American Was Shocked by Accent Differences Between British Region!!

Today We Talk about Accent Differences Between British Regions!

Hope you enjoy the video!

UK Ciara @oncloudciara
US Sophia @sophiasidae

[Merro]

Accents in the UK developed a long time ago before people moved around easily in cars or trains. This means the accents developed in relative isolation from each other, which is why they can be very different over small distances

[geminigal]

I live a couple of hours away from Manchester and I knew all of the words/phrases mentioned because we use a lot of them here as well. Also, even though the UK (England mainly) is so small, you can literally travel 10 minutes away and you'll hear a different dialect or accent. You can't avoid hearing them no matter where you are in the country. I love the range we have here😊

[ffotograffydd]

I find it bizarre that Americans think we all speak with one accent, but not as bizarre as Americans who think they don’t have an accent. 😂

[KenFullman]

"Do you guys always understand each other?" was the funniest moment for me.

[blackenreed]

English from Lancashire.. Born 1953. Never heard "ow bist" before. Typical greeting " 'ello luv" or " 'ello chuck".

[mjwoodroff]

So daps is a shared Severn estuary word, commonly used in South Wales, Somerset, Gloucestershire and North Devon showing that certain words are shared widely between different accents (one of which is heavily influenced by a completely different language, Welsh).

I do also find it interesting that a lot of major slang differences revolve around children/youth. A NY Times quiz published a few years ago was able to give a pretty accurate measure of the area you were from based in slang you used and a lot of identifiers were names of children's games (touch/tag, mob/123 home) and terms to do with school (daps/plimsoles/pumps, bunking/mitching/skiving). I guess children's lives are far more localised than adults, so (previously) developed unique local terms (the internet and social media may just kill that off)

[tonymcfeisty]

ow bist (thee), Ive heard it used in the Black country, which is a dialect that retains features of Early middle English, so closer to English's Germanic Roots, it contains more words of germanic origin than standard English Also it was less influenced by the great Vowel shift that took place between the 15th & 18th centuries. Bist in German means are

[jerry]

They should have got a Geordie and a Glaswegian...

[martinp]

In Sheffield when you say ark, as in ark at him, it means listen to.

[TrekBeatTK]

There are actually MANY American accents too. But mass media, particularly with the creation of the unnatural “Midatlantic” accent in the mid-20th century, homogenized many of them to the public view into a couple broad stereotypes.

[BobmuduUK]

If you want to meet a cockney, you'd struggle to find in our home town.
Most have moved to Essex and Kent.
London is now full of middle class people and foreigners.
It's thought only between 5-15% of Londoners are cockneys, and most of them are older.

[lundypete]

Serviette is a middle class word, and was an attempt by the new middle classes in the late 18th century to sound more "french" and therefore sophisticated. Napkin would be the more aristocratic and traditional word.

[Neofolis]

The accents were mostly caused by the great vowel shift. Because the GVS happened over the course of hundreds of years some changes reached some parts of the country others reached different parts. Technically the UK standard southern accent, which is often regarded as the standard English, is the least authentic, because it's the place that underwent the most change. The regional accents that differ from the southern accent are still pronouncing certain things the way they would have been previously.

[nameless]

The "Queens English" or "posh" is Heightened Received Pronunciation, not RP.
Received Pronunciation (RP), the accent she's talking about, is socially a step below Heightened Received Pronunciation, and is associated with the Gentry or middle class. It's very common in the media as well.
Heightened RP is typically associated with the nobility or upper class. (This is not universally true, though. Prince William, for example, speaks mostly in RP, with the occasional Heightened RP and even Estuary accent enunciation.)
Compare the way King Charles speaks with the way Tom Hiddleston speaks and you can really hear the differences between Heightened RP and RP.

RP is also sometimes confused with Estuary, a South-Eastern/London accent which blends elements of cockney and RP. Because Estuary sits on a bit of a spectrum, people with an Estuary accent who lean more towards the RP end of it are often confused with RP speakers by foreigners, but the regional elements always come through, in particular with how they pronounce the T's.

[BobbyBermuda]

UK has the most accents because English has been spoken there the longest. So the language has had much more time to diversify, regardless of how large the land area is or isn't.

[Lazmanarus]

"Daps" were called that because of the sound they make when they were used to smack you on the arse.
We used that word in Wales too.
" 'Ark at ee" comes from "Hark at ye", here in Wales, we'd use " 'ark at ewe" meaning "Hark at you".

[lorhantononvieira]

I got a friend from Manchester. Adam! Greetings from Brazil 🇧🇷

[taffyducks]

Why use a collective term like “British”, that’s supposed to cover all the cultures and nation of Britain (English, Scottish and the original Brits, the Welsh), instead of using the term “English”?

[matthewwalker]

I grew up in north London and then spent my teens in Worcester and Gloucester and had a friend group from Wales, Manchester and Derbyshire. I use slang terms from all over the place, lol. At school in Worcester, back in the 90s, we all used to say "kecks" for "underpants" and I only just discovered that that actually comes from Liverpool, which is weird because I didn't really know any Scousers - I don't know where we got that from, lol. I guess we just pick things up from TV and British music as well - we have a lot of accents, dialects and regional slang but we're also a pretty small island, so we interact with each other all of our lives and so understand each other and pick up bits and pieces too. I sound very Norf London most of the time but I still do a weird thing where I slip into slight West Country with the odd word and use various slang from all over the gaff.

[troohoste]

No, Cockneys say 'f' and 'v', not 's' instead of 'th'. And why are there so many different accents in the 'small' UK? Because it's much older than America.