Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English. This page now looks only at variations in the speech of native English speakers.
The Australian accent varies between social classes and is sometimes claimed to vary from state to state, though this is disputed. Accents tend to be strongest in the more remote areas. (Note that while there are many similarities between Australian accents and New Zealand ones, there are also a number of differences.) The following are some Australian characteristics:
Countries and Regions (in alphabetical order)
Australia
(See also Australian English)
Australian Vowel Pronunciation in SAMPA | ||
Australian | Received Pronunciation | Examples |
@i/Ii | i: | see |
{I | eI | day |
AI | aI | my |
VU | @U | no |
{U | aU | now |
1} | u: | soon,through |
e: | e@ | there |
a | V | but |
a: | A: | fast, car |
Canadian accents vary widely across the country, and the accent of a particular region is often closer to neighbouring parts of the United States. Nevertheless, there are some characteristics that exist across the country, in varying degrees, such as Canadian raising. Canadian actors and announcers used to speak with a Mid-Atlantic accent, similar to that formerly used by actors and announcers in the United States. An exemplar of this is the actor Christopher Plummer.
Regional variations include:
English accents and dialects vary more widely within the U.K. itself than they do in other parts of the world owing to the longer history of the language within the countries of the U.K. Here are some of the distinctions to be found:
South Africa has 11 official languages, one of which is English. Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers, tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection, which is very similar to a Dutch accent. Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles a middle to upper class British accent modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection, due to the Afrikaner influence. Native South African English speakers also insert a number of Afrikaans loanwords into their speech. Please add information about the English accents of native speakers of African languages.
The standard American English accent is the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia. Standard American makes a good reference dialect because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, tends to retain distinctions between unstressed vowels, and is considered a "neutral" dialect. However, /o/ and /ah/ tend to merge in standard American (which means that "father" and "bother" rhyme). This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation. American actors and announcers used to speak with a Mid-Atlantic accent, which was an affected hybrid of educated American and British accents.
Regional and cultural variations within the USA include the following:
This is actually a cluster of dialects with numerous regional variations. The below describes some features found in many (but not necessarily all) varieties, and emphasizes a stereotype that may or may not be true in some areas of the United States. This dialect is not exclusive to African-Americans and might be more appropriately titled Urban.
Canada
(See also Canadian English; North American English)British Columbia
Cape Breton Island
Maritimes
Newfoundland
Ontario and Quebec
Prairies
England
(See also British English)Southern English
Home Counties
Cockney
Estuary English
Southeastern English
London
West Country (southwestern) English
East Anglian English
Northern and Midlands English
Midlands English
Northern English/Liverpool
Northern English/Yorkshire
Northern English/Lancashire
Northern English/Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the northeast
Reference: For London accents, listen to old recordings by Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. Ozzy Osbourne has a Midlands accent. For Liverpool accents, recordings by The Beatles (George Harrison's accent was the thickest of the four of them), Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, Echo and the Bunnymen. A Yorkshire (Leeds) accent can be detected in interviews with Melanie Brown of The Spice Girls.Ireland
(See also Irish English)Scotland
There are several Scots dialects and many Scots accents. For more information see the article, Scots language. The information below describes how a Scots speaker will pronounce standard English when trying to make it easy for other English speakers to understand what is being said rather than when speaking to other Scots.
The Edinburgh accent is exemplified by Sean Connery or the film Trainspotting; the Glasgow accent by Billy Connolly.
see http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/sse.htm
South Africa
(See also South African English)United States of America
(See also American English; North American English)African American
(Sometimes referred to as Ebonics)Appalachia
(South Midlands, Tennessee through Texas)
Boston, Massachusetts
Reference: Speeches of John F. KennedyBrooklyn, New York
Reference: Old Bugs Bunny cartoons (Bugs has a Brooklyn accent). The accent is often exaggerated, but it still does exist to some degree with many Brooklyn natives. Also, Groucho Marx has a passable Brooklyn accent.Maine and Downeast
Midwest
(Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Lower Peninsula of Michigan)===
New England and East Coast
Old Northwest
(Minnesota (esp. rural), Upper Peninsula of Michigan, North Dakota)Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh accents have a number of distinctive features. Please reference that article for more information. St. Louis and vicinity
South
(Coastal Virginia, North Carolina through Louisiana))Wales
Welsh accents can be heard from the actors Richard Burton and (to a lesser extent) Anthony Hopkins, or on recordings of Dylan Thomas or in the music of Catatonia, Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey.External Links