Distinguishing accents in English

Even among native English speakers, as seen below, many different accents exist. Some of the regional accents are easily identified with certain characteristics.

Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English. This page now looks only at variations in the speech of native English speakers.

Table of contents

1 Countries and Regions (in alphabetical order) 2 Australia 3 Canada 3.1 British Columbia 3.2 Cape Breton Island 3.3 Maritimes 3.4 Newfoundland 3.5 Ontario and Quebec 3.6 Prairies 4 England 4.7 Southern English 4.7.1 Home Counties 4.7.2 Cockney 4.7.3 Estuary English 4.7.4 Southeastern English 4.7.5 London 4.7.6 West Country (southwestern) English 4.7.7 East Anglian English 4.8 Northern and Midlands English 4.8.8 Midlands English 4.8.9 Northern English/Liverpool 4.8.10 Northern English/Yorkshire 4.8.11 Northern English/Lancashire 4.8.12 Northern English/Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the northeast 5 Ireland 6 Scotland 7 South Africa 8 United States of America 8.9 African American 8.10 Appalachia 8.11 Boston, Massachusetts 8.12 Brooklyn, New York 8.13 Maine and Downeast 8.14 Midwest 8.15 New England and East Coast 8.16 Old Northwest 8.17 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 8.18 St. Louis and vicinity 8.19 South 9 Wales 10 External Links

Countries and Regions (in alphabetical order)

Australia

(See also Australian English)

The Australian accent varies between social classes and is sometimes claimed to vary from state to state, though this is disputed. Accents tend to be strongest in the more remote areas. (Note that while there are many similarities between Australian accents and New Zealand ones, there are also a number of differences.) The following are some Australian characteristics:

• The Australian vowel system is quite different from that of other dialects. Other standard dialects have tense vowels, lax vowels, and diphthongs. Australian English on the other hand has turned most of the tense vowels into diphthongs, and turned some of what are diphthongs in Received Pronunciation into long vowels, thus replacing the tense-lax distinction (one of quality) with a long-short distinction (one of quantity). The table below shows these.

• Vowels are changed in pronunciation as follows:

Australian Vowel Pronunciation in SAMPA
Australian	Received Pronunciation	Examples
@i/Ii	i:	see
{I	eI	day
AI	aI	my
VU	@U	no
{U	aU	now
1}	u:	soon,through
e:	e@	there
a	V	but
a:	A:	fast, car

• Additionally, the vowels are generally pronounced higher up in the mouth than their English counterparts; [I@] (beard) is often pronounced as [I:] when followed by a consonant; /3:/ (bird) takes on a fronter, more rounded quality; /{/ (bat) has split into two distinct phonemes, so that whereas dad, can (I can do it), bat have a short vowel, bad, can (tin can), pal have a long one.
• 'gone' takes on a peculiar quality: whereas all other /O:/ (born, saw) became [o:], and all /Q/ (hot) became [O], gone stayed as [O:].
• In Victoria, a short e before l is pronounced as a short a, so that celery and salary are homonyms.
• The /l/ sound in "Australia" may be elided; it becomes "Austray-yah".

Reference: Listen to various Australian actors, singers and native speakers. Internationally known actors Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and Sarah Wynter speak in their natural Australian accents when not acting.

Canada

(See also Canadian English; North American English)

Canadian accents vary widely across the country, and the accent of a particular region is often closer to neighbouring parts of the United States. Nevertheless, there are some characteristics that exist across the country, in varying degrees, such as Canadian raising. Canadian actors and announcers used to speak with a Mid-Atlantic accent, similar to that formerly used by actors and announcers in the United States. An exemplar of this is the actor Christopher Plummer.

Regional variations include:

British Columbia

• /aI/ diphthong pronounced /^I/

Cape Breton Island

• Cape Breton Island has a distinct dialect due to settlement by speakers of Acadian French and Scottish Gaelic

Maritimes

• loss of non-prevocalic r
• faster speech tempo
• use of "Eh?" interrogative

Newfoundland

• Newfoundland English is a distinct dialect of the language with its own pronunciation and vocabulary. Please reference that article for more information.

Ontario and Quebec

• subtle Canadian raising, although in Ontario it is often quite strong
• in southwestern Ontario (especially rural areas), some speakers also have aspects of the Midwestern US accent, e.g., "not" sounds like "naht" (/nOt/ --> [nat]), combined with Canadian raising (see USA below).
• accent is slightly modified to signify sarcasm: "not" becomes a heavily stressed "nat", for example.
• in Ontario, widespread use of Eh interrogative.
• more frequent voicing of intervocalic s – in resource, for example
• short a in words like drama; in common with most Canadians, Ontarians and Quebeckers pronounce words of foreign origin (Datsun, Mazda, etc.) as if the vowels are French.
• in Central Ontario (that is, the region around Toronto) in particular, voiced th and d are often not distinguished, the two pronunciations frequently appearing together (Do you want this one or dis one?, for example)

Prairies

• strong Canadian raising, "about" becomes "a boat", but not always, as about sounds like "a bout" to most ears.
• "sing-songy" intonation
• use of "Eh?" interrogative is found more often in the east of Canada.

England

(See also British English)

English accents and dialects vary more widely within the U.K. itself than they do in other parts of the world owing to the longer history of the language within the countries of the U.K. Here are some of the distinctions to be found:

Southern English

• Generally use a broad (rounded) A, so "cast" is pronounced kAst rather than the k{st pronunciation of most northern accents. There are other peculiarities in specific Southern Regions.

Home Counties

• Estuary English (see below) is extremely prevalent in the Home Counties, but where an individual does not adopt this accent:
• Southern and Western Home Counties (i.e. Surrey, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Buckinghamshire) tend to adopt a slightly "posh" (RP) accent.
• Essex in general uses Estuary English, this is in fact where it originated.
• Northern Home Counties (e.g. Herts) is more akin to the West Country rural accent, but with dropped 'h's being common.

Cockney

• Initial h sounds are dropped; i.e. "house" becomes "ouse"; "help" becomes "elp"
• T sounds in the middle of words are replaced with a glottal stop; i.e. "water" becomes "wa>
• Diphthongs shift tongue positioning distinctively, similarly to Australian English

Estuary English

• A broadly spread extension of Cockney, with less emphasis on the dropping of initial 'h's and a more profound presence of the glottal stop. Also compounded by an extremely imprecise understanding of grammar and a propensity to mangle tenses e.g. "Goin' up the mo'-urrway Sat-dee cos it's more be'-ur" (trans. "[I'm] going up the motorway [on] Saturday [be]cause it's more better").
• Complete loss of the subjunctive tense: "I woou'nt do that if I was you"
• Dropping of ly suffix on adverbs. "You havn't done it propper".

Southeastern English

• Terminal "r" is smashed; i.e. "doorway" becomes "doe-way", "forever" becomes "forevuh"
• Unstressed vowels are also smashed

London

• The tongue is more forward in the mouth
• Words can be overpronounced
• th becomes f or v, depending on whether or not it is voiced. "Fo'i fouzand fevvers on a frush's froat."
• h replaced by glottal catch, as in the last example

West Country (southwestern) English

• Among other things, inital "s" is pronounced as "z"; "r"s are pronounced.
• In the Bristol area a terminal "a" is often followed by an intrusive "l". Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle and Normal.

East Anglian English

• "beautiful" pronounced as "bootiful", "huge" as "hooj", and so on
• "eye" and "I" are pronounced "oy", "right" is "royt", and so on
• high intonation throughout most of a sentence

Northern and Midlands English

• Generally use a flat a, so "cast" is pronounced k{st rather than the kAst pronunciation of most southern accents. This applies everywhere north of (and including) Birmingham. There are other peculiarities in specific northern Regions.

Midlands English

• Among other things, "bus" pronounced as "buzz", and flat "a" is used, as in the northern accents (below)
• Dialect verbs are used, e.g. am for are, ay for is not (related to ain't), bay for are not, bin for am or, emphatically, for are. Hence the following joke dialogue about bay windows: "What sort of windas am them?" "They'm bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owner's sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright" (i.e. "He ay [isn't] right", a phrase implying somone is saft [soft] in the jed [head]).

Northern English/Liverpool

• The tongue is swallowed, cutting off nasal passages and making speech sound as if the speaker has a cold.
• "th" is often pronounced as "d", for example "there" becomes "dere" usage "oarite dere la!" ("all right there, lad!")
• distinctive rolling "ck" sound from the Welsh influence, sounds like the speaker is clearing their throat! usage:"gerr off me backk will yer!"
• "arr, ey!" distinctive sound of a disappointed Scouser,

Northern English/Yorkshire

• The "u" sound is pronounced like the standard English "oo", so "luck" is pronounced (in SAMPA) lUk. The difference between the Yorkshire Pronunciation of "look" and "luck" is difficult to hear, the "look" vowel being slightly longer in duration and tending towards the SAMPA lyk pronunciation.
• Shortening of "the" to "t", as in "I'm going down 't pub".
• Many dialect words, for example "owt" and "nowt" for "anything" or "nothing", "bevvy" for drink etc.
• Sing-song intonation, as in Swedish, Welsh, and the US accent from the film Fargo.
• Use of the singular second-person pronoun "thou" and "thee".
• In all cases of the past tense of "to be" is "were": "I were wearing t'red coat, but he were wearing t'green one".
• In the South-East of Yorkshire vowel shifts so "i" becomes "ee", and "ee" becomes "i", so "Where have you been last night" becomes "wherst tha bin last neet".
• Someone from the US commented that a broad Yorkshire accent does not even sound like English!

Northern English/Lancashire

• The "u" sound is pronounced like the standard English "oo", so "luck" is pronounced (in SAMPA) lUk. The "oo" in look is pronounced like the "oo" in "boom", so look is look is the SAMPA luk.
• "o" pronounced "oi", so "hole" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "hOIl".
• Many dialect words.

Northern English/Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the northeast

• The Newcastle dialect is known as Geordie and the accent is described in the article of that name. The accent of the neighbouring areas is broadly similar.

Reference: For London accents, listen to old recordings by Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. Ozzy Osbourne has a Midlands accent. For Liverpool accents, recordings by The Beatles (George Harrison's accent was the thickest of the four of them), Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, Echo and the Bunnymen. A Yorkshire (Leeds) accent can be detected in interviews with Melanie Brown of The Spice Girls.

Ireland

(See also Irish English)

• Pronounces "r" whenever it occurs in a word.
• "l" is clear wherever it occurs in a word, as in French
• 'Pure' vowels: "boat" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "bo:t", and cane is pronunced "ke:n"
• (in Republic of Ireland) The "th" sound is replaced with a dental stop (Irish "three" and Spanish "tres" start with same consonant cluster)
• (in Ulster) The "oo" sound is brought forward, so "boot" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "b}t"

Scotland

There are several Scots dialects and many Scots accents. For more information see the article, Scots language. The information below describes how a Scots speaker will pronounce standard English when trying to make it easy for other English speakers to understand what is being said rather than when speaking to other Scots.

• pronounces "wh" differently from "w" (watt and what, weather and whether, wales and whales do not sound the same).
• Does not pronounce technology as if it were spelled teknology.
• Pronounces "r" whenever it occurs in a word.
• 'Pure' vowels: "boat" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "bo:t", and cane is pronunced "ke:n"
• The "oo" sound is brought forward, so "boot" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "b}t"

The Edinburgh accent is exemplified by Sean Connery or the film Trainspotting; the Glasgow accent by Billy Connolly. see http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/sse.htm

South Africa

(See also South African English)

South Africa has 11 official languages, one of which is English. Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers, tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection, which is very similar to a Dutch accent. Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles a middle to upper class British accent modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection, due to the Afrikaner influence. Native South African English speakers also insert a number of Afrikaans loanwords into their speech. Please add information about the English accents of native speakers of African languages.

United States of America

(See also American English; North American English)

The standard American English accent is the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia. Standard American makes a good reference dialect because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, tends to retain distinctions between unstressed vowels, and is considered a "neutral" dialect. However, /o/ and /ah/ tend to merge in standard American (which means that "father" and "bother" rhyme). This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation. American actors and announcers used to speak with a Mid-Atlantic accent, which was an affected hybrid of educated American and British accents.

Regional and cultural variations within the USA include the following:

African American

(Sometimes referred to as Ebonics)

This is actually a cluster of dialects with numerous regional variations. The below describes some features found in many (but not necessarily all) varieties, and emphasizes a stereotype that may or may not be true in some areas of the United States. This dialect is not exclusive to African-Americans and might be more appropriately titled Urban.

• Use of double negative; in some speakers, multiple negation is used for emphasis: "I ain't never done nuthin' like that."
• Use of "ain't" where Standard American English (SAE) uses "isn't".
• Auxiliary "be" + verb is used for the habitual aspect of a verb. "It be dat way sometime" = "It's like that, sometimes".
• Auxiliary "done" + verb is used for the completive aspect of a verb "He done gone to the store" means that he completed the errand he set out to do. SAE has no direct equivalent to this.
• Some speakers may pronounce /D/ as [d] initially and as [v] between vowels; and /T/ as [f].
• People who live in the northern USA may perceive the dialect as having a distinct "Southern" quality to it, because of a tendency to monophthongize /ay/ as [a:] (see "USA (Southern)" below).
• African American dialects are not only non-rhotic, but in some cases may also delete /r/ between vowels. Thus, "Carol never made drop rate art" may be pronounced "Ca'ol nevah made drop rate aht" [k}.ol nE.v@ med drOp ret a:t]. "Store" is pronounced "stow".

Appalachia

(South Midlands, Tennessee through Texas)

• monopthongization of /ay/ as [a:], eg. most dialects' "I" --> "Ah" in the South.
• raising of initial vowal of /au/ to /æu/ (/{u/); the initial vowel is often lengthened and prolonged, yielding /æ:w/.
• nasalization of vowels, esp. diphthongs, before /n/.
• raising of /æ/ to /e/; can't --> cain't, &c.
• South Midlands speech is rhotic. This is diagnostic for Yankees to whom it all sounds "Southern."

Boston, Massachusetts

• loss of postvocalic <r>, except when the following word begins with a vowel. "Park the car in Harvard Yard" becomes "Pahk the car in Hahvahd Yahd."
• "I had no idea" becomes "I had no eye-dee-err"

Reference: Speeches of John F. Kennedy

Brooklyn, New York

• loss of postvocalic <r>.
• faster speech tempo
• /OI/ pronounced /3r/ and /3r/ pronounced /OI/. When asked if the apartment had heat in the winter the landlord replied "Shua. We got a brand new url boyna." ("Sure. We got [purchased] a brand new oil burner.")

Reference: Old Bugs Bunny cartoons (Bugs has a Brooklyn accent). The accent is often exaggerated, but it still does exist to some degree with many Brooklyn natives. Also, Groucho Marx has a passable Brooklyn accent.

Maine and Downeast

• Older native Maine (USA) residents pronounce "yes" or "yeah" as "ayuh", with the stress on the second syllable.

Midwest

(Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Lower Peninsula of Michigan)===

• /O/ merged with /a/. "not" sounds like "naht" (/nOt/ --> [nat]), "opportunity" like "ahppertunity" (NOTE: This is standard in Connecticut, an eastern state.)
• "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel.
• preservation of non-prevocalic <r>

New England and East Coast

• (also South:) loss of non-prevocalic r in some dialects.
• faster speech tempo

Old Northwest

(Minnesota (esp. rural), Upper Peninsula of Michigan, North Dakota)

• /O/ merged with /a/. ("Father" rhymes with "bother".)
• Preservation of non-prevocalic <r>
• Canadian raising: see section on Canada.
• "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel (SAMPA [U]).
• Use of German/Scandinavian "ja" as an affirmative filler or emphatic; Standard US English "yes" is used to answer questions and to start an explanation.
• Tendency towards a "sing-songy" intonation (the area's earliest European settlers were primarily Scandinavian, and this has influenced the local dialect). More recently, this has been reinforced by an influx of Asians, most of whom speak tonal languages.
• Known as "Yooper" in Upper Pensinsula of Michigan [UP = Yoo-Pee]
• For a stereotypical (if somewhat overdone) example of Minnesotan, refer to the movie Fargo. For a more normative example, Garrison Keillor speaks with a typical urban Minnesota accent.
• "You" ==> "Youse"
• W ==> V, particularly well=>vell and what=>vaht
• Perhaps to a greater degree than other parts of the United States, standard American English pronunciation is replacing the regional accent, probably because there is less cultural identity wrapped up in the language than elsewhere

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh accents have a number of distinctive features. Please reference that article for more information.

St. Louis and vicinity

• Older St. Louisans (probably born earlier than 1960) tend to merge the /Or/ sound as in for with the /Ar/ sound of far. This accent is otherwise a typical Midwestern General American-like accent.
• Many younger speakers are picking up the Northern Cities Vowel Shift heard in Chicago, eastern Wisconsin, and much of Michigan. This vowel shift causes words like cat /k&t/ to become more like /kEt/ and talent /'t&l,nt/ to be more like /'tj&l,nt/ or /'tEl,nt/. Younger generations also tend to pronounce not more like /nAt/ (naht), as do older generations in this area. This does not necessarily mean a complete merger between /A/ and /O/, however.

South

(Coastal Virginia, North Carolina through Louisiana))

• monopthongization of /ay/ as [a:], eg. most dialects' "I" --> "Ah" in the South.
• (also some East Coast:) loss of non-prevocalic r.
• slower speech tempo
• putting two modals together as if the second were an infinitive: "I might could do that."
• Coastal Southern speech is non-rhotic.

Wales

• Distinctive pitch differences giving a "sing-song" effect

Welsh accents can be heard from the actors Richard Burton and (to a lesser extent) Anthony Hopkins, or on recordings of Dylan Thomas or in the music of Catatonia, Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey.

External Links

• The Speech Accent Archive, over 250 audio samples of people with various accents reading the same paragraph.