The “British” accent dosn’t exist. Many Americans for some reason think Britain only comprises of England, or more specifically, London - this is total ignorance, and I’m here to rectify that.
Great Britain is divided into 4 “sections”, if you will: England, Northern Ireland (Not the South, that’s a completely different country altogether), Scotland, and Wales, and of all those parts, England has the most diverse array of accents.
For the sake of length, I’ll be doing only a very short post on English accents but will get to accents from other regions in other posts.
England is split up into 48 counties, or shires as depicted below
Each county has a distinct accent, as well as individual colloquialisms that some parts of England don’t even use. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll just divide the accents into “Northern” accents, and “Southern” accents.
Northern accents typically drop consonants and don’t have much diction, for example, a Yorkshire accent, a Mancunian (From Manchester) accent, which dosn’t like the letter “h” too much, and a Scouse accent (From Liverpool), which emphasises “c” and “ch” sounds and is considered “whiny”.
Me personally, my accent is North West, and one of my parents is Scottish and the other a Londoner, so I have a hybrid of Northern and Southern accents which could be defined as a “Cheshire” accent.
And if you’re going really “up north”, you’ve got a Geordie, (from Newcastle) accent, or basically Hagrid from Harry Potter. And yes, I have linked you to an episode of the Hairy Bikers because their Geordie is a perfect example.
West country accents are just.. I can’t describe them really. They’re a breed of their own, just listen.
Southern accents put a lot of emphasis on vowels and usually drag them out, but some (Like inner London accents or “Cockney”) drop a lot of consonants too. A Cockney accent is usually one of the two accents people think of when “Britain” is mentioned, the other is “Queens English” which is the stereotypically posh Southern accent which absolutely nobody sounds like unless they’re from the Royal family or are over the age of 70.
A “chavvy” or “street” Southern accent is usually atributed to Essex or East London.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is, if you want to create or portray a British character, or more specifically, an English character, please, for the love of god, put some effort into scoping out accents instead of just assuming they’ll speak like they’re from London when they’re actually better suited to be from from Yorkshire.
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