England

Great Britain

Varieties of English. The international spread of English, Regional variation.

The regional accents of English speakers show great variation across the areas where English is spoken as a first language. This article provides an overview of the many identifiable variations in pronunciation, usually deriving from the phoneme inventory of the local dialect, of the local variety of Standard English between various populations of native English speakers.

Local accents are part of local dialects. Any dialect of English has unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term "accent" describes only the first of these, namely, pronunciation. See also: List of dialects of the English language.

Non-native speakers of English tend to carry over the intonation and phonemic inventory from their mother tongue into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English.

Among native English speakers, many different accents exist. Some regional accents, such as Pennsylvania Dutch English, are easily identified by certain characteristics. Further variations are to be found within the regions identified below; for example, towns located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Manchester such as Bolton, Oldham and Salford, each have distinct accents, all of which form the Lancashire accent, yet in extreme cases are different enough to be noticed even by a non-local listener. There is also much room for misunderstanding between people from different regions, as the way one word is pronounced in one accent (for example, petal in American English) will sound like a different word in another accent (for example, pearl in Scottish English).

Accents and dialects vary widely across the United Kingdom; as such, a single "British accent" does not exist, but someone could be said to have an English, Welsh, or Scottish accent although these all have several different sub-types.

There is considerable variation within the accents of English across England.

Two sets of accents are spoken in the West Country, Cornish (primarily in South Cornwall) and West Country (the counties of Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Dorset (not as common in east Dorset), Wiltshire (again, less common in eastern Wiltshire), and also in East Cornwall).

The accents of Northern England are also distinctive including a range of variations: Northumberland, County Durham, Teesside, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, Cumbria, Lancashire with regional variants in Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn, Manchester, Preston, Fylde, Liverpool and Wigan, Yorkshire is also distinctive, having variations between the North Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.

Whilst many of the Lancashire accents may sound similar, the difference is the 'Scouse' accent, as spoken in Liverpool. Prior to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s the Liverpool accent was not dissimilar to others in Lancashire, except that with Liverpool being close to Wales, there were some Northern Welsh inflections. However, Liverpool's population of around 60,000 in the 1840s was swelled by the passage of around 300,000 Irish refugees escaping the Famine. Liverpool had this influx due to being England's main Atlantic port and a popular departure point for people seeking to embark for a new life in America. So, whilst many of the Irish refugees moved on to other parts of Britain and further afield, many remained in Liverpool and the Liverpool accent became changed forever over the succeeding years. Today, the Scouse accent is completely distinct from others in the North West of England and bears little resemblance to them.

Other accents include a range of accents spoken in the West Midlands (in the major towns and conurbations (The Black Country, Birmingham, Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton) and in rural accents (such as in Herefordshire and south Worcestershire)); the accents of the counties comprising the East Midlands (Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton, and Nottingham), East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire) and the Home Counties (typically Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Berkshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex.)

There is also great variation within London as a borough, with differences between Cockney, North London and South London accents among others.

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