
| 580 | * Apparently, real Brit Claire Forliani used an accent on ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' that was awful even to other real Brits. Jane Parsons was another British character and hers was much better. |
| 581 | * ''Film/{{Highlander}}'': Creator/ChristopherLambert used a generalized Scottish accent in the original film, but Lambert's natural French accent made it a bit odd sounding. Duncan in the series used a somewhat Scottish accent for flashbacks but the modern scenes weren't too far from Creator/AdrianPaul's normal British accent. Peter Wingfield kept his Welsh accent for Methos. |
| 582 | * ''Series/{{Bramwell}}'' features the posh accents of the upper-class Bramwells and those in their social circle, the Cockney accents of the patients and staff at the East End clinic (as well as the servants of the upper-class set), and Irishman Dr. Marsham. |
| 583 | * On ''Series/{{ER}}'', though it's never specified where in England she's from, British surgeon Elizabeth Corday's accent indicates an upper-class background and education, as does Neela Rasgotra's. However, when the two meet, Elizabeth asks Neela if she's from the East End, to which a miffed Neela replies, "No, Southall". Neela's annoyance is likely because Elizabeth assumed she was from a working class background based on her ethnicity (she's Indian), when her accent should clearly have indicated that she wasn't--the East End of London has historically been one of its poorer, non-white neighborhoods, while Southall is the opposite. |
| 584 | * ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'': Butler Geoffrey has a very posh British accent (his portrayer was born in UsefulNotes/SaintLucia, but moved to England when he was 9), presumably gleaned from years of working for the upper-class and pinpoints ''exactly'' where his British date grew up, to the point where he only misguesses that she lived on the second floor of the building rather than the third within minutes of hearing her equally elegant, yet not as refined dialect. There's also the Lord and Lady (his daughter) who visit Geoffrey. While the Lord clearly has an upper-class accent, his daughter's, strangely enough, isn't nearly so. |
| 585 | * ''Series/MadMen'': Lane Pryce apparently went to public school (although probably not a good one, since he appreciates that in New York, "nobody asks where you went to school") and speaks RP; so does his wife. In a sea of fairly neutral American accents,[[note]]Sometimes intentionally so; we know that at the very least Paul Kinsey is suppressing a serious {{Joisey}} accent, and given her totally Brooklyn family--all that squawking by her mother and sister about "[[UsefulNotes/ThePope the Howly Fahthuh]]!"--Peggy's newscasterese ''has'' to be practiced[[/note]] Lane stands out. |
| 586 | * ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' is another smörgåsbord of British accents: |
| 587 | ** The Crawleys are all very thoroughly RP (with the exception of Lady Grantham, who is American and speaks with a General American accent). This is thoroughly expected, since they are an earl, their daughters, his mother, and their cousins who are upper-middle-class educated professionals. |
| 588 | ** The Crawleys' cousins, the [=MacClares=], also all speak in RP, even though they are Scottish. This is, again, fully expected, since they are even more aristocratic than the Crawleys (Hugh [=MacClare=] is the Marquess of Flintshire). |
| 589 | ** The servants range widely: |
| 590 | *** The most common accent is Yorkshire--the majority of downstairs actors having been recruited from the county or from nearby Lancashire--with Alfred and Mr. Mason (William's father) being particularly bucolic. As noted above, Anna, Daisy, and William's actors are all actually Yorkshire born and raised. |
| 591 | *** Mrs Hughes is from Argyll and has a recognizable soft West Scots accent. |
| 592 | *** Gwen's actress Creator/RoseLeslie is actually Scottish aristocracy, and her real-life RP accent contrasts very much with the Yorkshire accent she affects as Gwen. |
| 593 | *** Miss Shore has Creator/SharonSmall's full Glaswegian accent. |
| 594 | *** Branson, of course, has a fully Irish accent (which was very technically a "British" accent at the beginning of the series in 1912). |
| 595 | ** Dr Clarkson has a soft, educated Edinburgh accent--the same as his actor, David Robb. |
| 596 | ** The [[UsefulNotes/BritishCoppers policemen]] who come to arrest [[spoiler:Mr Bates]] at the end of Series 2 are clearly identifiable as being from the Metropolitan by their definitely East End/Cockney accents. |
| 597 | * ''Series/TheVampireDiaries''' Original vampire family, though they were Vikings who migrated to what is now Virginia, speak English with an English accent, because they learned to speak it in England. |
| 598 | * ''Series/GameOfThrones'' has its characters use appropriate accents for their location -- and station. Sean Bean and the Stark clan use appropriately Grim Northern accents, as do the Wildlings. The Baratheons tend more Midlands. Those from the South generally use RP, or at least quasi-[=RPish=] accents suitable to the South of England (e.g.: King's Landing commoners will often speak in an Estuary accent--see Gendry and Hot Pie), with the more precise, posh and clipped the accent also serving as an indicator of status (and/or villainy). Creator/PeterDinklage's slightly more floral and exaggerated take is character-appropriate and serves well (and all in all pretty good for a [[UsefulNotes/NewJersey Jersey boy from Morristown]]--although that accent slips in once in a while). |
| 599 | * ''Series/PeakyBlinders'' has a few: |
| 600 | ** The Shelbys are Brummies, with some Irish influence (being a few generations out of Ireland, with their father Arthur Sr and eldest brother Arthur Jr being the most Hibernian). The actors do varyingly good jobs of it; Creator/CillianMurphy as Tommy Shelby does it well, although he slips around some words (like "strategy"); Helen [=McCrory=] (as Aunt Polly) is rather less convincing. Some of the other actors do a decent job of doing a ''West Midlands'' accent, but come up more Black Country than Birmingham. |
| 601 | ** DI Campbell and Grace Burgess are Northern Irish Protestants and have strong NI accents. Creator/SamNeill, who plays Campbell, was actually born in Northern Ireland but moved to UsefulNotes/NewZealand as a child; he's widely praised for his excellent accent in this performance (it helps, of course, that he was coached by Creator/LiamNeeson and Creator/JamesNesbitt). |
| 602 | ** Actually, "Irish business" is a recurring theme, and so both Northern and Southern Irish accents appear in series quite a lot. |
| 603 | ** Black Country shows up very thoroughly with Billy Kimber and his lads. |
| 604 | ** The London gangs, including Alfie Solomons, have (of course) Cockney accents and similar. |
| 605 | ** May Carleton is super-posh and speaks in an RP to match. |
| 606 | * Geraint Wyn Davies used his natural Welsh accent as Nick Knight on ''Series/ForeverKnight''. The character is actually from the French/Belgian region of Brabant but the flashbacks don’t change much. |
| 607 | * ''Series/{{Pennyworth}}'': Alfred Pennyworth (Creator/JackBannon) speaks with a Cockney accent as homage to Creator/MichaelCaine's roles. Meanwhile, the unpredictable Bet Sykes (Music/PalomaFaith) has a distinctive Mancunian accent and uses Mancunian expressions, and the accent of Wallace "Dave Boy" [=MacDougal=] is unmistakably Scottish. |
| 608 | [[/folder]] |
| 609 | |
| 610 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 611 | British rock singers frequently change their accents while singing to make themselves sound a bit more American or at least "mid-Atlantic" (much as many American singers try to sound Southern). Others will just adopt a generically "British" accent for no apparent reason. Thus singers who enthusiastically embrace their regional accents are at least somewhat noteworthy. |
| 612 | * Music/TheBeatles, especially Music/JohnLennon, were fond of using exaggerated joke accents in recording sessions. From ''Music/{{Revolver|Beatles Album}}'' onwards, they started using them in the final versions of songs as well. John Lennon managed to sneak his exaggerated Liverpudlian accent into such tracks as "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Maggie May" (from ''Music/LetItBe''), and "Polythene Pam" (from ''Music/AbbeyRoad''), to name a few. An equally jokey London accent is used at the start of "Two of Us" (from ''Music/LetItBe''). |
| 613 | ** Music/GeorgeHarrison had a particularly thick Scouse accent and never tried to hide it, either with the Beatles or in his solo work. |
| 614 | * Music/NickDrake's upper-class English accent is audible in his singing, and his relaxed delivery is a big part of the exotic feel of his songs. |
| 615 | * Music/JohnCale, formerly of the Music/VelvetUnderground, sings in his native Welsh accent. The accent is on clearest display in "The Gift" (on ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat''), where Cale is actually just reading a story written by Music/LouReed over the music. People unfamiliar with Welsh accents listening to the track for the first time often ask what an Indian dude is doing on a Velvets album. The better-educated tend to have to explain that it's John Cale, and that he's from Wales.... |
| 616 | ** Similarly, Music/{{Sting}} was accused of putting on a faux-West Indian accent on his early work with Music/ThePolice. He really wasn't. He's a Geordie. his Newcastle accent was accetuated more in his singing. People not familiar with the north-East of England made the error a lot. |
| 617 | * Music/ArcticMonkeys are from Sheffield (well, near Sheffield), and don't let anyone forget it, singing with full-on South Yorkshire accents that would do Creator/SeanBean proud. |
| 618 | * Lena Meyer-Landrut, the German winner of the Series/EurovisionSongContest 2010, sings with a Cockney accent. She blames her English teacher. |
| 619 | * Madchester bands like Music/TheStoneRoses, Music/HappyMondays, Music/TheCharlatans and the like. |
| 620 | * Folk music is one genre in which the singers accent is played for all it's worth. Kate Rusby, a Barnsleyite, often stresses a strong Barnsley accent in her songs. Averted with the (British) Spinners' version of ''The Calton Weaver'', which they did with one of the phoniest Glasgow accents ever. (They were from Liverpool.) |
| 621 | * Both Murdoc and 2D of Music/{{Gorillaz}} speak with Cockney-ish accents, with 2D's being the stronger of the two. |
| 622 | ** For that matter Damon Albarn's singing voice (especially on their early work) is far more Cockney sounding in his singing voice than it is in real life. |
| 623 | * Shirley Manson of Music/{{Garbage}} has a ''powerfully'' Scottish accent, but sounds practically American when she sings...mostly. Listen to "I Think I'm Paranoid" and pay attention to how she pronounces "paranoid." She sounds like a ''cartoon character.'' |
| 624 | * Sophie Ellis-Bextor keeps her strong London accent when singing. |
| 625 | * Peter Hammill of Music/VanDerGraafGenerator sings for the most part with a strict RP delivery. Notable exceptions are his Afrikaner accent on "A Motor-bike in Afrika" and his Cockney accent on "Polaroid". |
| 626 | * Music/TheProclaimers are fairly well known in Scotland for singing in a broad Scots accent, and Glasvegas (although less well known) have an even more audible, very Glaswegian accent. Music/BiffyClyro also sing in a slight Scottish accent, though it's not nearly as obvious as the other two examples. |
| 627 | * Music/SimpleMinds singer Jim Kerr's accent started off obviously Glaswegian, but by the time of ''Street Fighting Years'', had taken on significant Irish influences, which endure to this day. |
| 628 | * Music/KateNash doesn't attempt to disguise her Estuary accent, which has an interesting effect on her cover of the aforementioned Music/ArcticMonkeys' "Fluorescent Adolescent." |
| 629 | ** For this matter, Music/LilyAllen sounds exactly like a typical North Londoner right down to the way she enunciates her lyrics. |
| 630 | ** and The Twang do this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwmbkb_ZYgE incredibly well]] as well. They're Brummies. |
| 631 | * Maxïmo Park's Paul Smith has a very clear North-East England[[note]] Don't confuse Newcastle and Middlesborough, they don't take it well[[/note]] accent he sings with. |
| 632 | * Terrorvision are from Bradford, but for their first album Tony Wright tried to suppress his accent and adopt a fairly neutral transatlantic accent. From the second album onwards he started using more of his [[http://youtu.be/7Kf9k9uEkYc natural Yorkshire drawl]]. |
| 633 | * Joe Strummer of Music/TheClash was very well spoken in real life but sang with a Cockney accent. |
| 634 | * Many Americans were surprised when Music/{{Adele}} accepted her multiple awards at the 2012 Grammys and she spoke in her Estuary accent. |
| 635 | * Music/AmyWinehouse similarly sung like her musical idols but spoke with a brash working-class London accent. |
| 636 | * Jon Anderson of Music/{{Yes}} also has an ethereal, angelic singing voice but a very rural Lancashire accent in his speaking voice. |
| 637 | * Music/SteveMarriott of Music/TheSmallFaces and Music/HumblePie never went out of his way to disguise his East London accent, but given the chance on the Small Faces album ''Music/OgdensNutGoneFlake'' to sing songs in a music hall style he turns it up to eleven, complete with rhyming slang. |
| 638 | * The vocalists for the Music/MysteryJets (mostly Blaine Harrison but also William Rees) are unabashed middle-class Londoners and sing in clearly Estuary accents. |
| 639 | * Music/LauraMarling (a frequent collaborator of (the) Mystery Jets, incidentally), is a BlueBlood from northeastern Hampshire and sings in a Home Counties accent that depending on your perspective either is or approaches Moderate RP. |
| 640 | * Music/CameraObscura's Tracyanne Campbell always sings in her native soft Glasgow accent. |
| 641 | * A slightly amusing thing happens in "Barriers" by Birmingham punk band Templeton Pek. Is it "pain" with ''ai'' or ''ei''? For whatever reasons the first one in the song is with ''ai'', the second with ''ei''. |
| 642 | * Music/ThomasDolby's voice is essentially a London RP with hints of Oxford (where he went to secondary school) and East Anglia (where he'd go on holiday), which was also influenced by his living abroad amongst British expats as a child. He sings in his real life accent, with the occasional parody of Americanisms (he has lived in the US for a long time). |
| 643 | * Music/PJHarvey is from Dorset and has an "[[Music/NickCave accent]]". It shows up to very varying degrees in her music. |
| 644 | * As a Swindonian, Andy Partridge of Music/{{XTC}} has a noticeable West Country accent in his speaking voice. |
| 645 | * {{Music/Kate Bush}} is a notable example for singing not just in her normal southern English accent, but also singing in different varieties of UK accents, including Irish and Cockney depending on the song, which proved alienating to American listeners for most of her career. |
| 646 | [[/folder]] |
| 647 | |
| 648 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 649 | * The Orks of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' use a very mangled version of Cockney. Then again, they're pretty much [[RecycledINSPACE warmongering suicidal pub-crawling football hooligan looters]] [-[[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE.]]-] |
| 650 | ** When attacking the Ork base in ''[[VideoGame/DawnOfWar Dawn of War: Dark Crusade]]'', one of the massed Orkish voices is quite clearly shouting "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!" in RP. |
| 651 | ** Oddly enough, the Eldar seem to have extremely mangled accents from ''Barrow''. |
| 652 | ** The Eldar troops seem mostly to speak with received pronunciation, except for the Warlock in the Soulstorm Eldar stronghold cutscenes who for some reason has a distinctly northern accent. |
| 653 | ** Blood Ravens seem to speak in a geographically neutral form of RP, sometimes with hints of various British regional dialects. Space Wolves are usually (and oddly, given that they are based on ''Vikings'') rendered as "Och aye the noo" Scotsmen, and the ''Ultramarines'' movie seems to suggest that Ultramar is actually located in a service station in the Watford Gap. |
| 654 | * Many of the non-human races in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' were deliberately styled with different English accents to evoke their attitude and outlook on life to British players. Dwarfs, as rugged, pragmatic, no-nonsense mining folk, are naturally voiced as Northerners (mostly Yorkshiremen, who are stereotypically just like that), while the elegant, refined, effete and cultured High Elves tend towards the snobby end of Home Counties RP. Dark Elves get the same accents, but delivered with much more vaudevillian villain flair. Orcs and Goblins tend to speak in a grunting, exaggerated form of Cockney or Estuarine dialect -- one of their major inspirations being the infamous supporters of Milwall Football Club in the 1970s! Wood Elves, meanwhile, sound similar to High Elves, but with much more of a Welsh or Irish lilt to their voices to get across the ancient Celtic elements of their culture. The humans in Warhammer get stereotypical European accents based on their place of origin -- the Empire, being a fantasy counterpart to the Holy Roman Empire, is filled with people speaking with German accents, while Bretonnians are comedy Frenchmen, Kislevites are Russians, the Vampire Counts of Sylvania get the classic Dracula voice, and the Viking-inspired marauders of Norsca speak like Scandinavians. |
| 655 | * In ''TabletopGame/{{Crimestrikers}}'', WorkingClassHero Jeff "Top" Ranking speaks with a Cockney accent, while Arcana has the accent of a ViolentGlaswegian[=/=]BraveScot. |
| 656 | [[/folder]] |
| 657 | |
| 658 | [[folder:Theater]] |
| 659 | * Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw's play ''Theatre/{{Pygmalion}}'' centres around a bet that a guy can pass a Cockney flower girl off as a duchess by poshing up her accent, among other things. It (and the revamp ''Theatre/MyFairLady'') also lampshade that technically, a "standard British" accent does not exist; main character Henry Higgins, a language professor, can and does figure out where people are from due to which accent they have. |
| 660 | * ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'' has Draco as a FakeBrit (obviously fake), and its sequel adds his father Lucius (less obviously fake, but it's not great) and Seamus Finnegan, who, despite being Irish in the books and films, gets a (very very poor) Cockney accent. |
| 661 | * The INLA members from ''Theatre/TheLieutenantOfInishmore'' are supposed to have Northern Irish accents (the script doesn't specify sub-variety), to contrast with the rest of the cast's distinctly too-ra-loo West Coast Irish accents. Of course, it depends on the casting director and director how clearly this comes across. |
| 662 | * In Theatre/ThePiratesOfPenzance, there is an extended joke where the characters confuse "often" and "orphan" because the two words sound similar when using the non-rhotic pronunciation. |
| 663 | [[/folder]] |
| 664 | |
| 665 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 666 | * In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', the Gilneans who turn into Worgen invariably sound as if they're either choking on a Cockney, or gobbling down a triple-bred snob or two. Later on you're going to run into Yorkshire Gilneans. Even their Capital City resembles Victorian London. It's no surprise that they're sometimes known as Cockney Werewolves. |
| 667 | * Recent iterations of popular fighting games such as ''Franchise/StreetFighter'', ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' and the ''VideoGame/SoulSeries'' have taken the trouble to voice the British characters with their appropriate accents. Wealthy boxer Dudley from ''Street Fighter'' speaks with an RP accent, as does [=MI6=] femme fatale, Cammy White. As an aristocrat, Ivy Valentine from the ''Soul Series'' speaks with a ''heightened'' RP accent, as befits her status. She is also the only character in the English dub to be voiced with their native accent -- Spaniard Cervantes and Frenchman Raphael both have American accents. Steve Fox from ''Tekken'' is a curious example -- he's had both an Estuary, almost RP accent in one of his appearances and more of a Cockney accent in another, the latter probably being more appropriate, given his character. In ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom3'', Scottish succubus [[VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}} Morrigan Aensland]] is now (finally) voiced with a (General) Scottish accent in the English dub (despite her voice actress being Welsh), while [[ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy Rocket Raccoon]] in ''[[UpdatedRerelease Ultimate]]'' speaks with a Cockney accent despite his voice actor, Greg Ellis, being from Lancashire. |
| 668 | * ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'': Lionhead Studios is British, so that's not surprising. Black & White also uses mostly British accent (although your evil side and most of the leaders of other tribes in the sequel use others). Bullfrog, the developer that preceded Lionhead, was also British, hence the accents in ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper'' and their other games. |
| 669 | * ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'': |
| 670 | ** Male Voice 1 in ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'' has a Mockney accent that wavers between authentic (the VA is British) and strangely loose. Many of the Britishisms are correctly used, but oddly takes the American 'ass' over the British 'arse'. This voice (albeit voiced by Creator/RobinAtkinDownes) returns in the following games as Male Voice 3. |
| 671 | ** Matt Miller and his gang, The Deckers, from ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'', all have British accents. |
| 672 | * ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures'' features a wide variety of different British accents. Makes sense, because the developers of this specific game were British, but notable because it contrasts with the other games in the series, which were developed in Japan and dubbed into English in the US. |
| 673 | ** Pretty much every other game made by Rare was this. Even for those that were ostensibly set in America (looking at you, ''VideoGame/PerfectDark''), characters always use British accents. |
| 674 | * Patricia Summersett does a mix of an RP and a Northern accent as Zelda in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity'' and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom''. Amelia Gotham, Jamie Mortellaro and Creator/SeanChiplock also do British accents for Mipha, Sidon, Revali and Teba respectively (Revali and Teba less so). |
| 675 | ** Being Zelda's ancestor, Creator/CheramiLeigh uses a British accent for Sonia in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom Tears of the Kingdom]]'', although, like Revali's, hers is barely noticeable. |
| 676 | * ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'' series: |
| 677 | ** Layton speaks RP English and his sidekick, Luke, speaks with a Cockney accent. Interestingly, Luke has a different voice actor in the US version of the game to the UK version. This is because the original American voice actor voiced Luke with a butchered approximation of what 'an English accent' sounds like. As such, you can pick out a smattering of Cockney, estuary, RP, and... what can only be described as... Australian? Whatever it is, it went down so badly with English test audiences, the character was re-dubbed, this time with using an English voice actor, who played Luke as a straight-up Cockney. Interestingly enough, if you visit a forum in which this is discussed, the majority of American fans say they prefer the original, butchered accent. |
| 678 | ** Although the SpinOff game ''VideoGame/LaytonBrothersMysteryRoom'' does not have voice acting, the main character, Lucy Baker, is heavily implied to be speaking in a Yorkshire accent. For example, she says "were" instead of "was", and uses slang such as "nowt" and "summat". |
| 679 | * '''''DOSH!''''' Just take a look at the ''VideoGame/KillingFloor'' article. |
| 680 | * A few are dotted inexplicably around ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''. Especially notable is one, and only one, of the Great Khans, whose father is an NCR citizen and has no accent. |
| 681 | ** Played a little more realistically in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' as all Mister Handy robots seem to have these: Codsworth's is a more upper-class accent, while Whitechapel Charlie of Goodneighbour settles for a course Cockney -- the exception is Professor Goodfeels, a Mister Handy who was "taken" by the Robot Liberation Front and programmed to speak with a stoned slurring. [[DarkActionGirl Cait]]'s thick Irish accent is far more of a headscratcher. |
| 682 | * Seeing as Ferelden is a FantasyCounterpartCulture to pre-Norman England, a lot of characters in ''Franchise/DragonAge'' have some sort of British accent (notable exceptions include dwarves and Dalish in the first game). The second game continues this trend, despite the fact that the primary setting is no longer Ferelden, and actually increases the Britishness with the addition of Welsh and Irish accents to the Dalish. |
| 683 | * ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'': |
| 684 | ** The standard Received Pronunciation and London accents are used for most of the characters seen in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedSyndicate'' including the main protagonists Jacob and Evie Frye although they are from Crawley which is located in the South East region of England. |
| 685 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedValhalla'' naturally has variations of English accents from the Saxons (including King Alfred the Great) given that the game is set in UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge. |
| 686 | * Yangus from ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'' talks exactly like the introductory sentence of this page, with "guv" being used whenever he calls TheHero. |
| 687 | * In ''VideoGame/JeffWaynesWarOfTheWorlds'' (which is, after all, set in Britain) the OfficerAndAGentleman who acts as your adjutant in the human campaign has a standard RP accent, and Creator/RichardBurton is of course the same as he was in the [[Music/JeffWaynesMusicalVersionOfTheWarOfTheWorlds rock opera]], while the human units have a mixture of English- and Scottish-sounding voice sets. |
| 688 | * ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' was dubbed in Britain rather than America, and all the characters display English accents as a result. Notably, most of the humans speak with working-class accents (especially Reyn), whereas the standard 'received pronunciation' is reserved for people like the [[OurElvesAreDifferent High Entia]]. [[spoiler:The first speaking Mechon you meet]] speaks in ''very'' distinct Cockney, which [[{{Narm}} may make it somewhat difficult to be menaced by him.]] |
| 689 | ** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' continues the trend and ups the ante, now utilizing accents from all across the British Isles and in a more purposeful fashion. The peoples of every one of the game's nations are distinguished with a different British sound (barring two nations and a nationless ServantRace who have Australian or American accents) from the [[OopNorth northern Leftherians]], to the Welsh Gormotti, to the Scottish Ardainians, and so on. |
| 690 | * ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' are notable in that they are voiced by British actors, even in their native UsefulNotes/{{Japan}}. |
| 691 | ** Same goes with ''{{VideoGame/Bloodborne}}''. |
| 692 | * ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}'' has the titular witch and her [[TheRival rival]], Jeanne, who are both European, and so are voiced with British RP accents by Hellena Taylor and Creator/GreyDeLisle. |
| 693 | * ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'': |
| 694 | ** [[TheCaptain Conrad Roth]] from has a [[OopNorth Northern accent]], and hails from Sheffield/South Yorkshire. Lara once calls him a "Northern bastard" when trying to wake him up from a DisneyDeath. |
| 695 | ** Lara herself has an [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Estuary]] accent, the native one of her actress, who comes from Berkshire. |
| 696 | ** [[FatherNeptune Grim]] comes from Glasgow, and has the customary accent. |
| 697 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'', Tracer, the game's resident British character, has a noticeable Cockney accent. It helps that her voice actress, Cara Theobold from ''Series/DowntonAbbey'', is British herself. |
| 698 | * [[TheEmpire The Helghast]] from ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}}'' might mirror Germany's 20th century history to the letter (from WWI, to being ANaziByAnyOtherName to UsefulNotes/EastGermany in space), but this post-human race all have English accents. The soldiers tend towards cockney while the higher Heglahn brass have more lavish accents. |
| 699 | * ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'': |
| 700 | ** Every faction has different accents, with Eldar and Space Marines using high-class accents, the Imperial Guard having lower class ones, and the Tau having East Asian-speaking English ones. |
| 701 | ** While orks have always had Cockney accents, Kaptin Bluddflagg of ''Retribution'' adds TalkLikeAPirate and the occasional descent into Irish... [[NinjaZombiePirateRobot and is all the more beloved for it.]] |
| 702 | ** The Baneblade from the campaign's second mission sports a magnificent Scottish accent. |
| 703 | * As with other ''Franchise/StarWars'' works, ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has the usual British accent for the Empire (there are actually a few different accents due to the larger diversity of the setting). Of particular note is the Imperial Agent storyline: the Agent uses a British accent normally but switches to an American one when operating undercover among people who are not so friendly toward the Empire. |
| 704 | * In ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield,'' the residents of Galar speak with a British accent as the region is explicitly based on the UK. Some noticeable examples include the protagonist's internal dialogue referring to their mom as "mum" and Hop's use of "mate". The Galar Trainers' appearances in ''VideoGame/PokemonMasters'' feature them fully voice-acted, and indeed, with the accents implied in the main games. |
| 705 | ** Before that, Game Freak seemed to have a slight thing for giving [=NPCs=] Scottish accents, such as a Herdier in ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonGatesToInfinity'' (understandable, as Herdier is based on a Scottish Terrier). Less understandable, though, is the old lady on the roof of Mauville City in ''VideoGame/PokemonOmegaRubyAndAlphaSapphire'' whose sole purpose is to provide some flavor text about a Taillow. |
| 706 | [[/folder]] |
| 707 | |
| 708 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 709 | * In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'''s "Lara Kroft-Macaroni-And-Cheese" Arc, the title character speaks in a Cockney accent. The ''Franchise/TombRaider'' character who is being spoofed speaks in RP. |
| 710 | * ''WebComic/TurnSignalsOnALandRaider'' has Corporal Cavendish, an on-and-off character who appears when models have to be proxied due to breakage... |
| 711 | * In ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'', Surma has a strong Yorkshire accent (specifically Barnsley) in flashbacks. Most other characters don't have noticeable accents, but it's known that Kat's dad is Scottish and Zimmy is Brummie. Minor character Jenny seems to be West Country, with a VerbalTic of "my love". |
| 712 | [[/folder]] |
| 713 | |
| 714 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 715 | * Website/TVTropes: This trope falls victim to itself, as many non-Brits [[UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK confuse "British" with "English"]]. Mention of the other three nationalities (Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish) prevents it from being a complete facepalm. Not to mention actually mistaking a Scotsman, Welshman or Irishman for "English" can lead to... unpleasantness. |
| 716 | * At the [[SuperheroSchool Whateley Academy]] in the ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'', there are a number of students from the U.K. Several are busy faking a Received Pronunciation or Home Counties accent, with occasional slippage when they're surprised. Some, like Stunner (from Liverpool) don't fake their accents. Few of the Americans know the diff. |
| 717 | * [[http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1189 "Wallace House Sings English Folksongs"]] claims to use 16 different dialects (Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Kent, Lancashire, Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, London, Westmoreland, Norfolk, Northumberland, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire). |
| 718 | [[/folder]] |
| 719 | |
| 720 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 721 | * LetsPlay/ElectricalBeast, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbvZeOnHI_w here]]. "I can't believe someone this English exists." |
| 722 | * Discussed in the ''WebVideo/RoosterTeethShorts'' episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc3KxTXp3Ss Secret Door]]. Burnie, Gus and Geoff can't tell the difference between [[Creator/GavinFree Gavin]] and Ben because they both have "the same" accent. Both of them protest this. |
| 723 | -->'''Burnie:''' Yeah, we can't really tell you guys apart 'cause you both have the same pompous-ass British accent. I can't even tell what you're saying half the time.\ |
| 724 | '''Gavin:''' What are you talking about? We don't sound anything alike; I'm from Oxford and he's from Nottingham.\ |
| 725 | '''Ben:''' They're totally distinct accents!\ |
| 726 | '''Gavin:''' Exactly.\ |
| 727 | '''Burnie:''' Yeah, not a word... |
| 728 | * For the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_iMlwkzwow&vl=en chicken tikka masala episode]], the host of ''WebVideo/YouSuckAtCooking'' pretends to be from "United Britain" and sports a confusing accent that's vaguely British but sounds more Australian than anything else (or Cockney if we're being charitable), despite claiming to have grown up in Cardiff. |
| 729 | [[/folder]] |
| 730 | |
| 731 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 732 | * As noted, Wakko Warner in ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' speaks with a Liverpool-ish accent, despite the fact that his siblings ''don't''. He was [[WordOfGod intended]] to sound like Music/RingoStarr. |
| 733 | * In ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'', Pinky's voices seems to be an Estuary/Cockney effort. His VA Creator/RobPaulsen has cited Creator/PeterSellers as the main inspiration, |
| 734 | * [[EvilTwin Anti-Cosmo]] on ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'' talks with a British accent, simply to make him sound more intelligent than his fairy counterpart. |
| 735 | * The Lobe from ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'', amazingly with a non-standard accent for a US show. That's because he's voiced by the very English Creator/DavidWarner. |
| 736 | * Pip from ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' speaks with a deliberately muddled cross between Cockney and RP. British guest characters usually use one or the other as well. When the show devoted a two-part episode to lampooning UsefulNotes/RichardDawkins, his primary criticism was that [[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne they didn't do his British accent right]]. |
| 737 | * Several Autobots from ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' have "British" accents: Hoist, Grapple, Red Alert, and Perceptor. The minor villain character [[EvilBrit Lord Chumleigh]] in the episode "Prime Target" spoke with what seemed to be a PS accent. |
| 738 | * ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'': Considering the fact the Island of Sodor is located between the Isle of Man and England, in the more recent episodes, all of the humans were given British accents, but also half of the mechanical characters (Gordon, James, Spencer, and Diesel 10 were given English accents, and Emily, the Scottish twins, Harvey, Murdoch, and Duncan were given Scottish accents) as well. Upon their return to the series in CGI, the core narrow gauge engines (except for Duncan and Rusty; the latter was given a West Country accent) were given Welsh accents to reflect the origins of their prototypes. Some of the engines are given specific regional accents to represent where their engine types originated. Since the switch to voice acting, Duck and Oliver speak with West Country accents, because their beloved Great Western Railway primarily served the West Country. Rex, Mike, and Bert have West Country accents as well, although this probably has more to do with their proximity to the Little Western as the railway they're based on is in [[OopNorth Cumbria]]. Donald and Douglas hail from Caledonia in Scotland, while Emily comes from Stirling and Duncan was built in Kilmarnock, hence their Scottish accents. And Skarloey, Rheneas, Sir Handel, and Peter Sam all speak with Welsh accents in reference to their Real Life counterparts on the Talyllyn Railway at Towyn. |
| 739 | * The Victorian Era flashback in ''WesternAnimation/BarbieInAChristmasCarol'' of course gives everyone British accents. The Ghost of Christmas Past even gets a Cockney accent. |
| 740 | * Jetta from ''WesternAnimation/{{Jem}}'' has a Cockney accent. WordOfGod is she wanted an actual British woman to do her voice, not an American faking one. Jetta's accent goes against her stories of being rich and royal but her bandmates are too ignorant of British accents to notice. |
| 741 | * All the speaking characters use standard ReceivedPronunciation in ''WesternAnimation/WorldOfTomorrow''. |
| 742 | * In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManUnlimited'', Bromley, one of the Human Revolutionaries, speaks with a Cockney accent. |
| 743 | * Garnet from ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' has a noticable English accent, courtesy of her British voice actress. Strangely enough, [[spoiler:her [[FusionDance component gems]], Ruby and Sapphire, sound American]]. Aquamarine uses Received Pronunciation to emphasize her [[EvilBrit snobby and condescending nature]], while Bluebird Azurite (being a fusion of [[spoiler:Aquamarine and "Eyeball" Ruby)]] uses an over-the-top Cockney accent. Meanwhile, Blue Diamond has an Irish accent due to being voiced by Irish singer Music/LisaHannigan. |
| 744 | [[/folder]] |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext UsefulNotes / BritishAccents
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
