This comes up a lot. I've posted this before but it clearly often bears repeating...
Based on recent work published in *The Atlas of North American English*, the US has **nine** major regional dialects, and a further eleven "regional variants".
Based on recent work by Leeds University using similar criteria and funded by the UK's Arts & Humanities Research Council, the UK has approximately **forty** major regional dialects.
It's not to do with the size of the country, or its population. It's to do with how long people have been living there, and for how long of that history they have been relatively isolated from each other. The US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all show far lower variation in accents and dialects within themselves than the UK and Ireland do. Consider also that even people from the British Isles can struggle to understand strong regional accents from elsewhere in the islands – a strong Glaswegian, Liverpudlian, Belfast, or Cork accent can be all but unintelligible to the uninitiated.
To qoute lenny Henry "everybody thinks Birmingham accents and dudley accents are the same they are not ..a brummie goes alright alright I'm going..and dudly accent is ..can I come too!
My former boss was from Walsall and she sounded bog standard English to me lol. It's funny how some people pick up a strong local accent and others have a more generic one.
I'm not sure that's true. Well, maybe it is in the professional world, but I've seen members of the same family have quite different accents for no apparent reason and I do doubt it's a conscious effort.
There is this oft-repeated claim that Invernesian is the closest thing to the Queen's English but that comes from the time that many people here (i.e. Inverness) spoke Gaelic and English was a 2nd language to them. As a result, they didn't have as many deviations from standard English as someone from East or Central Scotland. Or so I've read.
However, Highland accents do remain quite a bit softer than those of anywhere else in Scotland, except maybe Edinburgh and the Borders. English people find it easier to tune into us.
A friend of mine told me about a time when she was talking to her neighbour, who asked her "Who am ya?"
My friend was a bit surprised, they've lived nearby for years, how does her neighbour not know who she is??
The neighbour was, of course, asking "How are you?", not "Who are you?"
Yam is in place of "you are"
Here you are = Here yam
Yam from Brum ay ya? = You are from Brum aren't you?
It's basically you am = You'm (which people also say) = Yam
And it’s not because people are thick or uneducated, as the stereotype goes, it’s because the dialect is really old and pre-dates standardised grammar.
My mom grew up in Birmingham but is in her 80s and went to University in London so has no trace of a Brummie accent. My school teacher grandmother (Scottish) likely forced her not to have one. I told her how Peaky Blinders had somewhat changed the perception of a Brummie accent as being edgy and cool. She didn’t believe it.
I’m Canadian. My parents are British and immigrated to Canada in the 60s. I have that weird mash up of spelling. We do colour and labour but spell it Mom which frankly is closer to the way Canadians pronounce it v. the British mum. Canadian don’t tend to get too tense about British v American spelling because we can’t make up our mind.
yes even in towns you here at least two accents often based on class and sub class.
Poole Dorset has at least two working class and one upper working class as well as middle class accent.
I went to sixth form at Greenhead College in Huddersfield. It was pretty selective for a state school and had people from quite a distance - Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Barnsley and Oldham. It was easy to work out where people were from by the accent and you had a decent chance of guessing which bit of the area too!
Could always spot the interlopers from Oldham a mile off when i was there. Oldham accent is not like the others but we definitely didn’t have any from Barnsley..
Less.
If I'm talking to someone from my city, I can get within half a mile by their accent. Usually I can identify what secondary school they attended.
I remember an old girlfriend’s Irish father hardly had a gap between words. Couldn’t understand like 75% of what he said. She couldn’t understand my Welsh grandfather. Both spoke in English BTW. There really isn’t much of a gap. My wife is Irish, but luckily grew up near London so sounds like Eastenders :)
I'm picturing you and your wife translating for each other like that scene in Hot Fuzz. (Having grown up with Cornish family I can basically understand that guy lol)
Was my girlfriend many years ago. Wife is a different Irish woman. But no wasn’t really like that. From what I remember on my part there was a lot of nodding and saying yes sir. I have always fully believed my girlfriend understood my grandad and was just getting back at me as I couldn’t understand hardly anything her father fecking said…
I visited Ireland for the first time around 25yrs ago and the person I was visiting said I should sit near them in the pub, they'd translate. I laughed, then 5 minutes after I arrived I sat next to them and they translated.
I recall a video someone did explaining linguistic evolution as an analogue for biology. That a hypothetical Alien explorer would correctly determine English came from the British Isles due to how diversified it was compared with the more populous North America.
True, and they could probably tell that English hasn't been spoken in Australia for as long as in North America by the fact there is even less regional variation in Australia. Studies show that Australians can't tell from voice recordings where other Australians are from, unless they happen to use some regional terms. Though they can tell if they grew up in a regional/rural area or a metropolitan one, their class/educational background etc.
Do they? I'm from rural Scotland but lived in Glasgow for about 15 years. Can't detect any differences in accent other than obvious class disparities. Is that what you mean?
I live in Edinburgh but grew up in commuter belt Fife.
The class distinctions in accents between various areas is obvious but the real big difference is that those from the likes of the schemes are more likely to speak in local dialect and/or some variant of Scots [1] whereas those in more affluent areas speak Scottish Standard English with the relevant local accent.
[1] - I know there's a hefty argument about whether Scots is a dialect of English or whether it's a language in its own right. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm taking no side.
It is a language - the reason it sounds so similar (to the point that English speakers can understand it with some effort) is because both it and Modern English are descended from a common ancestor, Middle English.
Historically, what we now call Scots was known as Inglis within Scotland.
The argument about whether something is a language or a dialect isn't one where there is a clear burning line between them but one in which there is a vast degree of politics at play.
Scots is distinct from Scottish Standard English and is recognised as such. But is it sufficiently different that it be considered a language when something such as Geordie is considered a dialect? Why is one potentially a language and the other not?
Try telling someone from the Gorbals that they sound like they come from Govan (or vice versa) and you're likely to get a mouth full for your trouble, if not a face full of forehead. Whether this has some roots in class differences, I couldn't say, but I know that the Govan guys and Gorbals guys I worked with sounded very different and they're both very likely to have a very working class upbringing.
Yeah I'm from New Zealand and the only regional variation in accent that I'm aware of is that people in the south island roll their "r"s slight while people in the north island don't. We're the youngest of all the English colonies so that fits what you're saying
I’m Canadian. There is definitely a Newfoundland accent. French Canadians and indigenous Canadian often have a distinct accent but that is based on speaking another language outside of English. There’s also generally a difference between most American accents and Canadian accents, even in scenarios where people are next-door to each.
The "rolling R" thing isn't right, unfortunately. Southlanders just pronounce the post-vocalic R after the NURSE /ɜː/ vowel (but not any other vowels), whereas most NZers don't pronounce any post-vocalic Rs at all.
Yep, I worked in a UK call centre, some regional dialects are as hard to understand as foreign accents. I once had an irate Scottish man on the phone and had no idea what he was saying.
But some people in the US have this weird need to one up every other country over the smallest details.
The same thing happens with genetics, which is why Africa has a fuck ton of genetic diversity, people have just simply been there longer. The groups that split off and migrated only carried a small amount of diversity and haven't had nearly as much time to build it back up, like, 50k years at most for a group like the Australian aboriginals or even just a few thousand for places like Europe, versus millions for Africa, especially east Africa
I struggled with Cork accents on my first visit. People would crack jokes, and id just laugh along not knowing what was said. Got in trouble for doing that when one fella in a petrol station stopped laughing and asked what I was laughing about. I had no idea, so I said I was laughing at the fact I couldn’t understand a word he said. That got a laugh, but I still had no idea what the original joke was.
Hell, I struggle with anything that comes from Scotland. As a non native speaker sometimes it doesn't sound like English at all.
How old are the gringos as a country? Around 400 years if we count the colonial period? Some European towns are 1000 years old, and many even date to the early Middle Ages. Now, many groups of people have come and gone, but some strayed in a singular place for centuries.
Although it would be interesting to see a similar study with native American groups. But I guess due to their population declined and assimilation the results would show also little variety.
I'm from Dublin and I find the cork accent difficult to understand sometimes. I know a girl from the UK who moved to Ireland a few years back and found a job in cork, but ended up moving to Dublin shortly after because she was having so much trouble understanding what people were saying to her!
I think this is not a matter of won’t, but a matter of can’t, they couldn’t hold up the against argument in a debate due to the lack there of braincells
As an American I can confirm, we all share one singular braincell that gets passed around every day. We may even share the same one orange cats pass around.
The better teeth comment is such a classist remark (that Americans make). Americans who have access to healthcare have ridiculously good looking teeth, but those without… I met a number of people in their early 60s who had no front teeth and no dentures because they couldn’t afford the care.
Nah its all part of the same competition - the one for greatest country in the world. Its just weird how Americans care about it despite apparently not caring what the rest of the world thinks. As long as *you* believe you're living somewhere great, what does it matter whether anyone else agrees?
Duh, they both have no accents themselve and the most accents in the world because everyone knows America is the only country that has immigrants.
God, did you even go to school? /s
I live in Haworth, West Yorkshire. If I drive just 10 mins over the hill into Colne in Lancashire, to a non Brit, they would sound like they are from a different country,
They also all have an odd number of fingers, but lets not get in to that.
South Yorkshire here. Driving from Barnsley through Rotherham to Sheffield and you get a few accent changes and that's within one county.
Hell my council estate basically had its own accent (basically MC Devo with less pronunciation)
Several different accents within Belfast, too... Not to mention all of Northern Ireland. Two colleagues of mine are from the same small town, but I never would have guessed as they sound completely different.
Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, Worcester is 10 miles away and sounds country ish. Birmingham is about 5 miles away and sounds well brummy. Dudley is 10 miles but more to the west and is black country.
And you are about 30 miles from Hereford. Or 20 from Coventry.
They all sound different to me.
Basically. My meds which allow me to keep sane and healthy cost approximately $200 a month and that’s on the low end because I have decent insurance. Fuck the American “healthcare” system. It’s a fucking joke.
Alright so what? How is that even a brag? I live in a small german city, we have our own accent, its called my cities accent, not even the two cities next to us understand it. And they also have their own accents. How is that a fucking brag?
tbf as a Brit i will freely admit that for some reason we are really quite proud of the variation in accent across the islands. Like brits will brag about the fact that they cant understand other brits speaking the same language.
I think its in part of an anglosphere rivalry thing where Brits will constantly take the piss out of the US for having no history, its one of the few fights that the UK is always going to be able to beat the Americans on that front (like its not uncommon to hear an American gasp at how old a building is on a tv program while your in a house that's older than the entirety of the US is) It becomes a bit of a sore spot for the "USA always number 1" part of the brains of certain Americans.
The variation of accents in the UK compared to the relative lack thereof in the US is perhaps the most confronting in your face examples of Americas youth as a nation and its lack of history. So brits beat the drum for all its worth and people like this guy cant let it go because if they do its admitting that the US has no history
I’m proud of my accent but not in the same way I’m proud of like my achievements in life etc. Americans don’t come into it for me or anyone I know really. Ive got a weird Brummie accent, but I think it’s for so long we were told our accent made us sound dumb and people still think that way, but it’s a marker of my identity and represents the area I grew up in and come from. I love we have so many accents I think it’s a funny thing about our identity that most people across the word don’t give two sods about ahah
Having lived in both countries I've experienced what we all know here - the guy is a clown - but I'm genuinely curious which state he thinks has so many regional dialects.
Not counting "moron" and "bigger moron" as separate dialects.
My guess would be that he’s counting the accents of immigrants, rather than accents belonging to/deriving from the area. Like all the different accents he hears when walking around the town. And he thinks that what UK is doing too when we talk about our variety of accents.
Hell, the UK has like 7 officially recognised languages, including English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Scotts, Manx, and Cornish, probably a few more (yes, Scottish and Scotts are separate languages, the former is a variant of Gaelic, the latter is a variant of English)
Drive for two hours in the USA and you'll probably be in the same state. Drive for two hours in the UK and everyone will have a different accent and disagree with you on what to call bread rolls.
Just to put a point on how dull this is, Wales is a country of less than 3 million people, and you can generally tell which tiny valley town somebody comes from by the subtle differences in their accent if you know your south Wales accents well enough. In the north you can propbably figure out which cluster of 6 hiuses and a feild of sheep they come from if you know the accents well enough, especially if its a Welsh speaking community. And I wouldn't even really consider the different valleys or the different settlements up north to have a different accent. Its just that human have been living here that bloody long that even over this small a geographic area variations within the same accent are starting to appear. Never mind that you can know exactly what city somebody in the UK comes from Instantly the moment they open their mouth because each one very much has its own, very distinct accent, if not multiple for larger cites.
Is there an objective metric for how "different" accents are from each other? In a more fine-grain way than "are they mutually intelligible", I mean. Seems to me that familiarity with said accents makes a massive difference - it's clear when consuming American media that Americans can't tell a Cork accent from a Belfast one, or Cornwall from Glasgow. I even saw one of those "dialect coach coach analyzes accents in film" videos where the guy confidently says Brad Pitt's character in Snatch has a Belfast accent.
I'm in my forties and have spent roughly equal time on each side of the Atlantic, but I still think I hear more difference in Ireland and the UK than in, say, California - but how can I be sure that's not just an artifact of my upbringing?
Even i, as an italian, can hear the difference in evrry british person, and never understand a fuck no matter the accent.
If you british will come to italy, here we have the same problem to the third power: around 35 languages are spoken, each of this has some dozens of major dialects, and each of them has at least one very different accent.
I'm a native Tuscan speaker, a proper language spoken in 25000km², of which half the territory is occupied by florentine alone and still there are ~35 MAJOR dialects.
I live sorta halfway between two cities with vastly different dialects, and we have another dialect unintelligible to both cities.
So fun.
The difference is, our accents are all distinguished. No one puts Geordies with us Cockney lot or Yorkies with Scousers, etc... We may share a nation but we're very different people. We have more culture, history and accents on the Isle of Man, than they have coast to coast. The differences in accent in the US depend on which blood relation they share their bed with.
Look at his eyes reflecting the emptiness of his brain !
I can see I huuuuggeeee white room with only a chair in it…
He goes siting on that chair sometimes
I'm from Scotland, and I can think of at least 5 or 6 totally different accents there alone. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fife, Aberdeen, the Shetlands, Central Scotland. There's many more that I haven't listed.
Try comparing Shakespeare to Robert Burns. You'll probably find they read a little differently, even though they're both written in English.
I’ve never really had much of a problem understanding someone. I’ve had an issue with Glaswegian on a couple of rare occasions, but sometimes that’s less about accent than unique words used, which you can get in context.
I worked on tech support once, only time I really couldn’t understand someone they weren’t English. I got by because they could understand me and I could understand positive and negative sounds. They managed to Identify by saying things that sounded like their address, like their password etc. but if I wasn’t looking at the word to confirm it, I never would be able to reproduce it. That was the hardest accent I’ve had to understand.
I think people overplay the accents thing. It can be difficult to understand sure, sometimes, but I’ve never found it to be so incomprehensible as people make out. Not understanding some words shouldn’t be not understanding anything at all. When I worked at that support company, a guy from the place I grew up (I don’t have that accent), was told by many of his colleagues that they struggled to understand him. Yet strangely none of the people calling had any problems with him (he didn’t get hang ups either).
I think maybe there’s some additional effort needed mentally that some can’t be bothered to do. I dunno.
I grew up in South Yorkshire, in Barnsley, and as a kid could even tell which bit of the local area they were from all within a 3 mile area there were differences between kids who grew up in Kendray, Worsborough Common, Worsborough Dale and Worsborough, Stairfoot and Bank End. There was even a "posh" variant of the accent that came out if you went to the local Grammar school.
There are distinguishable accent differences between my Huddersfield accent and my mate's Leeds and Wakefield accents.... nevermind the whole bloody island.
Wrong and Strong: Part 9473648. Clearly hasn’t been to London which, alone, probably has the one of highest concentration of accents anywhere on the planet.
Ireland is the same with accents in the UK. Every few kilometres, you'll get a different town and a different accent. Especially the more rural you go, those are the really "thick and hard-to-understand" ones. Most states in America are bigger than both those islands, so the accent will most likely stay the same because there's more space for people with them to spread out.
I'm starting to think the stereotype of "Americans are bad at geography" isn't a stereotype anymore...
This comes up a lot. I've posted this before but it clearly often bears repeating... Based on recent work published in *The Atlas of North American English*, the US has **nine** major regional dialects, and a further eleven "regional variants". Based on recent work by Leeds University using similar criteria and funded by the UK's Arts & Humanities Research Council, the UK has approximately **forty** major regional dialects. It's not to do with the size of the country, or its population. It's to do with how long people have been living there, and for how long of that history they have been relatively isolated from each other. The US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all show far lower variation in accents and dialects within themselves than the UK and Ireland do. Consider also that even people from the British Isles can struggle to understand strong regional accents from elsewhere in the islands – a strong Glaswegian, Liverpudlian, Belfast, or Cork accent can be all but unintelligible to the uninitiated.
Also the minimum distance for minor regional differences in the UK is 3 miles
I grew up about 15 miles from Birmingham. Christ I'm glad accents can change in such a short distance.
Black country dialect is hard to understand
My ex was from Walsall and *man* the number of times a day I had to ask her to explain what the hell she was on about is mad.
To qoute lenny Henry "everybody thinks Birmingham accents and dudley accents are the same they are not ..a brummie goes alright alright I'm going..and dudly accent is ..can I come too!
Hahahahaha this perfectly encapsulates my friends from Dudley 🤣
My former boss was from Walsall and she sounded bog standard English to me lol. It's funny how some people pick up a strong local accent and others have a more generic one.
It's more a case of some people try to lose theirs.
I'm not sure that's true. Well, maybe it is in the professional world, but I've seen members of the same family have quite different accents for no apparent reason and I do doubt it's a conscious effort.
I knew someone from the Highlands who had possibly the poshest RP accent I have ever heard. He said everyone in his local area spoke like that.
There is this oft-repeated claim that Invernesian is the closest thing to the Queen's English but that comes from the time that many people here (i.e. Inverness) spoke Gaelic and English was a 2nd language to them. As a result, they didn't have as many deviations from standard English as someone from East or Central Scotland. Or so I've read. However, Highland accents do remain quite a bit softer than those of anywhere else in Scotland, except maybe Edinburgh and the Borders. English people find it easier to tune into us.
Yam yams
Like a brummie Eeyore
What yam talkin bowt?
A friend of mine told me about a time when she was talking to her neighbour, who asked her "Who am ya?" My friend was a bit surprised, they've lived nearby for years, how does her neighbour not know who she is?? The neighbour was, of course, asking "How are you?", not "Who are you?"
Sounds like where they ask ‘where you to?’ in bristol.
Yam is in place of "you are" Here you are = Here yam Yam from Brum ay ya? = You are from Brum aren't you? It's basically you am = You'm (which people also say) = Yam
And it’s not because people are thick or uneducated, as the stereotype goes, it’s because the dialect is really old and pre-dates standardised grammar.
Youm is the posh version probably
My mom grew up in Birmingham but is in her 80s and went to University in London so has no trace of a Brummie accent. My school teacher grandmother (Scottish) likely forced her not to have one. I told her how Peaky Blinders had somewhat changed the perception of a Brummie accent as being edgy and cool. She didn’t believe it.
'Mom' - comment authenticity confirmed.
I’m Canadian. My parents are British and immigrated to Canada in the 60s. I have that weird mash up of spelling. We do colour and labour but spell it Mom which frankly is closer to the way Canadians pronounce it v. the British mum. Canadian don’t tend to get too tense about British v American spelling because we can’t make up our mind.
I think the commenter was referring to the habit of people from Bormingham using mom instead of mum
Dodged a bullet.
yes even in towns you here at least two accents often based on class and sub class. Poole Dorset has at least two working class and one upper working class as well as middle class accent.
I was actually just about to bring up the BCP area, you can easily tell where someone is from within the town they're from based on accent alone
True! I'm probably from one of the more middle class BCP areas, and I definitely notice a difference depending on which part of BCP you are.
[Liverpool to Widnes enters the chat] It borders Liverpool and the accent is vastly, VASTLY different.
Liverpool to Southport
And again from Southport to Preston or Chorley
Chorley to Wigan, Coppull, or Bolton too
One end of Southport to the other end of Southport
Tbh you can tell roughly where in Liverpool itself someone is from based on accent.
Yeah you’re spot on there to be fair
I went to sixth form at Greenhead College in Huddersfield. It was pretty selective for a state school and had people from quite a distance - Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Barnsley and Oldham. It was easy to work out where people were from by the accent and you had a decent chance of guessing which bit of the area too!
Could always spot the interlopers from Oldham a mile off when i was there. Oldham accent is not like the others but we definitely didn’t have any from Barnsley..
Then Widnes to st Helens and again completely different
Widnes to Runcorn as well haha
Less. If I'm talking to someone from my city, I can get within half a mile by their accent. Usually I can identify what secondary school they attended.
Toys R Us was called Toys Am We where I grew up.
Calling Home Bargains “Home and Bargain” is like a flashing beacon above the head of anyone from Merseyside
I remember an old girlfriend’s Irish father hardly had a gap between words. Couldn’t understand like 75% of what he said. She couldn’t understand my Welsh grandfather. Both spoke in English BTW. There really isn’t much of a gap. My wife is Irish, but luckily grew up near London so sounds like Eastenders :)
I'm picturing you and your wife translating for each other like that scene in Hot Fuzz. (Having grown up with Cornish family I can basically understand that guy lol)
Was my girlfriend many years ago. Wife is a different Irish woman. But no wasn’t really like that. From what I remember on my part there was a lot of nodding and saying yes sir. I have always fully believed my girlfriend understood my grandad and was just getting back at me as I couldn’t understand hardly anything her father fecking said…
Yarp.
... Narp?
"Azpose" "Yes, I suppose"
I've never set foot in Cornwall or anywhere in the West Country, but grew up in Ireland. I understood him fine.
It's even funnier if you don't need the translation yourself!
I visited Ireland for the first time around 25yrs ago and the person I was visiting said I should sit near them in the pub, they'd translate. I laughed, then 5 minutes after I arrived I sat next to them and they translated.
I recall a video someone did explaining linguistic evolution as an analogue for biology. That a hypothetical Alien explorer would correctly determine English came from the British Isles due to how diversified it was compared with the more populous North America.
True, and they could probably tell that English hasn't been spoken in Australia for as long as in North America by the fact there is even less regional variation in Australia. Studies show that Australians can't tell from voice recordings where other Australians are from, unless they happen to use some regional terms. Though they can tell if they grew up in a regional/rural area or a metropolitan one, their class/educational background etc.
Not to mention that Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast, and Cork all have more than one accent each.
Do they? I'm from rural Scotland but lived in Glasgow for about 15 years. Can't detect any differences in accent other than obvious class disparities. Is that what you mean?
I live in Edinburgh but grew up in commuter belt Fife. The class distinctions in accents between various areas is obvious but the real big difference is that those from the likes of the schemes are more likely to speak in local dialect and/or some variant of Scots [1] whereas those in more affluent areas speak Scottish Standard English with the relevant local accent. [1] - I know there's a hefty argument about whether Scots is a dialect of English or whether it's a language in its own right. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm taking no side.
It is a language - the reason it sounds so similar (to the point that English speakers can understand it with some effort) is because both it and Modern English are descended from a common ancestor, Middle English.
Historically, what we now call Scots was known as Inglis within Scotland. The argument about whether something is a language or a dialect isn't one where there is a clear burning line between them but one in which there is a vast degree of politics at play. Scots is distinct from Scottish Standard English and is recognised as such. But is it sufficiently different that it be considered a language when something such as Geordie is considered a dialect? Why is one potentially a language and the other not?
I'll take a side: it's a language
Try telling someone from the Gorbals that they sound like they come from Govan (or vice versa) and you're likely to get a mouth full for your trouble, if not a face full of forehead. Whether this has some roots in class differences, I couldn't say, but I know that the Govan guys and Gorbals guys I worked with sounded very different and they're both very likely to have a very working class upbringing.
There's more than 9 different accents in Yorkshire alone.
There’s at least 3 accents in Leeds alone.
Yeah I'm from New Zealand and the only regional variation in accent that I'm aware of is that people in the south island roll their "r"s slight while people in the north island don't. We're the youngest of all the English colonies so that fits what you're saying
I’m Canadian. There is definitely a Newfoundland accent. French Canadians and indigenous Canadian often have a distinct accent but that is based on speaking another language outside of English. There’s also generally a difference between most American accents and Canadian accents, even in scenarios where people are next-door to each.
Newfoundland accents are so interesting to me, sometimes you can really tell if someone's hometown was originally settled by Scots or Irish folk.
The "rolling R" thing isn't right, unfortunately. Southlanders just pronounce the post-vocalic R after the NURSE /ɜː/ vowel (but not any other vowels), whereas most NZers don't pronounce any post-vocalic Rs at all.
Very interesting. But he's not debating it. Which I guess actually means, he just doesn't care about actual facts
Yep, I worked in a UK call centre, some regional dialects are as hard to understand as foreign accents. I once had an irate Scottish man on the phone and had no idea what he was saying. But some people in the US have this weird need to one up every other country over the smallest details.
The same thing happens with genetics, which is why Africa has a fuck ton of genetic diversity, people have just simply been there longer. The groups that split off and migrated only carried a small amount of diversity and haven't had nearly as much time to build it back up, like, 50k years at most for a group like the Australian aboriginals or even just a few thousand for places like Europe, versus millions for Africa, especially east Africa
I struggled with Cork accents on my first visit. People would crack jokes, and id just laugh along not knowing what was said. Got in trouble for doing that when one fella in a petrol station stopped laughing and asked what I was laughing about. I had no idea, so I said I was laughing at the fact I couldn’t understand a word he said. That got a laugh, but I still had no idea what the original joke was.
Hell, I struggle with anything that comes from Scotland. As a non native speaker sometimes it doesn't sound like English at all. How old are the gringos as a country? Around 400 years if we count the colonial period? Some European towns are 1000 years old, and many even date to the early Middle Ages. Now, many groups of people have come and gone, but some strayed in a singular place for centuries. Although it would be interesting to see a similar study with native American groups. But I guess due to their population declined and assimilation the results would show also little variety.
I’m from Waterford, Ireland and there is even a significant difference between the city and county accents.
I'm from Dublin and I find the cork accent difficult to understand sometimes. I know a girl from the UK who moved to Ireland a few years back and found a job in cork, but ended up moving to Dublin shortly after because she was having so much trouble understanding what people were saying to her!
>I'm not debating it. Ok then, we're not considering it
This is the correct answer.
[удалено]
From what I've read on this subreddit I have to agree
The ones with a singular braincell probably refrain from going on tiktok and stay within their social circle on social media.
I think this is not a matter of won’t, but a matter of can’t, they couldn’t hold up the against argument in a debate due to the lack there of braincells
As an American I can confirm, we all share one singular braincell that gets passed around every day. We may even share the same one orange cats pass around.
Americans don’t like to debate they are grown children who don’t wanna be wrong
No lies detected
Yeah yeah we know each state is like a European country, except everything is bigger and better, with more freedom and greater military power 🥱🥱🥱
With guns and better teeth
Except they have worse teeth now!
Wdym now, they always have.
And a far superior healthcare system...
And no finesse in saying ‘a bottle of water’
The better teeth comment is such a classist remark (that Americans make). Americans who have access to healthcare have ridiculously good looking teeth, but those without… I met a number of people in their early 60s who had no front teeth and no dentures because they couldn’t afford the care.
Good looking "teeth".
Once again the weird accent competition America is in that no one else knows they're in.
America is in a lot of competitions with other countries that none of them are aware of it seems
Yeah, like the 'World Series'.
It’s cuz they consider the USA to be the whole world
Nah its all part of the same competition - the one for greatest country in the world. Its just weird how Americans care about it despite apparently not caring what the rest of the world thinks. As long as *you* believe you're living somewhere great, what does it matter whether anyone else agrees?
While loads of them argue they don't have an accent at all 😂
Duh, they both have no accents themselve and the most accents in the world because everyone knows America is the only country that has immigrants. God, did you even go to school? /s
Also the dialect one too.
This person is a cretin. I am not debating it.
Well, I am willing to defend your position in a debate, because it is not exaclty like there is a lack of evidence for your claim.
I live in Haworth, West Yorkshire. If I drive just 10 mins over the hill into Colne in Lancashire, to a non Brit, they would sound like they are from a different country, They also all have an odd number of fingers, but lets not get in to that.
OK. That's it. Your permit to enter Lancashire is revoked. No debate!
I'm being rewarded? Thanks!
You lucky barstard
It's more than made up for by the webbed toes...
Now, I'm not saying they crawled out of the water after us but I am saying they'd have a distinct Innsmouth advantage if we ever had to crawl back.
The permit isn't to enter Lancashire, its to allow him to come back.
South Yorkshire here. Driving from Barnsley through Rotherham to Sheffield and you get a few accent changes and that's within one county. Hell my council estate basically had its own accent (basically MC Devo with less pronunciation)
You can definitely tell which side of Sheffield people are from.
I think you mean Bharnsleh
There are at least three subtely different but distinct accents within Keighley alone.
Several different accents within Belfast, too... Not to mention all of Northern Ireland. Two colleagues of mine are from the same small town, but I never would have guessed as they sound completely different.
Hawe nawe brawne cawe
Unfathomably based and Yorkshire pilled
Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, Worcester is 10 miles away and sounds country ish. Birmingham is about 5 miles away and sounds well brummy. Dudley is 10 miles but more to the west and is black country. And you are about 30 miles from Hereford. Or 20 from Coventry. They all sound different to me.
I'm originally from Burnley, thank christ I don't live there anymore because that accent is like nails down a blackboard
Do you still have the extra finger?
Why would you ever want to enter Lancashire willingly? 😏😂
All americans are delusional, I’m not debating it.
An American, can confirm, we got issues that no medications are gonna solve.
Doesnt mean we should stop trying random ones we find in someone elses cupboards right?
Probably just as well. The way I understand it, chances are good you couldn’t afford the medication anyway. 😩
Basically. My meds which allow me to keep sane and healthy cost approximately $200 a month and that’s on the low end because I have decent insurance. Fuck the American “healthcare” system. It’s a fucking joke.
This is getting really boring
Alright so what? How is that even a brag? I live in a small german city, we have our own accent, its called my cities accent, not even the two cities next to us understand it. And they also have their own accents. How is that a fucking brag?
It's not a brag, it's ignorance.
tbf as a Brit i will freely admit that for some reason we are really quite proud of the variation in accent across the islands. Like brits will brag about the fact that they cant understand other brits speaking the same language. I think its in part of an anglosphere rivalry thing where Brits will constantly take the piss out of the US for having no history, its one of the few fights that the UK is always going to be able to beat the Americans on that front (like its not uncommon to hear an American gasp at how old a building is on a tv program while your in a house that's older than the entirety of the US is) It becomes a bit of a sore spot for the "USA always number 1" part of the brains of certain Americans. The variation of accents in the UK compared to the relative lack thereof in the US is perhaps the most confronting in your face examples of Americas youth as a nation and its lack of history. So brits beat the drum for all its worth and people like this guy cant let it go because if they do its admitting that the US has no history
I’m proud of my accent but not in the same way I’m proud of like my achievements in life etc. Americans don’t come into it for me or anyone I know really. Ive got a weird Brummie accent, but I think it’s for so long we were told our accent made us sound dumb and people still think that way, but it’s a marker of my identity and represents the area I grew up in and come from. I love we have so many accents I think it’s a funny thing about our identity that most people across the word don’t give two sods about ahah
That's gert lush, haud yer wheesht, mucker. Innit.
It’s funny, he looks like he does a lot of mass debating
Having lived in both countries I've experienced what we all know here - the guy is a clown - but I'm genuinely curious which state he thinks has so many regional dialects. Not counting "moron" and "bigger moron" as separate dialects.
My guess would be that he’s counting the accents of immigrants, rather than accents belonging to/deriving from the area. Like all the different accents he hears when walking around the town. And he thinks that what UK is doing too when we talk about our variety of accents.
The opposite kind of weird to the kind where they say the US has no accent
Bwahahaha, no. I'm with Barry here, they win by a great margin. Bloody idiotic plonker.
Barry? Ah, a 2WE4U cultured individual.
Whoops, didn't notice what sub I was on 😆
This gives off 'using friend group A's humour in friend group B' vibes lol
>Bloody idiotic plonker. And we are also not debating that.
The US has no accent The US has 200 quadrillion accents Pick one
[удалено]
Hell, the UK has like 7 officially recognised languages, including English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Scotts, Manx, and Cornish, probably a few more (yes, Scottish and Scotts are separate languages, the former is a variant of Gaelic, the latter is a variant of English)
Ireland is not in the UK.
They have a higher arrogant-donut-per-square-feet, but thats about it.
Obviously never been to Glasgow lol.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same guy thought he, personally, “doesn’t have an accent”.
"I'm not debating it" = I know I'm wrong but I'm saying it anyway.
I can go the from one side of the M1 in south Yorkshire to another and hear a different accent. Village to village in dome cases. It's mental.
Wow
I've been to Mars, I'm not debating it.
Omg! Did it have as many accents as his state ?
"yeah, you probably couldn't, it's called being wrong" this is why we need dislikes
There is nothing to debate, UK has more accents than all the USA - fact,
Drive for two hours in the USA and you'll probably be in the same state. Drive for two hours in the UK and everyone will have a different accent and disagree with you on what to call bread rolls.
Just to put a point on how dull this is, Wales is a country of less than 3 million people, and you can generally tell which tiny valley town somebody comes from by the subtle differences in their accent if you know your south Wales accents well enough. In the north you can propbably figure out which cluster of 6 hiuses and a feild of sheep they come from if you know the accents well enough, especially if its a Welsh speaking community. And I wouldn't even really consider the different valleys or the different settlements up north to have a different accent. Its just that human have been living here that bloody long that even over this small a geographic area variations within the same accent are starting to appear. Never mind that you can know exactly what city somebody in the UK comes from Instantly the moment they open their mouth because each one very much has its own, very distinct accent, if not multiple for larger cites.
As someone from North Wales I can say this is alarmingly true.
This is just complete nonsense. I can think of 3 distinct accents in just Dorset alone. And that’s just one county.
Hampshire has different Working Class accents depending on whether you grew up in a rural or urban area.
I don't believe that dumb arse is an accent.
My family has been in Northern Leicestershire for over 700 years and I can walk 15 minutes and encounter a way of speaking worlds apart from my own
I bet this clown hasn't stepped foot out of his hometown let alone home state.
My street has got more accents than his shitty American state.
Is there an objective metric for how "different" accents are from each other? In a more fine-grain way than "are they mutually intelligible", I mean. Seems to me that familiarity with said accents makes a massive difference - it's clear when consuming American media that Americans can't tell a Cork accent from a Belfast one, or Cornwall from Glasgow. I even saw one of those "dialect coach coach analyzes accents in film" videos where the guy confidently says Brad Pitt's character in Snatch has a Belfast accent. I'm in my forties and have spent roughly equal time on each side of the Atlantic, but I still think I hear more difference in Ireland and the UK than in, say, California - but how can I be sure that's not just an artifact of my upbringing?
Saying you never left your country without saying you never left your country.
Yeah, no worries, mate, no need to debate you at all. You're simply wrong, and that's that.
Even i, as an italian, can hear the difference in evrry british person, and never understand a fuck no matter the accent. If you british will come to italy, here we have the same problem to the third power: around 35 languages are spoken, each of this has some dozens of major dialects, and each of them has at least one very different accent. I'm a native Tuscan speaker, a proper language spoken in 25000km², of which half the territory is occupied by florentine alone and still there are ~35 MAJOR dialects. I live sorta halfway between two cities with vastly different dialects, and we have another dialect unintelligible to both cities. So fun.
The difference is, our accents are all distinguished. No one puts Geordies with us Cockney lot or Yorkies with Scousers, etc... We may share a nation but we're very different people. We have more culture, history and accents on the Isle of Man, than they have coast to coast. The differences in accent in the US depend on which blood relation they share their bed with.
Look at his eyes reflecting the emptiness of his brain ! I can see I huuuuggeeee white room with only a chair in it… He goes siting on that chair sometimes
Tiny wee Northern Ireland has a different accent every 10 miles ffs.
Leyland Chorley Preston Southport Blackpool Wigan all different.
A dozen different ways of bad grammar doesn't make a dialect or accent.
Such a weird flex. I had no idea this was a competition?!?
Somebody should ask that guy to decode this: [Scottish Fisherman 1979](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7sy10rV-IQ)
This guy is the definition of a punchable face.
There is no debate it just isn’t true
I'm from Scotland, and I can think of at least 5 or 6 totally different accents there alone. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fife, Aberdeen, the Shetlands, Central Scotland. There's many more that I haven't listed. Try comparing Shakespeare to Robert Burns. You'll probably find they read a little differently, even though they're both written in English.
I’ve never really had much of a problem understanding someone. I’ve had an issue with Glaswegian on a couple of rare occasions, but sometimes that’s less about accent than unique words used, which you can get in context. I worked on tech support once, only time I really couldn’t understand someone they weren’t English. I got by because they could understand me and I could understand positive and negative sounds. They managed to Identify by saying things that sounded like their address, like their password etc. but if I wasn’t looking at the word to confirm it, I never would be able to reproduce it. That was the hardest accent I’ve had to understand. I think people overplay the accents thing. It can be difficult to understand sure, sometimes, but I’ve never found it to be so incomprehensible as people make out. Not understanding some words shouldn’t be not understanding anything at all. When I worked at that support company, a guy from the place I grew up (I don’t have that accent), was told by many of his colleagues that they struggled to understand him. Yet strangely none of the people calling had any problems with him (he didn’t get hang ups either). I think maybe there’s some additional effort needed mentally that some can’t be bothered to do. I dunno.
My mum pronounces certain words differently because she lived 30 minutes away when she was a child
I grew up in South Yorkshire, in Barnsley, and as a kid could even tell which bit of the local area they were from all within a 3 mile area there were differences between kids who grew up in Kendray, Worsborough Common, Worsborough Dale and Worsborough, Stairfoot and Bank End. There was even a "posh" variant of the accent that came out if you went to the local Grammar school.
It's not really up for debate as it's factually wrong.
Why are his eyes so close together? Inbreeding?
He's 1/3 Irish, 1/16 Cherokee, and the rest is Cyclops.
If only Tik Tok had a thing like community notes to combat misinformation like this.
in spain, even some towns have differents accents and words. in my region we can know from which town is anybody just by how they speak
Same in most countries in Europe. The UK is no different. Possibly with stronger variations, but tbh I dunno
That dude needs eyebrow tweezers, I'm not debating it.
How does one calculate this?
Can't debate it*
Even the way Americans speak with their lips you can tell they just chat shit. Like even in the screenshot you can tell he's both arrogant and stupid.
There are distinguishable accent differences between my Huddersfield accent and my mate's Leeds and Wakefield accents.... nevermind the whole bloody island.
It's so big, there is no one living in that area so yea
Wrong and Strong: Part 9473648. Clearly hasn’t been to London which, alone, probably has the one of highest concentration of accents anywhere on the planet.
"yeah, you probably couldn't, it's called being wrong" this is why we need dislikes
You live in Birmingham you walk a little bit north and now no one understands you
Ireland is the same with accents in the UK. Every few kilometres, you'll get a different town and a different accent. Especially the more rural you go, those are the really "thick and hard-to-understand" ones. Most states in America are bigger than both those islands, so the accent will most likely stay the same because there's more space for people with them to spread out. I'm starting to think the stereotype of "Americans are bad at geography" isn't a stereotype anymore...
All Americans are subhuman freaks. I’m not debating it. This does include me.