The Queen's English
December 3, 2014 9:39 PM   Subscribe

One Woman, 17 British Accents: Have you ever wondered about the locations of accents used by British celebrities such as Maggie Thompson, Richard Burton, and Sean Bean? As part of the Anglophenia series, actress and comedian Siobhan Thompson takes us on a one-woman tour of regional accents of the British Islands.
posted by happyroach (66 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not totally spot on, of course- Ms Thompson doesn't specialise in British voice acting. But nevertheless, a very clear and light-hearted explanation of regional accents that is likely to help people who just want to identify the tone-origin of their favourite actor.
posted by The Zeroth Law at 10:00 PM on December 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


That was worth it just to finally understand how the heck "Siobhan" is supposed to be pronounced.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:15 PM on December 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


Shiv-on.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:17 PM on December 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah these are broad, comic approximations of sterotypes that would be familiar to a British speaker but definitely not the sort of thing you'd audition with if you didn't want to be laughed out of the room.

One I've been having trouble pinning down is what Pierce Brosnan was using in "A Long Way Down". A reviewer or two has panned it as bad Cockney, but I don't think so. It sounds like something genuine but I can't place it; though I'm sure I've heard at least one sports commentator using it.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:20 PM on December 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


> No MLE? No comment

Thanks for the link, Bwithh; that was fascinating!
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 10:29 PM on December 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


I have a friend at work whose accent, to my ear, sounds just like Milady in the Musketeers BBC show (plus she kinda looks like her.)

I work at a big, international company so I kind of collect accents as a hobby. "OK, so I've met someone from [Here]"

Just came up in casual converstaion a few weeks ago, so I showed her a video and while she thought it was *close* she made a point to mention you can sometimes distiguish accents between *towns.*

And there I was all proud I could tell Welsh from Scotish.
posted by Cyrano at 10:59 PM on December 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


I kind of hate videos like this. Not because it's not good at what it is; it's fine. But because whenever I search for "[place name] accent" I get stuff like this instead of videos of people with the actual accent. (And there are many, many videos on YouTube of people doing this kind of thing much less well.)

It can be really frustrating.
posted by ocherdraco at 11:11 PM on December 3, 2014 [5 favorites]


ocherdraco, this
posted by Zerowensboring at 11:18 PM on December 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


How about this?
posted by doctor_negative at 11:42 PM on December 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


A person can basically learn everything about the Glasgow Patter by watching Burnistoun obsessively. (Which I heartily recommend, since it's wildly hilarious even before you understand what they're actually saying.)
posted by koeselitz at 12:15 AM on December 4, 2014 [6 favorites]


No MLE? No comment

I always think of that as the ... Valley Girl of England.
It's how all my young relatives speak.

Even the ones that have never lived in the Valley..umm, I mean, London.
posted by madajb at 12:17 AM on December 4, 2014


I hate so much that Sean Bean's name doesn't rhyme
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:17 AM on December 4, 2014 [18 favorites]


I always enjoyed Adam & Joe talking about an American dialogue coach doing a "British" accent.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:20 AM on December 4, 2014 [8 favorites]


Her Birmingham accent sounds like a bad South African accent.
posted by PenDevil at 1:22 AM on December 4, 2014


I'm in agreement on the seth effrican brummy accent. A nice video all the same.
posted by bystander at 1:46 AM on December 4, 2014


These are really badly done; it was actually too embarrassing for me to listen to all the way through.
posted by AFII at 2:01 AM on December 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


I've tried to watch this video before and couldn't finish it then and can't now. I'm sorry, but it's absolutely terrible to the point of insult. What carries her through is heavy reliance on bad, outdated stereotypes about the sounds, words, and phrases that are associated with large groups of people, and her performance of those stereotypes is equally appalling. For example, her posh RP, "I do love you, but you're so terribly, terribly poor." or her London/Cockney "Get outta my pub, go on, get out of my pub!" Nevermind that she hangs onto her r's, her American 'a' vowel, fillers and other discourse markers that are not typically British, and several features generally associated with American (or just not-British) prosody. Plus, when she gets into her sweeping stereotypical phrases, she exaggerates them way out, beyond comedy. The London/Cockney was a screaching, nasally mess. And don't even get me started on the t's in "Shuut it, you tart!"
posted by iamkimiam at 2:03 AM on December 4, 2014 [13 favorites]


i wondered about the r's, too - i know little about british accents, but there were too many r's in a lot of those

also, that burnistown link - my god, that's hard to understand
posted by pyramid termite at 2:12 AM on December 4, 2014


It's a fun video but most of these are bad caricatures... she's basically doesn't even bother with the notorious tricky Geordie accent.

And of course no East Midlands... no-one does East Midlands (well apart from Angelina Jolie)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:19 AM on December 4, 2014


I hate so much that Sean Bean's name doesn't rhyme

It's correctly pronounced "shawn bhawn", at least round my gaff.
posted by sobarel at 3:18 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


Her Birmingham accent sounds like a bad South African accent.

I've met that one in real life!


The problem with the Birmingham accent is that it can change as you walk down the street from the Kings Heath High Street Sainsbury's 2.5 miles to the next Sainsbury's in Maypole.
posted by srboisvert at 3:18 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


These are really badly done

Brit here - I thought these were pretty good. Even the dodgy Birmingham started very wobbly but she got into it.
posted by colie at 3:39 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


I love this, simply because I can absolutely hear any of my East Anglian neighbors deploying her 'I dun dropped my computer in the fan and now it don't work' in my head with almost no effort. The accent might need some work, but the choice of phrase is perfect.
posted by still bill at 3:45 AM on December 4, 2014


I'm in Britain (though not British) and I think these are all horrible attempts. This one by Andrew Jack is the best I have come across (Scouse not withstanding).
posted by kariebookish at 4:15 AM on December 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


The East Anglian one was one of her better accents, which isn't saying a lot. As soon as she got past Wales they rapidly fell to bits. East Anglian is hard for a Westcountry person like me, because it somehow combines elements of the West (Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire) with bits of Essex via Suffolk. When I first heard the accent I couldn't place it at all.

I've married into a Birmingham/Black Country family and, as srboisvert says, the accents in that part of the world are many really granular in the way they change from area to area. For a start, my in-laws are most definitely not from Birmingham - they're from Sutton Coldfield, and you'd better not forget it. My sister-in-law has a much more distinctive 'brummie' voice than my wife, who has been a lot more geographically mobile through her life. Any attempt I make to put on a Birmingham accent (I'm better than average at accents) is apparently far too Black Country to be believable. I have a lot of trouble placing West Midlands accents, but my wife seems to have an almost magical knack of placing someone from Walsall or Cannock or Solihull.

I suppose it's not quite so magical, really. I grew up in Cornwall, and I can normally distinguish West Cornwall from North Cornwall from South Devon or wherever, and I really can't watch TV dramas supposedly set there.

It's hardly any wonder Americans can't get our accents right. The BBC fail at it about 75% of the time.
posted by pipeski at 4:21 AM on December 4, 2014 [8 favorites]


I can tell you all with some authority that she's absolutely atrocious at Scottish accents, especially the Glasgow one.

And she completely missed out the hilarious Dundonian accent, as well as anything from the north east, i.e. the "Doric".

"Southern" Ireland? Nice way to piss off an entire country.
posted by alan2001 at 4:38 AM on December 4, 2014 [6 favorites]


I am in love. I could listen to her all day.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:22 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've met that one in real life!

Ugh, there is nothing worse than the bitter South African emigre' who is still pissed that the country hasn't consumed itself in flames and massive slaughter of the white population the second their plane lifted off the tarmac at OR Tambo.
posted by PenDevil at 5:32 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


As an American who loves British comedy and tries to quote or imitate it whenever possible, I find that my "British accent" tends to bounce back and forth between all of these accents, sometimes even during the course of a single sentence. 100% not believable to any Brits, but I definitely have myself fooled into thinking it sounds good. I liked her video, though I found the Andrew Jack video linked by kariebookish to be much better, if less entertaining.
posted by GrapeApiary at 5:46 AM on December 4, 2014


My family are scots (fife and Dundee) and my father has claimed to be able to identify the dundonian accent almost to street level. Whilst I've not seen quite that precise a determination I've seen him identify an accent to a neighborhood (and the other person identify his neighborhood by accent)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:47 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


I find that my "British accent" tends to bounce back and forth between all of these accents, sometimes even during the course of a single sentence.

I have a friend who suffers from what we call Wandering Accent Syndrome. She was born in North Wales but then grew up near Liverpool, went to university in Manchester and now lives in Yorkshire - often in the course of a long utterance her accent will go on a similar journey. She even goes a bit Geordie after a few pints sometimes, although we've yet to work out a rational reason for that...
posted by sobarel at 5:56 AM on December 4, 2014


It's a party trick. I pretend to stick pennies up my nose at parties and feel sure if I posted a video of it everybody would be all ooh, I once ad a penny up me nose and tweren't like that at all, no.
posted by maxsparber at 6:14 AM on December 4, 2014 [8 favorites]


In my opinion they're really nowhere near as bad as some people are making out. (And the idea that they'd be no good for performance auditions is undermined by the genuinely horrible approximations you get on TV and in film all the time…) However, grumbling bitterly about them and criticizing them all for being absolutely terrible is a fine British response that makes me proud of my compatriots.
posted by oliverburkeman at 6:18 AM on December 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


I have a friend who suffers from what we call Wandering Accent Syndrome. She was born in North Wales but then grew up near Liverpool, went to university in Manchester and now lives in Yorkshire

She should have auditioned for Constantine.
posted by biffa at 6:23 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wandering Accent Syndrome

Eventually, for some reason, you always get sucked into the whirlpool that is Rubbish Pakistani.
posted by Segundus at 7:23 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


This one by Andrew Jack is the best I have come across (Scouse not withstanding).

Offended that the south Wales accent was essentially described as "drunk".

Innit.
posted by eddydamascene at 7:42 AM on December 4, 2014


I've tried to watch this video before and couldn't finish it then and can't now. I'm sorry, but it's absolutely terrible to the point of insult. What carries her through is heavy reliance on bad, outdated stereotypes about the sounds, words, and phrases that are associated with large groups of people, and her performance of those stereotypes is equally appalling. For example, her posh RP, "I do love you, but you're so terribly, terribly poor." or her London/Cockney "Get outta my pub, go on, get out of my pub!" Nevermind that she hangs onto her r's, her American 'a' vowel, fillers and other discourse markers that are not typically British, and several features generally associated with American (or just not-British) prosody. Plus, when she gets into her sweeping stereotypical phrases, she exaggerates them way out, beyond comedy. The London/Cockney was a screaching, nasally mess. And don't even get me started on the t's in "Shuut it, you tart!"

Thompson's English, which is odd.
posted by Thing at 7:44 AM on December 4, 2014


Would you mind elaborating on this, Thing? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:28 AM on December 4, 2014


I have a friend who suffers from what we call Wandering Accent Syndrome.

I have this. Drives me batty. I was a navy brat growing up, and spent my youngest years in the south - Biloxi, Newport News, and Corpus Christi, notably. Then when I was 8, my parents moved to MN.

I was teased pretty relentlessly about my drawl by those kids with their long vowels, and worked hard to get rid of it.

But anytime someone with a southern drawl starts talking to me - or I get the right combination of drunk/tired - it comes raging back. And because I tried to bury it under a nice Midwestern nowhere accent, it sounds like a bad caricature of a relentless hick.

Accents are funny things, yo.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:32 AM on December 4, 2014


Can anyone comment on how accurate Peter Sellers' take on accents is? I love this video, but I've always wondered....
posted by magstheaxe at 8:34 AM on December 4, 2014


her performance of those stereotypes is equally appalling. For example, her posh RP, "I do love you, but you're so terribly, terribly poor.

I think you've taken this very seriously for what was surely not intended to be any kind of social commentary. She was partly imitating the way accents like posh RP and London are performed on TV and you definitely hear actors doing 'shut it you tart' type accents on Eastenders, for example.
posted by colie at 8:38 AM on December 4, 2014


Would you mind elaborating on this, Thing? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

Er, Thompson is English, isn't she? It's odd that she has the speech characteristics you're claiming.
posted by Thing at 8:47 AM on December 4, 2014


I've been enjoying all the ranting I've been hearing about Welsh actor Matt Ryan's accent in Constantine. The consensus seems to be that he's all over the map in any given sentence. It actually makes me want to watch it, once.

Renee Zellweger nailed her accent in Bridget Jones, though it's been criticized as being a shade posh for her character. She reportedly worked her ass off for it, even working incognito at a job in North London. To my moderately experienced ear it sounds just about perfect for what it is, though. Getting the O as in "home" right is almost impossible to someone not born to it.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:47 AM on December 4, 2014


Jude Law's attempt at an Aberdonian accent in his new movie makes this seem genius.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 8:54 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jude Law just can't do accents. His Russian accent in Enemy at the Gate sounded terrible. I am still not entirely sure whether his character in Rancid Aluminium was supposed to be Irish or Russian, but if you haven't seen it I don't recommend watching it to find out. His American accent is awful too.
posted by tinkletown at 9:01 AM on December 4, 2014


You're right in that I do tend to take these things much more seriously than most (I am a sociolinguist, but I am trying to stop). But I would contend that while these things aren't necessarily intended to be social commentary, they implicitly are. It's a performance of identities, which spread knowledge about how people sound, act, carry themselves, and even what they value and care about (e.g., money, alcohol, whatever else). When these performances are exaggerated representations, or are based on inaccurate perceptions of large groups of people, they perpetuate negative stereotypes about those they represent. It can be damaging, even if on the face of it the performance itself is fleeting or otherwise seemingly benign. At the least harm, it can be silly and dismissable and that's fine (we all take the piss sometimes), but at worser ends it can be ignorant reappropriation or something even more damaging.

In this case, I'm sure she meant well and no harm. But I feel that it's important to point out the flaws, because it's really easy to evaluate this as an accurate representation and then therefore unintentionally mentally link things like posh RP to the more negative stereotypes about class (yes, RP is historically strongly linked to upper class identities), and not realize that not only does a significant percentage of the British population speak with an RP accent, but that there is a range within RP accents, and so forth with identities, and values/attitudes of those speakers, and on. And same goes for all the other accents, of which there are waaaaay more than 17.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:02 AM on December 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


I've been enjoying all the ranting I've been hearing about Welsh actor Matt Ryan's accent in Constantine.

I can't even watch that show because it's not about assassin pirates.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:02 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Just came here to leave the video of this kid. lots of stereotypes as well, but pretty good.
posted by scolbath at 9:13 AM on December 4, 2014


Just laughing to myself remembering the time Russel Crowe walked out of an interview when questioned over his wavering accent in Robin Hood
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:18 AM on December 4, 2014


A slightly more fluid example of this genre of video (with a better map thing going on) here
posted by IndigoJones at 9:19 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Er, Thompson is English, isn't she? It's odd that she has the speech characteristics you're claiming."

Did some searching and yes, she did grow up in England, but now lives and works in NYC. She does an excellent American accent, which I'm guessing is quite natural to her now. Regardless, if you listen to her video carefully you will hear the r's, the fillers, and the American style prosody and vowels creeping through. Also, British accents are so incredibly diverse, resulting in sound inventories that are quite varied — most British speakers cannot accurately do other British accents, especially the further away from "home" you get. Often it's things like the pronunciation of t's and r's that are the giveaways.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:31 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes, noted she was educated in Bristol and it really shows in that the first accent she does that actually sounds real is Welsh.

It's hilarious that she uses Sam Gamgee as an example of West Country given that Sean Astin is American and his accent caused the facepalm that went 'round the world. She's right insofar as it's an impression of a West Country accent, which presumably the dialogue coaches thought would be the right rural signifier for Sam, but it's an odd thing for her to choose.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:47 AM on December 4, 2014


She missed out Estuary English, spoken by millions of Brits like the great Russell Brand.
posted by colie at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2014


Can anyone comment on how accurate Peter Sellers' take on accents is?

It's a moving target, because 1963 is not 2014, and accents change. Sellers' talent for mimicry was immense but impressionistic: he's indicating region and class and register (and creating characters) with just a few sketched signifiers. His John Arlott's pretty good, but Arlott was almost a caricature of himself.

most British speakers cannot accurately do other British accents, especially the further away from "home" you get.

And sometimes it's hardest to mimic accents that are geographically close. I can't do Geordie (or even Durham) to save my life, because the vowels and intonation are in all the wrong places, but I can get to something approximating Scouse without dislocating my jaw.
posted by holgate at 10:04 AM on December 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


most British speakers cannot accurately do other British accents, especially the further away from "home" you get.

An English friend once told me that it was a fine English acting tradition to do broad or completely off renditions of accents from other regions of the country.

Of course he may have been trying to comfort me after my role as an English person in a student film, where my accent was said to wander up and down the breadth of the English Isles, with occasional stopovers in Boston.

Also, I have to admit that I liked this video because it helped me place an ex-housemate. "The West! Bob was from the West if England! He totally sounds like that!"
posted by happyroach at 10:34 AM on December 4, 2014


When these performances are exaggerated representations, or are based on inaccurate perceptions of large groups of people, they perpetuate negative stereotypes about those they represent.

Yes I agree. I personally actually have the 'shut it you tart' accent that she does in the video (honestly), having grown up in Islington with no money, and it holds you back in your career if you don't consciously work to soften the edges.
posted by colie at 11:03 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Vaguely remember recently some stuff on people changing their accent depending on who they are talking to, which social group they are in etc. I've definitely got relatives who have a different, posh, phone voice.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2014


Interesting that she places the Downton servants in Lancashire, given there's textual suggestion (and fan legend on top) that places Downton somewhere in a triangle between Ripon, Thirsk, and Easingwold (all in North Yorkshire).

Anyway, I've been broadening my experience of British accents, and I expect others as well, with shows like Blue Murder set in Manchester and Happy Valley (and its less gory antecedent Last Tango in Halifax) set in West Yorkshire -- not to mention Downton. I'm usually at around 85% comprehension. (I don't like subtitles because I start watching the subtitles instead of the show -- it's like reading a script with something distracting you oh yes that's the action -- but I watch a lot of these with a hearing impaired family member who without subtitles, on a show like HV, is around 15% comprehension, unfortunately.) I apologize for the Mail link here, but there was an article there about how recent programming has helped swing Northern viewers to the BBC, historically more of an ITV demographic thanks to the former's London-centric approach. Something mentioned there is the Generic Northern Accent, used by actors and apparently endorsed by showrunners, but grating to natives. (Having watched most of Kingdom, set in East Anglia, even I could tell that the accents were complete rubbish. It was also one of those shows that didn't bother much with casting people who looked at all like their characters' relatives....)

people changing their accent depending on who they are talking to

This is called code-switching. In the US it's frequently adopted by minorities, especially African-American, as a matter of unconscious habit, but very few dominant/in groups tend to do it, with a possible exception of politicians on the prowl in the interior of the country (like Bush and his comes-goes Texas accent).
posted by dhartung at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2014


Something mentioned there is the Generic Northern Accent, used by actors and apparently endorsed by showrunners, but grating to natives.

There's also a casting in-joke about the generic/parody West Country accent she uses, which they call "Mummerset". Casting calls often include the regional dialect needed, if relevant, and I've heard of them actually saying "(NO Mummerset)".
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wandering Accent Syndrome reminds me of my excuse for my execrable handwriting, where I pretend that each letter is actually a perfectly formed example of a different typeface to every other letter.

I'm fascinated by code switching - I grew up in a middle class family in a posh neighbourhood, went to school in a rough area, then worked for several years as first a builder and then as an upmarket hospitality role where you were expected to basically role play as a genteel Hugh Grant for tourists. I no longer really know what my natural voice sounds like and just find myself sliding up and down the scale of RP to Estuary English as appropriate.

Oh, and the accents aren't really as good as she thinks they are. Placing Scottish Hagrid as a West Country accent is a particularly bad start.
posted by forgetful snow at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2014


I've been enjoying all the ranting I've been hearing about Welsh actor Matt Ryan's accent in Constantine. The consensus seems to be that he's all over the map in any given sentence. It actually makes me want to watch it, once.

He occasionally hits a decent middle-class Liverpudlian accent - maybe 25% of the time. The comic character is supposedly working class and would be much more broad, but you would likely expect this to modify if he had been away from the city over time so that's not bad, and broad scouse would not be US TV friendly anyway. Unfortunately he then tends to run up and down the welsh border for decent portions of time.

Generic Northern Accent

Good God, Derek Jacobi in the aforementioned Last Tango in Halifax. Laying it on with a trowel.

As GS notes, shows in the SW UK always means an appalling twisting of the language. Doc Martin is painful for Oo-ahing all over the place, and total inconsistency considering most of the characters are supposed to be from the same village. The teacher is particularly bad but there are plenty of others. The policeman is the only one that sounds like he has ever spoken to a real Cornish person.
posted by biffa at 1:48 PM on December 4, 2014


There was, maybe fifteen years ago, a drama set in Hull. All the actors used generic Yorkshire accents. Do Hull folk sound like those from the rest of Yorkshire? Nur.
posted by Thing at 2:15 PM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


That was worth it just to finally understand how the heck "Siobhan" is supposed to be pronounced.

Shiv-on.

Ooh, I know about this! It's because Irish has funny rules about pronouncing consonants, depending on the surrounding vowels. The h there in "Siobhan" isn't a letter, it's basically a sort of diacritical mark indicating that the b is not really a b. Attempting to apply normal English sound-it-out pronunciation to Irish words results in some very silly things. For example, there's an Irish mythical hero whose name is Fionn mac Cumhaill, which is pronounced "Finn McCool."
posted by axiom at 5:04 PM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


And the first i is there to tell you the s is pronounced as an sh.

Learning to read Irish now, and it mostly comes off as a language created by frustrated Scrabble players who had too many vowels and a few to many bhfs.
posted by maxsparber at 7:26 PM on December 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


Regarding Bwithh's link - Look at his fucking red trousers!
posted by unliteral at 7:48 PM on December 4, 2014


And the first i is there to tell you the s is pronounced as an sh.

The letter e serves a similar role after s. Hence my own name, "Sean."
posted by Iridic at 3:27 PM on December 5, 2014


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