They sometimes sound a little bit drunk.

April 6, 2014 6:16 PM

A tour of accents across the British Isles performed in a single, unedited take.
posted by Obscure Reference (51 comments total)

Direct youtube link.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:23 PM on April 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

That audio was totally edited. I can hear obvious fades at :10, :19, 1:03, and I'd bet there are at least a few more.
posted by chimaera at 6:29 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

So Mrs. Doubtfire is from North Wales?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:47 PM on April 6, 2014

I think the "unedited" claim was tagged on by someone else. Impressive voice talent!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:52 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I liked that! I wished they would do more, across the Anglophone diaspora.
posted by sweetkid at 6:55 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

He didn't have that accent where someone talks for 15 minutes and I don't understand a single word he's saying.
posted by eye of newt at 7:11 PM on April 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

That would be Highlands Scot, eye.
posted by jrochest at 7:14 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I thought Glaswegian was the least intelligible of all accents, you hardly got a sense of that here.
posted by emjaybee at 7:19 PM on April 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm flashing back to when I saw Mike Leigh's Naked, and spent the first five minutes not understanding a goddamn word anyone said, and eventually I caught up, I could hear them, I could follow... And then the drunken Scots showed up. And I couldn't understand a goddamn word. And then I realized that David Thewlis also couldn't understand a goddamn word and I felt better.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 7:48 PM on April 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

There are a lot of accents missing. Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen are three different accents separate from highland speak. There are even differences within cities...most of my family is in Edinburgh and sound similar but one aunt in Dalkeith has a very distinctive accent.
And where are the real Geordies? I struggle to decipher what someone like Ross Noble is saying.
posted by rocket88 at 7:59 PM on April 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

That Glasgow accent was shite.
posted by scruss at 8:02 PM on April 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

I love how the people in the comments (and here) are all "Insufficiently granular! That was a north Yorkshire accent!" I am fairly convinced that British people would be happy to talk about accent gradations on a block-by-block level. Possibly household-by-household.
posted by agentofselection at 8:47 PM on April 6, 2014 [22 favorites]

I struggle to decipher what someone like Ross Noble is saying.

One of the shining moments of QI was Ross Noble floating the idea of a Toblerone-Rolo combo.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:12 PM on April 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

This was enormously disappointing. You can't claim to do a tour of UK and Irish accents and a) ignore the midlands completely, b) be unable to do Liverpool, c) reduce London to two accents only (jokes bruv), d) reduce Scotland to two accents only, e) reduce Ireland to two accents only (there is a place called Cork, for example), f) fs.
posted by motty at 9:53 PM on April 6, 2014 [9 favorites]

My dad's from Scarborough in north Yorkshire, and even though I've listened to that accent my whole life if you head a bit north you can't fuckin' understand a word those Geordie bastards are saying. I'm not sure if aliens landed or what but jesus it's like a second language. They can turn it off but if there's a few natives talking to each other you're just lost.
posted by jimmythefish at 11:23 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's that bit in My Fair Lady where the guy can tell where someone lives down to the block just based on their accent. I used to think that was bullshit.

Then I came to the UK.
posted by nushustu at 12:20 AM on April 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

That was very well done.
posted by Decani at 12:37 AM on April 7, 2014

you can't fuckin' understand a word those Geordie bastards are saying.

posted by jimmythefish at 7:23 AM on April 7


Well, I can, because I had Geordie relatives as a kid. It took me a couple of visits, mind.
posted by Decani at 12:45 AM on April 7, 2014

You can't claim to do a tour of UK and Irish accents and a) ignore the midlands completely, b) be unable to do Liverpool, c) reduce London to two accents only (jokes bruv), d) reduce Scotland to two accents only, e) reduce Ireland to two accents only (there is a place called Cork, for example), f) fs.
posted by motty at 5:53 AM on April 7

"Tour" does not mean "Fully comprehensive visit to every goddamned place in the country", now does it? When you do a tour of Europe do you go, like, absolutely everywhere?

That said, the attempt at the scouse accent was definitely the clunker here.
posted by Decani at 12:51 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

As a Welshman, I can confirm both Welsh accents were dreadful*.
(The North Wales accent was closer to a South Wales Valleys accent like Merthyr)
I assume people from the other parts of the UK feel the same about the accents closest to them.

*Although true to his parting comment, I am a bit drunk.
posted by fullerine at 1:09 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

A Liverpudlian friend told me of the dilemma of going to Manchester for a Liverpool F.C.-Man U. match. There would be kids hanging about waiting for people to park their cars near the stadium. The kids would ask you for the time. The dilemma was that if you answered, they would hear you were from Liverpool and cut your tires. If you didn't answer, they would cut your tires. Liverpool and Manchester are 35 miles apart.
posted by Didymium at 1:25 AM on April 7, 2014 [7 favorites]

No Geordie/Northumbrian? Shame.
I'd love to hear this with accents of America.
posted by evil_esto at 1:53 AM on April 7, 2014

Didymium: I was brought up in Manchester, I knew that ruse about asking people the time but I heard it was practiced in Liverpool on Mancunians.

The accents were an interesting demonstration of the man's range but most were pretty inauthentic and some (Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Liverpool) downright wrong. The man has an impressive CV so I assume this video isn't representative of his abilities.
posted by epo at 2:02 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I thought the Suffolk one wasn't too bad, although between the local patois (my favourite is "bishy barney bee" for ladybird) and the accent a "real" East Anglian can be almost as impenetrable as your common or garden Glaswegian. There were a couple of farmers down the road in my village who sounded like David Bradley's character in Hot Fuzz. Watching that movie was like a little shot of home.
posted by fight or flight at 2:31 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Epo, I'd agree with this being the demonstration model, and something like an actor's exercise (well, he is an actor). That being said, reducing southwestern England to about 1.5 accents felt like he barely slowed down for a roadside slash. Plenty of examples online of any number of attempts (goes for any language/dialect/region), but this attempt made me smile (warning: SLYT and corpsing).
posted by datawrangler at 2:55 AM on April 7, 2014

The Highland accent was shockingly bad. It would have been nice to hear some accents from the islands too. I'm not too surprised that he didnt attempt any Aberdeenshire accent. It's incredibly difficult to do. (I recently watch last years indie film For Those In Peril which is set in the North East. There are some tiny speaking parts by natives but every other actor just does weegie. Terrible film)
posted by gnuhavenpier at 3:46 AM on April 7, 2014

> Liverpool and Manchester are 35 miles apart.

yep and St. Helens and Warrington are between the two cities and sound nothing like either of them
posted by looeee at 5:53 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was very disappointed that Ireland was reduced to just two accents. I was looking forward to hearing an attempt at Waterford! When I lived in Ireland, it seemed to me that guessing what county someone was from based on their accent was a pretty common intra-Irish social game (my father came to visit from our home in Newfoundland; based on his 'natural' accent, people guessed West Cork or Kerry for him; on the other hand, people usually thought I was American [sad trombone]).
posted by erlking at 6:26 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

The 'Highland' accent was more like 'Comedy Isle of Lewis'. Good work on missing out the whole east coast of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland too.

I'm always slightly baffled when I go to the US and you've got folk living fifty or a hundred miles apart with basically the same accent (in the West and Midwest, obvs, the Eastern Seaboard is a bit tighter packed). Glasgow and Edinburgh are forty miles apart and sound completely different, and I can tell if someone is from West Lothian versus Edinburgh, which is less than ten miles.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:28 AM on April 7, 2014

Hey guys, how about instead of talking about how crappy the impressions are, you link to a better example video.

I can't tell the difference, and even after you complain about how crappy the impressions are without giving a proper example, I still can't tell the difference.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:56 AM on April 7, 2014

Ah, the audio is an extract from a radio programme featuring two dialect coaches and so I am guessing is an edited one-take snippet from an interview. The source's headline is pretty cretinous and raises undue expectations for what is merely a parlour trick performed for a radio interview.
posted by epo at 7:01 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

oceanjesse, trawl around this from the British Library, the flash version doesn't work for me so I linked to the HTML only page. Compare Morningside, Edinburgh and (a not very broad) Glasgow.
posted by epo at 7:13 AM on April 7, 2014

oceanjesse - here is a (nsfw) example of an Aberdeen accent. The title says the Torry part of Aberdeen but it sounds more like Balnagask to me.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 7:17 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm always slightly baffled when I go to the US and you've got folk living fifty or a hundred miles apart with basically the same accent (in the West and Midwest, obvs, the Eastern Seaboard is a bit tighter packed). Glasgow and Edinburgh are forty miles apart and sound completely different, and I can tell if someone is from West Lothian versus Edinburgh, which is less than ten miles.

For the most part, people haven't been living in the same geographic area for centuries without a nation wide medium exposing them to other accents. Accents are generally more regionally based than pin point locality based in the US, with a couple exceptions of a few major cities or relics from colonization/immigration days.
posted by Atreides at 7:23 AM on April 7, 2014

Oh sure, I understand the reasons for it. But when I'm in the US (my wife is from Colorado) my bafflement is that American accents can sound so similar over (relatively, to a European) vast distances. A further source of bafflement is people telling me they can't tell the difference between Aberdonian and Cockney. I've been asked if I'm Australian more times than I count too.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:47 AM on April 7, 2014

We have different accents in the Bronx vs Brooklyn meanwhile, in the NYC area.
posted by sweetkid at 7:55 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

you can't fuckin' understand a word those Geordie bastards are saying.

Q: 'Ow d'ye tell a Geordie?

A: Divvent, 'e canna be telt.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 8:01 AM on April 7, 2014 [7 favorites]

>A further source of bafflement is people telling me they can't tell the difference between Aberdonian and Cockney

My wife is from Inverness and is terrible at accents. Recently we were in Aberdeen shopping for a suit and while I was in the changing room I could hear her strike up a conversation with the assistant. He was clearly from somewhere around London and but she asked whereabouts in Aberdeen he was from. She is also convinced she doesnt have an accent.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 8:06 AM on April 7, 2014

A further source of bafflement is people telling me they can't tell the difference between Aberdonian and Cockney.

Differences that are in some way important to you (like whether someone is from Aberdeen or London) are easy to learn and detect; differences that you just don't give a shit about tend are easy to gloss over.

Not a challenge, just as a forinstance, I'd wager that either it's difficult for you to distinguish a stereotypical Blue Ridge Virginia accent from a stereotypical low-country southern accent or that it took you a long time to do so, because why would you give a shit whether someone speaking to you is from near Charlottesville or Charleston?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:49 AM on April 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

ROU_Xenophobe: "
Differences that are in some way important to you (like whether someone is from Aberdeen or London) are easy to learn and detect; differences that you just don't give a shit about tend are easy to gloss over.

Not a challenge, just as a forinstance, I'd wager that either it's difficult for you to distinguish a stereotypical Blue Ridge Virginia accent from a stereotypical low-country southern accent or that it took you a long time to do so, because why would you give a shit whether someone speaking to you is from near Charlottesville or Charleston?"

To a point, yes. However, the differences between 'Blue Ridge Virginia' and 'Generic Southern' are, I think, relatively small, whereas Aberdonian and Cockney are drastically different and audibly so (one is several octaves higher in pitch, for example). I guess I get bemused when people just go 'I can't hear a single difference', when perhaps they mean 'I can hear differences, but can't be bothered to work out which ones denote which origin'.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:15 AM on April 7, 2014

Tha can allas tell a Yorkshireman, but tha can't tell him much.

The NI accent was a bit weak - and there are lots of different NI accents, Belfast being very different from Derry which is distinct from Ballymena etc. But I still thought it was quite an impressive feat to be able to change from one to the other so easily. I'd love to be better at impressions, but there's only a couple I can do convincingly. My husband was worse than me; he couldn't do a Donegal accent without sounding like he was Jamaican.
posted by billiebee at 9:19 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

However, the differences between 'Blue Ridge Virginia' and 'Generic Southern' are, I think, relatively small

...to you, because you don't care, and have never cared, whether someone is from near Charlottesville or Charleston. To me, the difference is immediate and obvious, and don't even use the same basic sounds for some common words.

whereas Aberdonian and Cockney are drastically different and audibly so

...to you, because you care whether someone is from Aberdeen or London.

(one is several octaves higher in pitch, for example)

That's at least the difference between a bass and a soprano, so no.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:54 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

...to you, because you don't care, and have never cared, whether someone is from near Charlottesville or Charleston. To me, the difference is immediate and obvious, and don't even use the same basic sounds for some common words.

I grew up in Charlottesville and have a fair idea of the type of accent associated with Charleston (traveled there a few years ago, but didn't get a real good chance to talk with locals), but I personally think the difference between an Aberdeen accent and a London accent is larger.

And yes, THERE IS a hidden/invisible "r" in Albe(here)marle and the visible U in Staunton should always be ignored.

I do find accents remarkable in Britain and surrounds because of their variety and difference (and I understand the whole distance thing now). Allegedly, a professor of mine's friends decided to bicycle through England, and adopted a fake English accent at every pub they stopped at. They were never called out on their fake accent, as everyone they encountered just assumed it was an accent they had simply never encountered yet.

As an additional aside, I find it kind of interesting that in my interpretation of the upper class accent, it sounds far similar to American accents than to other British accents.
posted by Atreides at 2:44 PM on April 7, 2014

ROU_Xenophobe:
"(one is several octaves higher in pitch, for example)

That's at least the difference between a bass and a soprano, so no."

You've obviously never spoken to an Aberdonian after a couple of drinks. They've got high notes in their speech that would crack a wine glass.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:19 PM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

To be clear, I was just using "near Charlottesville" as shorthand for the rural/mountain folks who go oat of the hoase when they leave home, and whose dialect is pretty low-prestige even in the area.

It's not a big thing. But the answer to "Why can't these people hear that difference that's obvious to me?" is almost never that they're too stupid to, and almost always that they've never needed or cared to because it's completely irrelevant to their lives.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:37 PM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pretty sure I never said anyone was stupid. Just that I was baffled.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:39 PM on April 7, 2014

Sake. Will yis ever houl' yer whist and shut yer bake? Yer doing my fokkin nut, so yis are.
posted by billiebee at 3:48 PM on April 7, 2014

If it makes you feel better Happy Dave, I never heard anyone talk that way growing up. So it kinda goes to the point Of the whole conversation.
posted by Atreides at 6:44 PM on April 7, 2014

Fair enough Dave; I ought not to have said that.

But it shouldn't be baffling that people have trouble distinguishing things that they've never had any reason to distinguish. I expect that neither you nor I could reliably tell whether someone was speaking Cantonese or Mandarin, and those are different languages -- and our lack of skill about that isn't baffling or strange.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:48 PM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd love to hear this with accents of America.
Amy Walker does this. I have no idea how well though.
posted by unliteral at 11:50 PM on April 7, 2014

It warms my cockles that he managed to tell the difference between the many Westcountry accents, and it's probably best for us all that he skipped Bristolian, bastard child of Welsh and Westcountry and the most heinous of the southern accents.

Lack of Brummie or Black Country was a fair old oversight though. And how can you include Scouse but not Manc?
posted by greenish at 3:27 AM on April 8, 2014