A lorry pranged the banger in the boot, but I 'aven't the ready to get it out of the ricky. So d'you fancy takin' the tube to the cinema, or rollin' round to the local for a pint?
As any Brit will tell you, there is no such thing as a "British" accent. Britain has a ridiculous number of different accents - in some areas people can tell which
village someone who lives nearby is from by listening to them 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.
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
Rome is entirely British (and Irish), and their actual accents are used to reflect their characters' positions in
the social hierarchy of Ancient Rome; i.e. the lower class soldiers usually speak with rougher accents, while the noblemen speak with more refined accents. Taken to logical extremes in
Life of Brian (in which everyone in Jerusalem has British accents) when the title character is arrested by Roman centurions. The head Centurion proclaims "
You're fucking nicked, mate!"
Movie Romans in general
tend to have British accents. We can probably
blame Shakespeare.
In what may be the finest British Accents twist of all time, author Bernard Cornwell revised the
backstory of the character
Sharpe to reflect Sean Bean's portrayal. The books had established that Sharpe was from London, but Bean is from Sheffield and has a distinct Northern accent; Cornwell
established in later novels that while Sharpe had indeed been born in London, he had been raised in an orphanage in the North. *cough*
Sometimes confused with an Australian or New Zealand accent by Americans, which results in casting Brits as Aussies or Kiwis - e.g.,
Rockos Modern Life. To be fair,
some Aussies/Kiwis do sound a bit British, but like many accents listed here there are regional variants.
English people in American movies tend to have one of two accents: Upper-class ("I say, old chap, let's go and have tea and scones. Pip pip!") and cockney ("Caw blimey guv'na! Gi' 's a pint!"). Okay, also occasionally pirate ("Aaar! Shiver me timbers!")
Many Americans seem to believe the Australian accent is a British accent, as demonstrated by the use of a "fake British accent" by Ross Geller in Friends which is in fact far closer to an Australian accent. As Australia and Britain are on opposite sides of the world, this is not the case, but keep in mind that Americans
literally cannot tell the difference. 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.
One of the big differences between the accents most commonly heard in England and those most common in North America is something called rhoticism. People with non-rhotic accents drop the letter "r" in certain situations, especially at the end of a word, while those with rhotic accents pronounce it in almost all situations. This can sometimes create confusion in written communication. In one 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".
Contrast
American Accents. See also
Fake Brit,
Ooh Me Accents Slipping.
For our non-British friends, the above phrase can be translated as...
A truck hit the back of my old and dilapidated car, but I lack the money to get it out of the garage. Do you want to use the underground railway network of London to go to a place where movies are shown, or visit the usual-choice of bar-restaurant for about half a litre of beer?
Examples
Black Country
Often confused with the Brummie accent (Black Country residents 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 Industrial Revolution.
- Not so much "resentful" of being called Brummie, as potential grounds for another War of the Roses fought a bit further south and on more local terms...
- Simon Templeman's character in Just Shoot Me had a Black Country accent. Many American viewers 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. Yams think I'm saft, but s'true.
- Anita and Me is probably the best fictional example of a Black Country accent, possibly the TV production of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as well.
Brummie
The Birmingham accent. Sounds whiny and unattractive to many other Brits, so is often given to whiny or nerdy characters, e.g. Barry from
Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Interestingly, a poll has revealed that this is the least attractive British accent (and this editor is a Brummie, so no bias). 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.
- Ozzy Osbourne, whose singing in his natural accent was cited as a reason Black Sabbath's music sounded much darker than most music at the time. Sometimes practically unintelligible, as lampshaded in a recent phone network ad.
- Particularly Jeremy Clarkson's take on it, or Barry himself (his actor isn't even from the Midlands, 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. I'll retract that when I hear either of them give a reasonable reading of "I wanted to go home, but they wouldn't let me take my bike on the bus". Also, and my out-of-region friends go to great lengths to point this out, there's an overemphasis on G's when we try to speke proper instead of slurrin' it; the name of the town almost becomes two words, the second one starting with a K.
- PS... Geordie may sound the most attractive to other Brits, but - somewhat inexplicably - an international survey found that Brummie was actually the one found most pleasing to the ear by foreigners. Yes, I know... [Citation Needed]...
- The oddest thing may be, however, that we have have at least two West Midlands accents listed here, but East Mids gets little to no media love at any point, when it could actually serve fine a generic "English" accent. Or maybe it has been doing quietly for years and no-one's noticed. (This from a Brummie who has some, but not very many Leicester-Peterborough examples to draw on, and if you weren't told, you'd probably have trouble placing them - apart from "English"). Ditto Bristol/other West M4 corridor tones, except for a couple of high-ish profile cases (and Leeds, or SE coast?).
- Similarly, the Lincolnshire accent is largely ignored even within England. Like the East Mids, it can be seen as almost "generic" English, with variations across the county: shading to the South Yorkshire accent on it's western border and touches of "Mummerset" in the deeply rural areas and close to East Anglia. Marked by flattened vowels and frequent use of the Yorkshire-style "now then" (nahr then) as a greeting. The port town of Grimsby has a distinct range of accents of its own.
East London/Cockney
A character with an East London accent will very often be involved in some form of criminality. They can either be
gangsters (such as anything played by Vinnie Jones) or a
Loveable Rogue. 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
Firefly is a bad Cockney and Ray Winstone has played good (although often aggressive) East Londoners on a number of occasions.
- 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.
- There is also "Mockney", putting on the accent for effect.
Estuary English
RP's crass, vulgar cousin (or if you prefer, Cockney's gentrified, suburban relative). Originally spoken in southeastern England on the estuary of the Thames, but increasingly co-opted by people with higher levels of income and education who view Received Pronunciation as too
stuffy. As a result, it (or a slightly more refined variant thereof) has increasingly become the default "newscaster" accent of media based in London. Even the Queen's speech has drifted noticeably in this direction over the past few decades. Sounds somewhat similar to RP, but incorporates a number of elements traditionally associated with Cockney and other southeastern dialects (notably, pronouncing "t" as a glottal stop, fronting "th" to "f" and "v" and pronouncing a hard "g" in "-ing" words).
Stereotype: Originally, stupid and poor, or otherwise middle-class and trying to come across as "earthy"; possibly really annoying. (See half of Catherine Tate's characters or the classic "Essex Girl" archetype.) Has risen in profile in recent years, to the point where it's become more-or-less "neutral", though some of its old associations remain.
- Michael Caine approximates this in most of his roles. It was much stronger in his youth: his performance in Sleuth was one of the first times an actor had used the accent in a film.
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
Alan Partridge's friend Michael). Associated with macho, beer-drinking, sexist guys, especially thanks to the comic strip Andy Capp (actually from Hartlepool), the adult comic
Viz and the show
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet 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. Another famous North-Eastern accent belongs to Marcus "Day 42 in the
Big Brother house" Bentley, who often exaggerates his natural accent for effect.
Ant And Dec are also Geordies.
- Geordies are depicted as constantly using the word "like" as punctuation, like.
- Why aye, and they only have one vowel, man. "Æ"...
- Very much a Your Mileage May Vary accent in terms of attractiveness- especially when it comes to Cheryl Cole, one of the members of Girls Aloud and judge on The X Factor.
- In stark contrast to the Birmingham accent, Geordies are often considered to have one of the most pleasant sounding accents in the UK (with the result that an awful lot of call centres have started moving there to take advantage of this fact).
Glasgow
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
Violent Glaswegian is a trope in its own right on British Telly. Lighter Glasgow accents usually imply much the same as Liverpool.
Kelvinside
The posh bit of Glasgow. A Kelvinside accent is very clipped, and mangles vowels (most notabl 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.
Liverpool
Also called "Scouse". Again, criminal activity is fairly common, often involving stealing car wheels or stereos. Also highly likely to be Catholic in some way (the city has one of the highest percentages of Catholicism in the country, due in part to it being the destination of a lot of Irish immigrants in the 1840s). Often portrayed as fun-loving and highly likely to be the comic relief.. The Bill is notable for the fact that four out of five Liverpool-originating regular characters have ended up dying violent deaths. Also, you know,
The Beatles.
- Dave Lister in Red Dwarf is a Scouser, as is Craig Charles.
- Just mentioning "The Beatles" would've sufficed for 99.9% percent of people reading this... except they weren't deeply Scouse from any point they were well known. Ringo Starr was maybe the strongest (and the one with the most voice work on record, handily) Liverpool-area accent. But choose Lister as a closer example of Merseysider scouse. (Or if the quiet invasion continues, anywhere along the north Wales A55 corridor... eh? EH?)
- The Beatles are also a big exception to your average Scousers in that you can understand them. Even Red Dwarf's Lister is much more eloquent.
- For some reason, Wakko Warner has a Liverpool-ish accent despite being ostensibly American.
- That's because Wakko's voice actor, Jess Harnell, modelled the character's voice after Ringo Starr.
Manchester/Mancunian
Associated with
ITV Granada and
Coronation Street, along with general mouthiness.
- A very similar accent is Christopher "A lot of planets have a North" Eccleston's Ninth Doctor from Doctor Who.
- ...but don't let them hear you say that in Salford!
- He's Manc? Seemed more "generic northern" to me. A bit of Manchester-area, a slight geordie twang, but nothing particularly clear. Can you imagine him seriously yelling "Mad fer iiiiit!"?
- A very notable example is DCI Gene Hunt from Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes.
- 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.
North East Scotland
A somewhat deep accent though not as abrasive as Glaswegian or traditional Scottish, usually associated with farming, fishing and 'teuchters'. Has its own distinct dialect ("Fit like, min?", "Caumie doon!" "Awa 'n' bile yer heid, pal.") Put someone from Aberdeen, Fraserburgh or Elgin in a room with a Glaswegian and they'll probably have some difficulty understanding each other.
- How they speak up in Moray, Aberdeenshire and some parts of the Highlands is so distinctive
that it barely resembles the common image of Scottish dialect/accent.
Northern Irish
Often associated with terrorism or criminality, as was seemingly "Norn Iron"'s stock in trade during
The Troubles. If you've ever heard Ian Paisley - that accent, "criminality" used to be one of his favourite words.
- Someone who commonly subverts this by playing good guys is James Nesbitt, of Murphy's Law fame.
- One of the best known examples, and most imitated, of a Norn Iron accent in television drama is the character of Jim Mc Donald in Coronation Street - so it is.
- There are some distinctions between accents in Northern Irish accents - Belfast accents tend to be harsh, while the accents of people from the Western counties ((London)Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh) sounds softer. Some Northern Irish accents, especially from those native to areas on the Irish Sea/North Channel coast (including This Troper, are sometimes mistaken for Scots. Some natives of counties of the Irish Republic which border NI have accents that sound recognisably more "Northern" than "Southern".
Received Pronunciation ("Posh/Educated/BBC/Queen's English/RP")
Nobles, intellectuals, snobs, the
Battle Butler, older people who went to public school or worked for the BBC, and/or foreigners substituting this for their own native accent. Although ironically, in
Real Life, there are three variants of RP, two of which are less affected.
The BBC used to insist on everyone speaking RP, but this is no longer the case: some of the old announcers still use the accent, though.
- In US media this accent is most commonly heard emanating from an Evil Brit, Although not always - Alfred Pennyworth of Batman used to speak in RP.
- Ironically, the Queen's own accent is drifting towards Estuary very strongly.
- The Queen's accent is NOT drifiting towards anything. Estuary may be becoming more proper and formalised however.
- On Canadian TV, the male character speaking in RP has at least a 50% chance of being gay.
Rural
Also called "Mummerset". Stock accent for a broadly defined region stretching from 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 Somerset can be found explantory T=shirts with local expressions: 'Where zat to? Yer tizz' (where does this road go to? Over there') or proper job (pronounced 'pruppar jaab') 'that's been done right'. Familiarity is marked by the expression 'my lover'.
- The exception being Phil Harding, an archaeologist who appears on the long-running "Time Team" archaeology programme, speaks with a broad Somerset 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.
- 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.
- Careful observation will reveal a "Yokel Belt" stretching from Cornwall to 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).
- We tend to see a great deal of inaccuracy when it comes to the portrayal of eastern rural accents in the media, particularly the Norfolk accent. The ITV production, "Kingdom", for instance, is a classic example of this. Accents tend to end up somewhere a great deal nearer to Somerset. But then, it's possible that the only people who would notice are the ones who actually speak the accent, and are therefore the only portion of the audience who it annoys.
- There's a good reason for Cornish 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 Treasure Island. 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. It would at least have been a fairly genuine sailor's accent however, given the geography and economy of the region; for a softer, related, half-Welsh example there's the Bristolian (sorry, Bristowyan) voice, as heard from such, er, greats as Justin Lee Collins.
- Also consider that the major sea-trade region of Britain during the age of pirates was the Bristol Channel coast, it isn't too surprising that the accent became associated with pirates.
- With the above, there is also a reputation for this accent to belong to people who simultaneously viewed as the height of country bumpkinism but also surprising cunning to take advantage of this reputation. See Wiltshire resident's historic Moonraker tag, from a probably apocryphal story where some west country smugglers were retrieving some goods stashed in a pond, and when caught by an official claimed to be trying to rake in a cheese - the moon's reflection - something he believed because of the region (and accent's) rep.
Scottish
One that seems to appear far more in the US, especially cartoons. Often kilt-wearing. See Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons, The Scotsman in Samurai Jack, Scotty in Star Trek, and Duff Killigan in Kim Possible. There is no such thing as a "Scottish" accent either, of course; this usually has elements of various Lowland dialects. Stereotypes include a bad temper, a dislike of the English or being generally miserable and miserly. The latter is present in the
Headcases caricature of Gordon Brown.
- The miserly portrayal of Mr. Brown really isn't accurate (warning - contains Nightmare Fuel in the form of Alastair Darling).
- True, 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.
- It may be barely recognisable to natives of Scotland.
- Probably related to Mike Myers's London-ish English in Austin Powers being about as accurate, and not that much different (nor either that far removed from his everyday Canadian lilt)? Also...
- This may be because the American film depiction of the Scottish accent is actually closer to...
Welsh
Like Irish, often used for comic relief (unless you're listening to Super Furry Animals or watching
Torchwood, in which case you'll have to rely on the rest of the show), but more in a Funny Foreigner-style "they have their own ways" manner. Sometimes stereotyped as
liking sheep.
A lot.
- There doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement that there's a distinct difference between north and south Welsh, either. There's a hundred miles of mountain between each coast...
- Or between Cardiff and Swansea and the Valleys and...
West Coast Highlander
Only ever seen in specifically Scottish programmes. A lilting accent which often barely pronounces consonants. Usually implies much the same as Rural or Welsh.
Armando Iannucci has such an accent.
- ...while his voice is soft and liliting, he actually has a Glaswegian accent.
Yorkshire
Rural with a twist of lime and 128-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) Norwegian, 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. Americans know this accent best from the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch made famous by
Monty Python (though it actually came from
At Last The 1948 Show). For a sample, see the county song,
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 unfailingly honest.
- The number one source for the Yorkshire accent on American television: All Creatures Great And Small. The vets don't have Yorkshire accents (they all speak RP or Estuary despite the fact that the real James Herriot was actually from Glasgow), but most of the farmers have a Yorkshire accent.
- If a character uses the word "reet" or "nowt" (for "right" and "nothing"), and greets people by deadpanning "Now then", you're in Yorkshire. Unless he's Fred in Coronation Street.
- 'Tt is also a good giveaway, although if the Ts are actually pronounced the actor has probably never been farther north than Portsmouth.
- Presumably the apostrophe is meant as a soft glottal stop, and the trailing T's (e.g. in Trouble at't Mill) are silent.
- The confusion may stem from the popular Yorkshire phrase, "I'm going to't' pub," and similar statements. The "T" soundyou hear is actually "to", not "the".
- Surely, it's "I'm off to't' pub,"? We're Yorkshiremen, and wouldn't waste a syllable.
- Apparently sounds like a Gaelic accent, according to an American friend of mine.
- Those Americans who watch old Last Of The Summer Wine episodes (and there are a lot of us) will recognize this as the accent of "Compo" Semmonite.
- 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.
- "Chuck" is nice one too. I like "chuck".
- Used to be all over Canadian television in the 70s, for reasons that fail this troper.
- It's essentially a true to life Running Gag that a Yorkshireman can go to the next town and be instantly recognised and identified (and often ridiculed) for not being local. Living in Barnsley (where exists a very thick and distinctive Oop North dialect), this troper can identify someone from Wakefield or Sheffield. Neither city is more than 20 miles away.
- Oh, and don't get a Sheffielder, a Wakefielder and a Barnsleyite started on the Teacake/Breadcake argument. Is there a trope for that? If not, why not?
Lancashire
Sounds a bit like Yorkshire (a *lot* like it to most), but rolls the "r"s more. Whereas a Yorkshireman comes from "Yorksher", a Lancastrian comes from "Lancashrrrr". The vowels also tend to be a bit more rounded. Cricket fans can contrast the commentary of Geoffrey Boycott (Yorkshire) and David Lloyd (Lancashire).
- But for the love of god don't get them mixed up.
- Vowels a BIT more rounded? They stuff two O's AND a U into "cooking" when most dialects use one or the other (usually the single U). It gets worse the further west you go; though there's similarities and other differences, it's still one of the better giveaways. The two areas were regularly more-or-less cut off from each other for large parts of the year until the roads improved, and even now you're likely to have to dodge the A66 for the MUCH more southerly M62 in bad winters, so a fair distinction has formed. The strange bit is how un-Scottish either of them sound ;-)
- An internationally famous example, for those whose interest in cricket goes no further than a Douglas Adams novel, would be Sean Bean - the title character of [[Sharpe]] and also Boromir in LotR.
- Sean Bean comes from Sheffield. In Yorkshire. That is how alike they are. And this troper is from Yorkshire.
Notable uses of British accents:
Anime and Manga
- In the English translation of the Excel Saga manga, Sumiyoshi's lines are in the Geordie accent.
- The American dub of Sailor Moon has Luna speak Received Pronunciation.
Comedy
- Actual Brit Peter Sellers' 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 Real Life...), Yorkshire, Scotland, Glasgow, Liverpool, Wales, and the West Country. In addition, there's a Fake American narrator, and fake Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen in a montage early on.
Film
- Johnny Depp's accent in Pirates Of The Caribbean is noticeably British; it's difficult to determine what kind of British, however.
- East Anglia, shading towards Estuary, and based on Kent-born Keith Richards.
- Inexplicably, Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda, although it is likely due to the Rule Of Cool factor. Then again, considering all of the main cast except two (Monkey and Viper) are straight-out American, and only Oogway and Mr. Ping are voiced by genuine Chinese actors, this shouldn't be surprising.
- Tai Lung was voiced by Ian McShane, using his normal voice. He is perhaps best known for playing Lovejoy.
- Virtually all of the evil characters in Star Wars speak with an Evil Brit accent - with the noticeable exception of Darth Vader. And Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is decidedly good but speaks with a British accent anyway.
- Well, he WAS played by real Brits Sir Alec Mc Guinness(Ep4-6) and Ewan Mc Gregor(1-3)
- Natives of the planet Coruscant (the cultural center of the galaxy) tend to speak with a British accent.
- Speaking of hooligans, Charlie Hunnam's antipodean-leaning cockney accent in Green Street is the worst ever English accent by an actual English person.
Live Action TV
- In Headcases, a British political satire show (think Spitting Image in CGI and you're in the right area), David Cameron, 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 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)
- Note also the differences between the "public" and "private" accents of Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren in the same show.
- In Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Baltar is one of the few characters with a non-American accent (D'Anna Biers, played by New Zealander Lucy Lawless, puts on a surprisingly broad Australian Accent as well) and normally speaks in RP. When he assumes his native Aerelon accent, he speaks in a Yorkshire accent.
- But then this is ruined when we are shown his father in season 4, who seems to speak in a mangled west country dialect. Although I suppose there may be more than one accent on the planet.
- Firefly - Genuine London-born Mark Sheppard using a London accent as Badger.
- Stargate Atlantis - Paul McGillion [Scottish parents] using a Scottish accent to play Doctor Carson Beckett.
- The British comedy Allo Allo is set in France, and it's presumed everyone speaks French there. When Michelle speaks English to the British airmen, it's presented as her accent changing from French to British.
- In one episode of Kingdom, 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.
- 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.
Tabletop Games
- The Orks of Warhammer 40000 use a very mangled version of Cockney. Then again, they're pretty much warmongering suicidal pub-crawling football hooligan looters IN SPACE.
- When attacking the Ork base in Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade, one of the massed Orkish voices is quite clearly shouting "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!" in RP.
- Imperial Guard units seem to have a less mangled accent, so it becomes more stereotypical.
- Oddly enough, the Eldar seem to have extremely mangled accents from Barrow.
TV Tropes
- This trope falls victim to itself, as many non-Brits (Americans, mostly) confuse "British" with "English". Mention of the other four 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...unplesantness.
Video Games
- Fable, anyone?
- Of course, 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 Dungeon Keeper and their other games.
Web Original
- At the Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, 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.
- "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). House, born on Gerunsey and taken to Canada at age 9, was a professor of Folklore in New York when the record was made (1952), and I remember when it was first issued as being the first examples I had heard of most of these dialects. Being a born and bred U Sian I can't swear to the accuracy. Certainly the first time I ever heard "On Ilkley Moor Bar t'At"!
Webcomics
- In Sluggy Freelance's "Lara Kroft-Macaroni-And-Cheese" Arc, the titular character character speaks in a Cockney accent. The Tomb Raider character who is being spoofed speaks in RP.
- Turn Signals On A Land Raider Has Corporal Cavendish, a on-and-off character who appears when models have to be proxied due to breakage...
Western Animation
- Wakko Warner in Animaniacs speaks with a Liverpool-ish accent, despite the fact that his siblings don't. He was intended to sound like Ringo Starr.
- Anti-Cosmo on The Fairly Oddparents talks with a British accent, simply to make him sound more intellegent than his fairy counterpart.
