UK Accent Tour: Liverpool, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Newcastle & South Wales
Find out how UK accents sound different!
Get a free pronunciation lesson in my course: improveyouraccent.co.uk/engli...
Watch my other UK accent tour videos:
Accent Tour 1 (R sounds, Glottal Stops & more): • UK Accent Tour: R soun...
Accent Tour 2 (how vowels vary): • UK Accent Tour: How Vo...
00:00 - Intro
00:28 - Liverpool & Merseyside
01:45 - Scotland
03:00 - Northern Ireland
03:47 - Newcastle & North East England
05:01 - South Wales
06:11 - Conclusion
Disclaimers and further information
1. Some topics have been simplified for a general audience
2. People living in a particular place will not always sound the same. Not everyone from a certain area will have the same accent feature (or the feature to the same degree) as those in the video. Accents vary according to factors such as socioeconomic background, age and ethnicity (among others).
3. I have not shown all the accents in the UK.
4. Although I pronounce “brick” with a released stop plosive consonant, this is not the only way to pronounce it in my accent (Standard Southern British English). I can also pronounce “brick” with no audible release, with glottal reinforcement, or as an ejective.
5. /k/ may be realised as [x] in certain environments by some speakers in Merseyside. Another pronunciation would be [χ], which is more common after back vowels. Other pronunciations, such as [kx], may also be heard.
6. In certain environments, /p/ in North East England is often realised as a fully voiced segment with laryngealisation. More information can be found in Docherty, G. and Foulkes, P., 1999, August. Sociophonetic variation in ‘glottals’ in Newcastle English. In Proceedings of the 14th international congress of phonetic sciences (pp. 1037-1040).
7. /k/ can also be realised as [k] with laryngealisation (creaky voice/glottal reinforcement) by speakers in the North East. You can hear an example in the word “ticket” in the final clip.
8. /p/ and /k/ can also be realised with laryngealisation (creaky voice/glottal reinforcement) in Standard Southern British English. However, this occurs at the end of a syllable when no vowel follows.
9. There are different sounds used in Scotland for the /ʍ/ phoneme. I talk about [ʍ] in the video, but you may also hear [hw], [hʍ], [xw], [xʍ], or even [f] by some in North East Scotland!
10. The word “year” can also be pronounced with the NURSE vowel in other accents (for example, some RP speakers will use this pronunciation).
11. Of course, I take full responsibility for any errors! If you spot anything that should be corrected, please email me and I shall add it here.
Thanks
Many thanks to friends, family and UCL SCEP teachers who gave valuable feedback on the video before its release.
Links
Instagram: / improveyouraccent
Twitter: / improveaccent
Facebook: / improveyouraccent
Free pronunciation learning resources: improveyouraccent.co.uk/learn/
Songs in the video
1. Liverpool: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles
2. Scotland: “Here’s to Scottish Whisky” sung by Ronnie Ross
3. Northern Ireland: “Take A Bow” sung by Kirsten Aston
4. Newcastle: "Call Me Maybe" sung by May Arcade
5. South Wales & Ending: "Have A Nice Day" by Stereophonics
Speakers
There are 23 different speakers. The listed origin is the place (or nearest biggest place/county) they were born in or grew up in.
Intro
Rebecca Ferguson (Liverpool)
Ruth Davidson (Edinburgh)
Ian "H" Watkins (Rhondda Valley)
Vicky Pattison (Newcastle)
Jamie Dornan (County Down)
Liverpool/Merseyside
Stephen Graham (Merseyside)
Rebecca Ferguson (Liverpool)
John Bishop (Merseyside)
Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool)
Scotland
Fiona McQueen (Ayrshire)
Frankie Boyle (Glasgow)
Ruth Davidson (Edinburgh)
Jackie Kay (Glasgow)
Kelly McDonald (Glasgow)
Northern Ireland
Jamie Dornan (County Down)
Saoirse-Monica Jackson (Derry)
Stephen Nolan (Belfast)
Jamie-Lee O'Donnell (Derry)
Newcastle/North East England
Russell Howard (Bristol - not from North East England!)
Sarah Millican (South Shields)
Vicky Pattison (Newcastle)
Jade Thirlwall (South Shields)
Sara Davies (County Durham)
Chris Ramsey (South Shields)
South Wales
Owain Wyn Evans (Carmarthenshire)
Lateysha Grace (Port Talbot)
Ian "H" Watkins (Rhondda Valley)
Sophie Evans (Rhondda Valley)
For more information on the video and a list of the speakers, click "show more" in the video description 😊
Hii
@ImproveYourAccent, I just discovered your channel and instantly subscribed. It appears you haven't uploaded new content in a while. Should we expect more videos sometime soon? 🥲
0:28 Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da !!! ☺️👍 Funfact: "Ob-la-di ob-la-da" means exactly the words after it mean. It means "Life goes on" in Nigerian. And that is the exact meaning of the song. 🤗💕🇳🇬
As a non native speaker, my brain kind of "corrects" some words for me because I can't hear many of the nuances, except the Liverpudlian k, the N Irish "owl in a towel", and South Wales "year". For me, it's impossible to understand Alexander Arnold hahaha. I had never noticed the Scottish blowing the candle "what, white, where, why." I'm from Brazil, never been overseas, always studied American accent (which is more common here), but my interest for British accents started when I decided to watch Harry Potter and I could barely understand anything hahaha. This video is amazing! Thank you so much!!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😊 The more you actively listen, the better your ears and brain become at perceiving different sounds. You'll find that some Americans will also pronounce "wh" like some Scottish people do.
The best 7 mins I had today
Hi! Long time no see. Happy you are back! :-)
Yes i wanted to say the same but you did it right so glad to see him back !
You're still alive! Good to see that you are back to posting
This is a really great and beautiful video! Thanks for sharing it, I look forward to the next ones!💚💚
So happy to see a new video! Thanks!!
He’s back
Awesome! Missed your videos
Hi Luke! Thank you for this great video and thank you for sharing your knowledge in such a creative and engaging way. 7 minutes are definitely not enough and I'm already craving for more! 🤗🤗
Thanks, Elena!
Hello professor Thank you so much for your priceless advice and interesting guidance. I love your way of teaching and excellent explanation. I really appreciate your job. I wish you peace and happiness under the sky of prosperity. Your Student from Algeria.
I enjoyed this vidéo !!! It's very interesting to know about différents prononciation hehe thank you sir!!!
Great video
Thankyou :)
I've always found the subject of why various accents sound the way they do interesting. One accent I would like to see you do in the future is for people from India.
UK's accents tour! 🌹 Maybe, I'm not sure! 🤪🤗💖💖.
Paddy the Baddy should have been included as a textbook example of a scouser :D
You are fantastic! Love your videos and love your course. I would like to hear you contrasting the accents from different English speaking countries… it would be awesome! Congrats for your excellent work!
Thanks, Alessandra! That's great to hear 😊
What about the plosive phoneme /p/ in the word speak. Is it aspirated or unaspirated. Or does it have a weak aspiration. To me I prefer RP accent.
That /p/ is unaspirated, because /s/ is before.
🥰
1:30 the k in 'book' fricative is just like German 'Buch' isn't it? Ich, mich etc.
Hii
Here's to Scottish Whisky, is just a second clip so I'll allow it as fair use.. the rights are controlled and normally a license is required for outside use. It was written by my father Stewart Ross, and is a copyright work. Both my late father and brother who sings it, are from Inverness, (as am I) where we speak a more refined form of Scottish/English. Many dialects exist.. Scottish accents are not homogenous. I cannot understand many broad Glaswegian speakers etc. Their tongue is a foreign dialect to me.
Thanks, Inver!
Scouse sounds a bit like German! Take the word "book" for example: in German it's "Buch" /buh/, and the Scouse pronunciation is very similar. I wonder if that's because of Germanic/Saxon influence, perhaps a feature Scouse retained from Old English.
💐💜🌺
So oke
They pronounce k as Arabic خ as in Khalid
Could you please name some famous people with rp accent?
Prince Charles, Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Stephen Fry
@@ImproveYourAccent How do you call it when the r is pronounced like in 1:08 in the word brick? And is it also typical for rp? I noticed that Stephen Fry uses it quite a lot (but not always) especially when he imitates older rather "posh" people.
@@lucielu7447 It's a voiced alveolar tap (similar to the "r" you find in Spanish, but not the "rr"). It's common nowadays in some accents of English and some RP speakers used it between vowels.
Everybody should have your accent 😁
Hey there! Accent genius, idk if you can make a video on why Indians sound so Indian. 😐
Scouse is not the accent of Merseyside, that's incorrect.
🤔🤔🤔🤦🤦🤯🤯🤯🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Make a video about why Russians sound Russian!
« Typically British !!! » 🫖☺️🇬🇧 Yes, but which one ??? 😅👍