Where do you think the Anerican colonists came from? Duh... mostly from the UK. Some people in the southwest parts of America spoke Spanish before the British colonists arrived, but no one in what is now the USA spoke English until the 17th century, when the British colonists started arriving. Prior the arrival of the Spanish and British, everyone living in what is now America spoke indigenous for First Nations languages: Iroquois, Algonquin, Cherokee, Navajo, Cree, etc. etc.
@@DestinyAwaits19 Actually that's not quite right. There was actually a class reaction to the American Revolution in England that caused a radical change in accents there. The higher classes started exaggerating pronunciation to differentiate themselves from the lower classes. So in fact the English have gone through quite radical changes in pronunciation, ironically, due to the American Revolution.
@@glamberson Rubbish. How do you explain all the other accents in British colonies like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa? If the British spoke like Americans then their colonies would sound American aswell. But they don't. They all took off after UK accents and had slight tweaks.
When I was younger and lived in the North of England I met a guy who was able to listen to a local in an area about 30 miles wide and he would be able to narrow your birth place down to about 6 streets or roads...not 100% of the time but was well known for a success about 85% of the time. So not only do we have different accents we obviously are affected by those close around us.
As an Liberian we are the closest to the United States when it comes to cultural, historical, religiously and traditional relationships with the United States because Liberia and the Liberians people is the only African country on the planet that was settled and control by the American Colonization Society which went back to Liberia in the 1800's that is why our English is similar to the American English, the Liberian flag , our culture, music, food and so much more is tie with in the American society
@@petesmitt That's because Australian colonisation was a very rapid growing process, with relentless people coming in from different areas of UK & Ireland, but also relentless and constant migration around Australia itself: gold rushes (& other mining), farming land, new towns & cities constantly established, hence professional opportunities for engineers, doctors, surveyors, lawyers, teachers etc. This meant Australia would only develop a generic accent, and no specific regional accents, purely because of the constant shifting of the population around, which actually still happens today (I've been to school & work with people from every other state and territory, and I've lived in the same city my whole life!).
@@andrewbray772 So true, when I was in the North east it was noticeable in the pit mining villages, move to another even just a couple of miles away and it was like moving to a whole new world, to be honest I think this effect is fading today as these villages all blend into one via expansion.
Lived in London for 75 years. The change in the dialect is phenomenal. So many words are completely different. South was pronounced sowth. Horse was howss. Now sarf and ors.
Olly, I praise your work! It is such a pleasure to follow you and learn from your videos. I am a native French Canadian speaker, "Quebecoise" who is perfectly bilingual and the fact is not too many people take an interest in languages like you do. You should have mentioned in your video, the Normand conquest and how the French language influenced it.Merci Olly! Tu es le meilleur! 🙏
I'm not Quebecois, but I'm from Plattsburgh， NY。 When I was a boy the English was influenced by French. For example people would say "Hey whcha doin' der you?" Which is a loan translation of "Que est-ce que tu fais toi?" Now that is lost unfortunately.
I speak Guyanese Creole. Similar to other English dialects in the Caribbean region, it is based on 19th century English and incorporates loan words from West African, Indian, Arawakan, and older Dutch languages.
As an Liberian we are the closest to the United States when it comes to cultural, historical, religiously and traditional relationships with the United States because Liberia and the Liberians people is the only African country on the planet that was settled and control by the American Colonization Society which went back to Liberia in the 1800's that is why our English is similar to the American English, the Liberian flag , our culture, music, food and so much more is tie with in the American society
I heard the English spoken in the 1970s in the Bay Islands which are north of Honduras. Very interesting. They said they were descendants of pirates and the blacks from slaves. I am afraid it is being lost now because of TV and internet.
What fun. I had a friend from Roanoke many years ago. He sounded kinda English. He claimed it was because many families were descended from shipwrecked sailors.
Thank you so much! Loved your explanation on South African English 🇿🇦. You just missed one little detail that every city in SA has its own English accent and today it also differs more on social class rather than ethnic groups.
For sure. My wife is from Joburg but many of her friends are from Cape Town, and their accents are so different! Heck, my wife's father (who grew up in Vereeniging) has a different accent from my wife.
I'm from Dbn living in Cape Town and people would always pick up that my accent is from either Dbn or they think I'm from an English speaking person from Jhb
@@hastigehond Only in Cape Town is code switching is a major thing. The rest of the country it's more of which school you attended, what people you socialise with, where you work and live hence that is why social class is the more prominent factor everywhere else. I think CT is the exception because people still very much stick to their own and there hasn't been a blend of English across all groups yet in CT like in Joburg for example.
Ive noticed that in Scotland, not only do different cities have their own accents, but even smaller parts of cities. Smaller towns and even different parts of towns
Am from Kenya, I speak a variety of English known as Kenyan English, It is the official language of education, business and media in Kenya. Most people in my county speak it as a second language alongside Swahili and other indigenous languages, hence the different accents even to foreigners.
One thing i find interesting about Australian accents is that they are not particularly regional. Unlike the UK where people from Liverpool, London or Newcastle sound quite different you'd struggle to tell where in Australia you were from based on your accent. For such a large country the regional differences are small.
This always confused me. They have a few accents, but they’re social/class based, not regional. It’s weird. It’s so big and filled with immigrants but they have no strong regional accents. Very weird. There are vocabulary difference, I assume because like the US, it’s so geographically different that some Australians live around things that don’t even exist in the other states. But the accents aren’t different.
@B P have you never been to South Australia? Settled predominantly, and equally, between the German & the English. And their accent represents the most localised difference in Australia. The East of Australia was a blend of Irish & English. Western Australia was predominantly English
I loved the clips you found to illustrate the video. That Aussie guy was a classic, and that clip got replayed here a bit n Oz and the fellow was interviewed again later so people could hear more of his classic "bogan" way of speaking. I think he went on to say how the guy in the car took off on foot and the guy being interviewed chased him in his undies. I loved the way that guy immediately went into "storytelling" mode, or maybe "yarning". You can imagine him spinning it out into a fantastical yarn where you're not quite sure what's true - pretty typical Aussie thing to do, especially to bullshit foreigners, eg winding them up about drop bears and shark and spider stories. "Yarning" is a term well-used in Indigenous talk. I think Aussies like to think we are natural storytellers, maybe from many long nights around a campfire back in the day. Indigenous folk still have organised "yarn circles" and places dedicated for them. Journos love to tell you when they are on to a "great yarn", meaning they have a good story in the works.
Where I live in the US is right on the edge where Midwest and Appalachian and Southern dialects meet. Generally I speak a pretty mild midwestern “television” English. But I like to joke that when I drink my accent moves about 10 miles further south.
Hi there from Quebec city, Quebec Canada🇨🇦! Wow! Such an informative video! My favorite English is definitely the English spoken in Newfoundland. Their accent is unlike no other! They're awesome!
I really enjoyed this video- thank you. My English accent is a unusual mix- a little northern, a little southern, with hints of both Welsh and Cockney as a result of moving house a lot when I was a child. I also have a smattering of non-English words in my vocabulary for the same reason. Now I'm settled in the south of England, I have become more aware of my language peculiarities, especially when my children use similar terms back at me.
Decades ago I was in the car listening to a talk show on London's Capital Radio. A girl came on and when she started to speak my blood ran cold. I knew without a shred of a doubt she grew up locally to me. Towards the end of the interview she said she went to Tolworth Girls School (where Debbie McGee went and also my mum). TGS was less than a mile from my house. In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins was right - "[by his accent]...I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets"
In my area of West Yorkshire our dialect is heavily influenced by Norse. Words such as "ought" and "nought" are pronounced "owt" and "nowt". A street is a "gate" and a gate is a "bar" . Most people are not aware of the history of their dialects, but I find it fascinating!
An American from California here. Yes, my "R" is strong, especially at the ends of words. I think the strong rhotic "R" creates a problem, in that makes the rolled or trilled "R" difficult to master. I can roll an "R" if I can, so to speak, get a running start at it. Even then, it's not quite what it should be. This being California, I'm surrounded by native Spanish speakers, any of whom can rip off a rolled "R" with ease, in any situation. They have my endless admiration.
I'm a Midwesterner from rural Illinois, so my accent is fairly neutral in the US, but I also spent a year in India, doing volunteer work in Karnataka, where I leaned some ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), but also returned having fairly naturally picked up some of the rhythm and stress of Indian English. Ofc, a few months back in Illinois and I drifted back into my Midwestern accent.
Central Illinois now but I grew up in far Southern Indiana, where the accent is like Kentucky and lives for 20 years in Chicago. Central Illinois is distinct from both. At this point, I might have all three accents collide in a single sentence.
I was born and bred in North Manchester, so my accent is a mixture of Manchester and Lancashire. I've also been living in West Lancashire for nearly 40 years, so I've probably picked up some of their nuances too!
There are 30 different Indian English accent depending on a person's primary language. I come from a bilingual family that speaks tamil and kannada. My accent is easy to understand for American and Canadian citizen but hard for other Indians.
@@dubmait of course yes. I can tell if they are from northern or southern part of India. The people in the north can't pronounce the last syllable if it ends in a vowel. Moreover they fill their mouth with paan parak, a tobacco derived substance. Continuous consumption of this substance prevent them from pronouncing the last vowel syllable of any word. From plumber to carpenter,they skip the vowel at the end. People in my city bangalore are known to speak fluent English and 5 other languages along with English because we live in Silicon valley of India. We have no choice but to be a polyglot.
@@bharath2508 so in Ireland there are 6/7 accents. Some people say more. But ye you can tell if someone is from a certian area based on accent. I didnt realise english was so engrained in india
@@dubmait Bengali speakers can't pronounce va and use ba instead. People from far east(7 states) use sa instead of sha. Should will be pronounced as sould by a far east speaker. The Indian languages like kannada,telugu,Tamil and Malayalam are derivates of Sanskrit. One can tell Malayalam speakers apart from others. Malayalam speaker say ungle instead of uncle. The prominence of nasal sounds in Malayalam might be a reason. Telugu speakers interchange ja instead of za. North of india speaks a language derived from Arabic called hindi/urdu due to invasions. Hindi and urdu are dialects of each other and have 90% similar words. These languages make it difficult for them to be a polyglot by interfering with their pronunciation. Unless a hindi/urdu speakers moves to a different region before turning adult ,they can't escape their strong accent. We have 100s of languages and 1000s of dialects. A college graduate from bangalore can identify 20 different English accents in India. To identify them further I must focus on each and every word. This is called primary language influence. Thankfully I grew up in a bilingual family which reduces the primary language influence. Such bilingual families are only found in cities like Bangalore. Around 450 million Indians speak English fluently because we study in English medium schools. Although we don't speak English with our classmates. Our accent depends on our exposure to other Indians languages from a young age. A lot of Indians these days watch Nolan's movies or cricket commentary and we pick the accent that we are more exposed to. Check the accent of different uncapped cricket players in IPL, you will be shocked to hear different dialects.
One of My favorite varieties of English is Singaporean/Malaysian-English. A fascinating melting pot of linguistic influences that affected both vocabulary and grammar, as well as many particles that add layers of emotion/nuance. Love it!
I'm from Chicago. Been here my whole life, but my accent is primarily just a standard American accent. The thing about the Chicago accent is that there really isn't just one accent. There's actually about five distinct accents in Chicago and it depends on what your ethnicity is and what side of Chicago you're from. The stereotypical Chicago accent is really only spoken by one group of people in Chicago and that is the Irish American population of the south side, or the South Side Irish as we call them. Italians have their own distinct accents, as well as people on the north side, Hispanics, and African Americans. Like you can tell if a Hispanic person is from Chicago or if an African American person is from Chicago. Hispanics and African Americans in other parts of the country have a different accent
I lived in the Chicago area in the 70's. The Public Radio station played a funny comedy piece about "The Accents of Chicago" with various different people saying the names of streets like "Chicago Avenue" and "Lake Shore Drive" in exaggerated accents. It was pretty funny, I only heard it once and can't remember who did it. My dad grew up on the South side during the depression, and he said "deese" "dat" and "dose" when he wasn't thinking. He called the living room the "front room".
@@binxbolling I wasn’t talking about accents in Minnesota, North Dakota, or Wisconsin. I was specifically talking about Chicago. My comment had nothing to do with accents of MN, ND, or WI. Why would an accent from MN, ND, or WI mean anything if I was only talking about the five distinct Chicago accents? Unless you meant to respond to the actual video and not my comment
I’m from the southside of Chicago and the accent in my neighborhood was very different from what is commonly recognized as a Chicago accent. That sounds more north side to me. It’s my vowels that give me away, especially what my high school speech teacher called the dreaded “urban ‘a’”. And my dad had what he and his sibs called “the west side accent”. Kim sure things have evolved. I’m in my mid 70s and my dad would be almost 120.
South African English first-language speaker here. I can relatively easily distinguish which of the major cities of SA a first-language English speaker comes from. Even within those groups, there are many sub-groups, some of which get more coverage than others. The Afrikaans and Cape Street Taal you covered are often a result of it being spoken as a second language or where aspects of the accent are emphasised to emphasise wishing to be associated with a cultural group. I've been told that a "normal" SA English accent, spoken by a first-language speaker, has one of the best chances of being understood in most other English speaking countries.
I'm Dutch-English bilingual. However during my childhood, I spoke English my Oxford English stepfather, our Cockney au-pair and my American friend. Oh, and I picked up quite a bit o Geordie when I lived in Newcastle. I love it when native English speakers try to figure out my accent and background. I've been called everything from Lancastrian or Canadian to Kiwi and South African.
I had many Dutch friends . They all spoke english well. A few were taught Oxford English and sounded to me , very English but most sounded American. I was always impressed by their language ability. I did find their rare mistakes interesting though . They were often in the use of an idiom. it would be technically correct but no native speaker would use it in that situation . I found that very interesting but could make no conclusions about that. I'm sure I did the same in my German and Dutch.
Actually half of those Viking words we still speak in Northern England unchanged. Nice to know! That little girl's accent is probably from my hometown or maybe a couple of towns over, West Yorkshire. I had a bit of difficulty cos she's a little kid and she's running her words together but I got most of it. My accent's basically the same.
While on a cycle trip from Land's End to John O'Groats with another American from Tennessee, and an Aussie from Brisbane, I got to experience many of the noted British accents. The most pleasant to my ear was around Lockerbie. All were easily understood till our visit to the Orkney's. Of course it only took a couple of words from me before everyone said, "A bloody American! How can I help you?" Despite warnings to the contrary, we were always well received. Great video. Accents and idioms have always fascinated me.
I learnt to speak English from the Philippines as it was brought to us by one of our colonisers the US. But I’m more comfortable now using British spellings I’ve lived 14 years in Ireland. Because of that I still have rhotic R. English is fascinating as it’s an amalgamation of many ethnic European languages and brought to other parts of the world as it is with local extensions. Thanks for this entertaining and educational video 👍
Interesting, I come from the UK but moved to USA and I started using words like color and favorite without the u just because my text would automatically shift to it as if I made a mistake 😂
@@akoden2667 lol funnily enough my mother watches all these us true crime documentaries and she has started to say things like "he held up a gas station" instead of "he robbed a petrol station" and "the child's crib" instead of "the child's cott" lol
@@lightfootpathfinder8218 lol I still call the remote control a "zapper" and yeah I call it the petrol station sometimes and gas station other times.. My mother started picking up words like "hospitalized" instead of "in hospital" which I was told by my cousins still living in UK that they've started to adopt the same thing. It's become more common in England, do you think that's true? one thing that Americans tell me I say "sorry" too much and it makes me seem not confident, but I remember in the UK and talking within my family we say sorry a lot too. It's just polite. I have started to say skedule and appresheeate too lol. But I still say vitamin and mineral the British way. There's more examples I can't think of right meow.
@@akoden2667lol I think some Americanisms are said more now in England but it's at the expense of RP English not of regional or common English. Never really heard "hospitalised" in England tbh and like you said saying sorry is just good manners
location and time influence a lot... I live in the DC area and there are multiple accents that are very distinct ... the DC accent is very different from the Baltimore accent... And then the Counties in between have their own isms as well... fascinating video!
This is so crazy, I was born and now live in Nova Scotia, Canada. My father was in the military so we moved across the country as I grew up. From Alberta to Ontario, to New Brunswick and the finally arriving back in Nova Scotia. So every 4 years I'd have to get used to a new dialect and accent. The prairie provinces have a lot of Ukrainian and Russian immigrants so their mannerisms have slipped into the Canadian English dialect. The Ottawa region of Ontario is a jumble of Quebec French and Canadian English. New Brunswick has a thick Maritime accent along with a weakened Quebec French accent. Nova Scotia has a unique Maritime accent that derives from Scottish and Irish ancestors migrating from Newfoundland with Cape Breton Island having a very unique accent that is more akin to Newfoundland. Growing up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (even our city and town names come from the UK) my oldest childhood friend was born in Belfast and his family lived in Johannesburg SA before moving to Canada. So he had a mild Irish accent that disappeared not too long after moving here. His parents and two older sisters have very think Irish accents and his younger brother had a noticeable South African accent that he lost as well over time. Another unique person I knew was a sub-mariner from Wales that moved to Canada and joined our navy. He his wife moved here in the 90's and they still 30 years later have a thick Welsh accent. I just think it's crazy that we all spoke English yet sounded SO different in such a small area...
You may have got that from Quebec. When speaking English we pronounce an H before words beginning with vowels. But we don't pronounce any actual Hs same as we don't in French. So instead of: "Hi how are you" We would say: "'I 'ow har you" Don't ask me why. Probably because we don't pronounce Hs in French. It just happens and people work hard to get their Hs straightened out.
@@michellesheaff3779 & Maddog -- thanks, that's plausible, but in this case I doubt it because only "haitch," was affected. A woman I met in Sydney circa 1967 complained that her children were taught to say "haitch" in school. I just now saw a couple of sites that say it's an Irish Catholic thing, so I suspect her kids attended a Catholic school where some of the nuns were Irish.
I speak a variation of Europeanised South African Business English deliberately influenced by received pronunciation flavoured with South African Capetonian Afrikaans accented English. Sprinkled with some Xhosa vocabulary because most of the places I've worked are trilingual with English as the official policy preferred work language. It's impossible to get by effectively at work without at least a little trilingualism in Cape Town.
I speak the Singaporean English known colloquially as Singlish. One of the most efficient varieties of English influenced by other local dialects and languages.
Not really efficient, I'd say. It's just a statement made by some rando blog out there. No scientific paper has suggested that, if you do have one, please tell me the title, publisher, and release year. I'd gladly read that paper if it's not just some stupid propaganda made by overproud nationalists. It borrows a lot of phrases, ways of speaking, and sayings from Hokkien, Mandarin, and Malay. It's not that special to Singaporean either to be honest, some Malay and/or Indo Chinese can understand and speak Singlish just as well as the Singaporeans.
Most languages have regional accents , all dutch sounds the same to me , but my dutch friends can tell what part of the Netherlands someone comes from , I also have it on good authority that Russian speaking accents are incredibly diverse . But the British Isles are so amazing with the diversity of accent ,considering the differences over short distances.
I live in the southernmost province of the Netherlands, and here the dialect is different in every town pretty much. If you go 5 km, it's already very different, so it's easy to tell where someone's from.
Dutch and English are extraordinarily vocabularised. Both just avoid compound nouns and invent words when needed. Accent diversity is extreme in the UK and I don't think anyone can properly explain it. Britain invented the modern world of travel and communication so why travelling a few kilometres results in entirely different accents is unclear but a source of fun.
Flemish Dutch sounds different than Dutch from the Netherlands some Flemish accent reminds me of accents from Scotland. Flemish Dutch has less throaty sounds.
One of the things I like about being British is the dialect diversity, I live just outside Liverpool. Explaining to a Canadian that if you go 10 km east from here, people speak with a Lancashire accent, If you go 20 km to the north, people also speak in a Lancashire accent, but it's different from the other Lancashire accent. Then observe their brains explode.😊 Multiply that by all UK accents, and chuck in Gaelic languages in Scotland, Wales and NI-now you understand why I like it so much😊😊
Through a long history and international spread English acquired a large number of dialects and and an even larger number of local accents. In Glasgow as children we spoke a rhyming slang with one type of pronunciation plus a more standard southern Scottish English at school etc. Even over a short period of time pronunciation can change because English writing is not very phonetic to say the least. So we can have a standard way of writing while having a large diversity of pronunciation.
Would you consider extending this and looking at English accents in other former British colonies (eg. South East Asian English (e.g Singapore/Malaysia), Pacific islands, Caribbeans) and what differentiates an accent from a creole to a pidgin?
You could have touched on accents from the former British West Indies - Grenada, St Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana etc. Great variety there. Looking forward to that!
I love de Jamaican accent, mon! Harry Belafonte, Bob Marley, and Sean Paul-de be ma favorite singers! Kingston is a cool city-totally relaxed, not at all like London or New York-which are very hectic, always busy, busy, busy!
My wife was from Guyana and I went there twice. I couldn't understand a word they were saying the first time. Meh ga gaf vid ya tamara. Or as I would say "I will talk to you tomorrow." They don't say "i" it is "Meh" and me pronouced "me" So for "i don't know" they say "Meh ne know" "it is my first time to town" "meh firs time a tong"
@@jeffbguarinoas someone eith Guyanese parents I can confirm this is all correct but also find it funny reading you explain all these phrases in "common" english lol
It’s nice you brought the diversity of English accents within India. A lot of it depends on schooling, how early kids are taught the language and the quality of teachers. So typically, you’ll have much greater fluency as you rise through socio-economic stratas although that’s not a necessary indicator since there’s a difference in fluency and diction between the urban and rural areas as well. So while you’ll definitely have that ‘Indian’ accent among a lot of English speaking Indians, typically it isn’t their first language (what they speak at home with family a majority of the time, for example). If one’s an upper middle/upper class urban kid in one of the bigger cities, chances are they’re likely to have a very neutral and polished accent with a very expansive lexicon as well.
I'm a Midwesterner living in South Korea. I've been told I have a very unique accent. Some people back home tell me that my accent has gotten stronger in the 13 years that I have lived here.
Each individual speaks in a way that is unique to them - their idiolect - which reflects their personal history, influences, circumstances and current context (i.e. it changes in different contexts). All this tends to pull language apart, but there is an equal and opposite force that keeps it together - the need to understand each other, and to feel part of a community, and to distinguish our community members from non-members. Nations and other identity groups, in their speaking culture, work the same way, at a macro level. What struck me about this video is that Olly supplied the history and some facts, while many of the clips showed people loving the elements that make their accents distinctive, and feel like home to them - there was an infectious warmth and happiness there, which was lovely to see and hear.
Born and raised in the American South. Currently in metro Atlanta. Native accents around here vary from heavy Appalachian influence in north and northwest Georgia to something more akin to what most people would think a traditional southern accent is. The traditional southern Dixie accent exists, but it's rare. I find it a little more common from central Alabama over into Mississippi than I do in Atlanta (LOTS of Northern and Midwestern transplants here). My accent is somewhere between the Appalachian influenced and the more traditional. I believe the traditional Dixie style accent is more old guard and is being phased out, and I think that's a shame.
I am from Newfoundland and the way that you showed is the way we USED to talk since that dialect it dying in replaced by other dialects but we still retain some words and we never use because we use since
The fact that I’m lucky enough to have Standard American Broadcasting English as my native accent is never lost on me.. it has made EFL teaching a much easier career!
Is your accent mid-Atlantic? I have an extremely neutral American accent, despite having been born in the Valley and thus literally being a Valley Girl. It helps having lived in Europe and gaining (then, alas, losing again) a British accent before the age of 10. I’ve also been an ESL teacher and I agree, a neutral accent is very helpful in that line of work.
Where I'm from, we call it ESL (English as a Second Language), so at first, I was thinking, "EFL...English as a first language?...no, that can't be right." Sorry. Then English as a Foreign Language made me think of this: ua-cam.com/video/3iJ9gnt7wNo/v-deo.html
For some reason I keep getting pushed english as a second language content on other social media apps and it's made me a lot more aware of the slang and the weird made up contractions I use in everyday English. For example, I caught myself saying, "Yardy did that" instead of "You already did that" it made me crack up lmao. Midwestern american English btw
Fellow Midwestern accent holder here. We tend to cut the g off of words ending in '-ing', and of course there is the semi-famous 'Ope!' said like the end of nope. We tend to insert that as an accident word, like if something gets dropped or you bump into someone.
I have lived all over the US so my accent is a mix of standard midwestern and southern. I probably confuse people when I talk "normally" but then randomly use "y'all" in a sentence.
I am from Southern California but have lived in Wisconsin for half my life. Folks here still on occasion hear me speak and wonder where I'm from as I don't do the "raising" of vowel diphthongs as they do (similar to upper peninsula Michigan and much of Canada). I sometimes ask them to guess... I'll broaden my accent to Valley Girl if they don't hear the west coast slide right away. It's fun to figure out where folks are from based on accent!
I was born in New Jersey and grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania so I tend to code-switch between a Philadelphia/SEPA/South Jersey dialect (those watching at 7:41, please don't assume we sound the same as those from NYC or Boston), and something pretty close to General American. But my dad has an interesting way of speaking that I don't think is noticed very often: he was born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania's coal belt (not too far out of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre) and still carries with him a number of neat-ass shibboleths, and I think this might be a suitable place to discuss them: 1: Positive "anymore". Most English speakers only use "anymore" in negative statements like "we don't go there anymore" but in Pennsylvania you'll often hear people use it in a positive sentence to mean something like "these days" or "nowadays", such as on a long car trip: "hoo boy, gas sure is expensive anymore, heyna?" 2: Heyna. This is a tag question similar to how "innit" works for some English speakers over in the UK. "The weather's sure nice, heyna?" "Aw but she sure is a nice kid, heyna?" Sounds either like "hay-na" or "henna" depending on your taste, your intent, and possibly even which side of the river you're from. If you're lucky, and you're kicking it with the right kind of old-heads in back-country Luzerne County, you might even hear someone end their sentences with "heyna'r no?" 3: Calling bell peppers "mangoes". The reason for this was explained to me once when I was little, but I can't remember anymore. 4: A sprinkling of PA Dutch vocabulary. Neither my parents nor I are ethnically PA Dutch but it just kinda bleeds into the local lingo. So I heard "schnickelfritz" (a bothersome kid) a lot growing up. 5: The curious elision of "to be" in passive constructions. Most would say "the lawn needs to be mowed" or "the floor needs to be swept" but my pop always said "the lawn needs mowed" and "the floor needs swept" 6: A stock/stalk merger. Both are pronounced with a rounded back vowel (e.g. "the stawk market"). This one's interesting to me because not only do I not have it (despite having a very pronounced cot/caught split), but I've never really met anyone else who has it besides older people from NEPA.
I’m from a region called the Iron Range in northern Minnesota (it’s in that little triangular shape north of Lake Superior and south of the Canadian border). The area is definitely Minnesotan sounding, but also different with a number of unique features. This is due to European settlement patterns, but the settlements began as company towns for mining iron ore (I’m talking Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan actually striking a deal together to focus on different parts of the steel industry amounts of ore. And during WWII three counties in MN put out more iron ore than all the res of the Allied countries combined.) So this region had Americans, Cornish, Irish, Italian, Norwegioan, German, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Finnish, Swedish, Greek, Ojibwe, and more all in this relatively isolated string of towns. Logging and mining. So I grew up eating sarmas, potiça, pasties, gnocchi, porketta, venison, pheasant, ‘shore lunch’, wild rice, wild blueberries, etc.. The dialect has mostly leveled to more of a distinct accent I suppose. But folks outside of the States- people do sometimes have trouble understanding me, and can almost never guess where I’m from. Apparently in even in German it sounds more like an Irish accent than American. Guessing it’s the Minnesotan ‘oh’ sound. But the Range tends to be a little less nasally, a little more like idk monotone, and a little more Canadian than the rest of Minnesota. Yoopers (UP of Michigan) had the same sort of thing going on, and Yooper is a close cousin of Ranger. Together the regions account for most of the Finnish descendants in the US. Get in there outdoors channel is a wonderful example of Iron Range English. ua-cam.com/video/wTd_RI9SlVg/v-deo.html Charlize Theron also did a great job in North Country- she said it was the toughest accent she’d had to learn, that most take a few days but this took her a couple weeks. Anyway, it’s a unique little bubble and most people don’t know about it. But if you read all that, now you do! :)
@@aldozilli1293 meaning people born in the United States (of varying European descent generally). By the other nationalities/ethnic groups, I don’t mean ‘descendants of people from [Cornwall, Germany, etc…], but people coming from those places themselves. So while there were many immigrants, there were also indigenous people of course already there and also people who moved to the area from elsewhere in the U.S.
The accent game the guys play at 16:27 - 16:33 I really want to play that with my friends. Each of them has different backgrounds and accents, I'm sure we will have fun and learn something new. The last time I spoke to someone from Northern Ireland I had to pay close attention because I really wanted to understand and learn more. They were very nice, easy going and enjoyed teaching us - tourists - about their culture, plus the ale is amazing! 🍺
I'm a native Northern Californian. My twin brother and I spoke in a way that only our older brother could interpret. By age four we started to speak normally but became terrible mumblers. As a correction I learned to speak more slowly and to over-enunciate. The result is that people I meet often think I'm Canadian!
I was born in Colorado (he left out Rocky Mountain English on his American dialects list), grew up in central Texas (also missing), and then spent more than a decade in the Midwest, BUT also had a speech impediment growing up so I learned to over-enunciate my words. Nobody can EVER place where my accent is supposed to be from.
They think you’re Canadian from lower BC, I’d guess. Some of the slowest speakers are on the west coast of Canada; folks tend to speak faster the further east you go. (Same, I’d think, of the USA west vs east coasts.)
@@snotrajohnsonThis is certainly true....until you go south of the "Mason-Dixon Line" (for those who don't know, technically, it's the line that STILL divides the North from the South -- running between Maryland and Virginia, with Washington, DC being its own entity). Once south of it, the rate of speech slows down the further South you go😄
I speak Quebec English. We have a few differences in pronunciation with the rest of English-speaking Canada, a lot of vocabulary that comes from the French-speaking majority around us, and a lot of code switching because some things are just easier to express in French.
@@herknorth8691 Franglais is not the same as Quebec English. Non French speakers wouldn’t understand Franglais. But they would understand Quebec English very well with some clarification about vocabulary on occasion.
@@camorrell I had no idea that Franglais was a real term. I grew up in Alberta and there were some native Francophones that would interject French words into their otherwise English speech. My brother and I spoke French as a second language and he came up with "Franglais" to describe that phenomenon, or at least I thought he did!
I speak Québec English too! I go to the dépanneur (convenience store), eat doré (walleye fish) and incorporate French-Canadian "sacres" (religious-based cursing) in casual speech. Vive la différence!
Though Quebec English is the correct term, I'm not certain that Quebec English is the most accurate description. I'd say it's more a Montreal Island/South Shore thing. In the Ottawa Valley/Outaouais, I don't think that anglos who live in Quebec have a distinct sound and way of speaking to our neighbours in eastern Ontario.
Kenyan English varies by location because of people's different native languages. However, people growing up in more diverse environments, such as Nairobi, tend to pretty much sound the same. Rolling r's at the beginning of words, not pronouncing r's after vowels. And in some cases, actually being more influenced by American English.
Standard Canadian English, we tend to pronounce all but the silent because of a rule letters. But I grew up in Toronto ("Torana") which had people mistake me for American when I moved to Vancouver. I tend to think of Toronto as 'The Greatest American City North of the Border' which amongst Canadians is a minor but accurate insult, and can be also reflected in their speech which can be closer to American Broadcast English than Standard Canadian due to people not pronouncing all the letters.
Not sure if any other Australian can relate but the Māori form of English seems to be getting more and more common (at least in Queensland)? For me doesn’t really sound out of place at all. I’d guess it’s because there’s a significant amount of islander peoples and kiwis who are coming over here.
I grew up in Bermuda so it was cool to see Bermudian English being included as it is a lesser known variation of English. The most common way of describing Bermudian English that I have heard from friends abroad is that the accent sounds like a mix of American, British and Caribbean accents all put together which gives it its uniqueness.
I'm originally from Canada (Alberta, specifically), and have lived in the USA (Wyoming & Colorado) for over 13 years. Interestingly, I was always accused of having an "American accent" when I lived in Canada, even though I was born and grew up there. Now that I'm in the USA, when people here learn that I'm from Canada they express surprise that I "don't have an accent". When I talk to people from Canada, I now think of them as having an accent, even though I didn't before.
I spent a few weeks in Australia several years ago and after I was there for a week, everybody started asking me what part of Canada I was from - and I have always lived the US! Apparently being surrounded by a bunch of people speaking Australian English caused me to exaggerate my vowels of my native mid-Atlantic East Coast accent just enough to sound like I was from Canada.
I live in Southwestern Ontario and in Ontario we have the same accent as most americans, the standard american accent. So i never understood, I still don’t, when people say “Canadian accent” because to me the Canadian accent is the same as the standard American accent.
I speak mix of Welsh English and East Anglian English, Which is always fun when your friends don't know what you're saying. I must say the Welsh accent used isn't very common, especially in the south, it has it's influences and you can here it in a lot of speech but it's not particularly strong, it's most prominent in the older population of farming communities. I think something that could be interesting to discuss would be the influences that the internet has had on language around the world, such as is British English becoming more Americanised?
I love how Andrea Riseborough masters every accent watch, "Shadow Dancer" for a perfect Northern Irish accent. Then watch "To Leslie" for a perfect blue collar Texas accent. Both amazing films.
Some languages have dialects that are actually unable to understand each other. Where an accent turns into a dialect is probably a fuzzy line but the fact that so many different accents can actually communicate effectively in English is interesting. Comparatively few are so far apart that speakers cannot casually converse.
As a Geordie I LOVE the sketch you started with. Did you know that even in the north east the accent varies. You can tell if someone comes from south or north of the Tyne. Also my brother has lived in Bermuda for over twenty years and I've visited many times. I remember my first visit. The accent was definitely NOT what I was expecting. Btw, I don't like people saying a British accent. It's like saying somebody is speaking with a European accent (ie which one?). Britain is England, Wales and Scotland. Nearly always when Americans say someone is speaking with a British accent they mean English. Also did you know that the RP clipped accent promoted by the BBC you mentioned was actually based on an early phonetic model that they later realised contained a mistake. In normal spoken English the /ee/ sound has a slight -y sound at the end and the /oo/ sound has a slight -w sound at the end. You can hear it most clearly if there is another vowel sound afterwards. 'I see a man' is pronounced 'I seeya man' and 'I do a job' is pronounced 'I doowa job'. That's why they ended up with this very artificial clipped version making these exaggerated ee and oo sounds without the y/w glides at the end. Basically, it was wrong.
I once lived in the Tyne valley, I think roughly 30km west of Newcastle. The accent there was noticeably different from the Newcastle one. In Newcastle they would slightly pronounce all the sounds in "boat", ie bo-at.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Well spotted!! The other clue is the schwa sound at the end of words like 'better', 'river'. In Newcastle it tends to come out as almost an -a sound 'betta', 'riva'. In Durham we pronounce it as 'bettuh, rivuh' like everyone else. I do think these regional differences are changing though as communications mean we hear each other all the time and also people move around and live in different areas. I've heard people from Ashington in Northumberland speaking just like Newcastlers.
I mostly only hear the "yeh, nah" in Australia, not the opposite, which sort of makes sense as it kind of means "yes I understand what you are saying, but no".
it's odd but some of us grew up living all over the US. Our accents are a combination of various from north to south and on to the west. Hard to pin down by many
Honestly, as a Brit, it's hard to pin down the vast majority of American accents other than a few obvious outliers, most of you simply sound like standard American to us. I've always thought it strange that such a small island as Britain has such massive variance, you can travel just a few miles and people sound completely different (Edinburgh is a pretty small city but has several distinct accents, and I live about 15 miles away and sound like none of them, and I'm about 30 miles from Glasgow but they practically sound like a different country lol), but in America you can travel for hundreds of miles and people still sound the same
@@notaname8140 There is more variety in accents in UK because English spoken a lot longer than in in United States. In addition, majority of the people stayed within their communities before Industrial Revolution. This allows different accents to change from village to village. In the United States, the most variety in accents are in the east vs the west coast for the same reasons.
@@dawnpalacios8312 Weird, I'm not from the US and can hardly tell the difference between east-coast and west-coast (unless they are exaggerated stereotypes), but I can easily tell from, say, a Texan accent vs a Midwesterner from Ohio (I had a friend from Cincinnati). EDIT: Also, I respectfully disagree with your hypothesis. I don't know if there's really more variety in the UK, but if there is, it has nothing to do with "they have been speaking it for more time than in the US", since American English descends from British English, both have been spoken for the exact same time, i.e. since whenever English can be considered to be born. Also, the US had a huge influx of migrations to a lot of areas (while in the UK there was a huge influx of migration to mostly the urban centers), where people from all over the world influenced the accent.
I think Americans move around much more than do Brits. Around 20 years ago I spent several days in Atlanta for a conference, and I never heard a Southern accent! Most of the US is pretty cosmopolitan and you often have to work hard to find any regional accents in recent decades.
I've had the pleasure to know many English speakers from many parts of the world throughout my adult life. In my mind, understanding a number of the accents requires me to figuratively shift gears in my brain. My "cerebral transmission" often got quite a workout during the hundreds of global conference calls. Good, and interesting, times.
Very interesting background information. Thank you. Of course, almost all languages know enormous variations, based on historical and social peer group background. Even in a small place as Flanders, people who are used to Limburgs have difficulties understanding Westvlaams.
When I was 16 my family went to visit friends who lived in a rural part of Ireland. They rented some of their land to a guy to graze his cattle. I was peaking to him, but didn't understand what he was saying. I asked him if he spoke English and he got really angry. Still had no idea what he was saying, but later one of our hosts confirmed he *WAS* speaking English. I just thought he didn't have good craic.
I grew up in southern California on a skateboard & surfboard in the 1980's. I really did have the whole "Dude, that's raaad" CA surf town kind of accent loaded with slang. Like, cool, rad, hot, baaad, on and on, my vocabulary and pronunciation was what you've seen in the movies that apply to this small culture. As an adult, I moved halfway up the state and in business, I had to polish my accent and drop most of the slang. Now I'm living in Mexico, and I speak American national TV English, plus Spanish, of course. I speak English slower and with zero slang because on any day, it's likely that I'll be speaking to someone whose first language was Spanish, Canadian English, Canadian French, Portugese, Italian, an indigenous language of Latin America, or any extreme American English because my clients are from all over the world. I'm often understood because of Hollywood. American movies and TV shows are playing almost everywhere in the world.
I'm from the southern part of Sweden. I can't remember when I actually learned English, apart from specific moments such a finishing reading my very first book in English (Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban ofc). I grew up naturally consuming a lot of both British media (Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers, Monthy Python etc) as well as American media (songs, movies). I was born 1,5-lingual you could say as my mom was Swedish and my dad was Croatian (he didn't really speak Croatian to us as kids so we never became 100% fluent which pains me to this day). But English was just sort of there all of a sudden and I honestly can't remember what it was like before I could speak it. In school my English teacher spoke with a British accent, but I guess I leaned more towards an American dialect. No offense to Brits, but I felt I was putting on a show if I spoke British. After spending time some with Americans, I came to realize I wasn't actually speaking with an American accent. But I was so convinced I did not have the typical Swedish accent with its UPs and DOwns (which stems from Swedish being a very 'melodic' language). However, I'm from the south, meaning not from Stockholm where the dialect is more distinctly melodic. But also, the southern dialect continuum, which I'm a part of, is distinctly different from the rest of Swedish dialects, so my English accent would be quite different from the majority of Swedish accents you'd normally hear. Anyway, that has just gotten me to think about dialects and accents in general. I think it's interesting to let native English speakers in on the experience of learning English as a second language, since its such a global phenomenon that they don't get to be a part of. They're born into their accents. But us second language learners, we are served a buffet of dialects which we can arbitrarily choose from when we first start learning it. Like, why couldn't I adopt the Indian dialect? Perhaps the Jamaican accents suits my personality better? Obviously the media we consume and our environment will greatly affect our choice. For example, I have Swedish friends who have spent more time in Australia whose accents therefore have a lot of Australian characteristics, and other Swedish friends who have spent more time in the UK and therefore speak more British-ly. We get together and it's three Swedes with accents akin to American, British, and Australian, and it feels natural. There's no rule saying we should all talk in a certain way. And that gets me to final realization. None of us really have a true American, British or Australian accent. And I don't have a "Swedish accent" either. I've come to find that I have a "Vincent-dialect". I have a way of speaking English that is particular to me, as does every single English speaker in the entire world. I think the pressure of having to mimic a standard English dialect as well as you can is something that resonates with a lot of people who have English as their second language. But really, pronunciation is not a requirement for fluency. We simply have our own voices. And instead of letting that pressure affect your confidence and flow when you're talking, it's better and more freeing to just let your natural voice lead the way, and be proud of how you've mastered a language and made it your own.
Yeah, my accent in English is an unholy mixture of some kind of American one (because of all the media we consume), British English (probably most like RP, that we learn in school) and my own Swedish accent (born and raised in the so called center of Sweden - definitely not Stockholm, but I do have the melody down). Like most people's accents it has been influenced by my life and what media I have chosen to consume. When I studied English at university, I had to try to analyze what my accent actually was. Made the teacher laugh by calling it an unholy mixture. :) What most people in Sweden try to to is to at least not sound as horrible as most of our politicians do. They don't even try, it seems. As long as we don't, it's probably fine. If people understand you, it's probably fine. Ah man, that means that the way our politicians speak is also fine! Oh well...
At 5:38 that is actually a guy from Northern Ireland, he is from my mum's hometown of Dungiven near Derry. His name is Ruairi, I remember how happy and fun he was to speak to one day in the town
I saw an urbex video on UA-cam where they were speaking a weird type of French I had never heard before despite 8 years of French lessons. I had to ask where they were from. Turned out they were Canadian and I can tell you Canadian French is a lot more "divergent" from Paris French than Canadian English from London English.
French Canada was more of less isolated from French influences after the British conquest of 1759. For all intents and purposes, there was nearly zero immigration from France to Canada, nor from Canada to France. So, now over 260 years or more later, they have diverged.
Canadian French has certain slang words that other French speakers don’t use. I’m a bilingual Canadian, bilingual in English and French. I don’t use any slang in French. What kind of French do you speak?
Born in England, raised in New Zealand now living in the US. Having an English father and American mother took the edge off our Kiwi accent. I still sound unmistakably kiwi but when I go home, most locals sound pretty extreme. Many expat kiwis I know in the US have picked up an American twang as the majority western states US accent (that you hear in movies and on TV) is quite strong and after 16 years, I’ve had to exert considerable effort to resist the twang by enduring the quizzical looks of Americans and repeating myself. And don’t forget the slang - there are over 300 words in everyday use that NZers use different from Americans.
@stan1510 That's called "rhoticity". There are several non-rhotic accents, so there's actually no "correct" way to pronounce certain words, just accent/dialect variations.
@stan1510 It's only the rs After the vowel in a syllable that are lost (well, more like they became a modifier to the vowel). Some US accents are like this, and Most non-US dialects of English are like that too.
The Newfoundland accent here is spot on. Nova Scotia - sounds like a very rural accent, not common. JJ seems to do that fake/exaggerated accent schtick, likely to bring interest to his channel. No one says aboot or aboat, or "aroond" unless they are trying hard to put on a fake Canadian accent. Most Canadians do a very quick 'ow', keeping the lips very close, in contrast to the mid-west/ southern American where the mouth opens wide to say 'aBOWt' (bow as in to bow one's head)
Western Canadian here. I do say it sort of like aboat, but still not as exaggerated as the example clip, sort of like how JJ says house, as opposed to most Americans who say it more like “hAOs” or “aBAOt”. That example audio was kind of a weird pick, she sounded more like a New Englander than a Canadian to me personally.
@@meteoman7958 I'll never understand how Canadians are so unaware of their own accents and culture, nor will I ever understand how it's not obvious why an accent is perceived differently depending on ones own accent. For Canadians who think the "aboot" thing is a myth, try saying "cow" five times, and then say "house." There's a difference between "ow" and "ou." Our about sounds normal to us, but it sounds like "aboot" to foreigners (except Scots) because they don't distinguish between those two diphthongs.
@juliansmith4295 funny cow reference. The ow in cow is exactly what I hear when a midwest/southern American says house. I've also heard ottawa valley people say "Melkin kews" (milking cows)
This is so interesting. For the most part I really don't have a hard time understanding, it just takes my wee brain a couple of more seconds to fumble through it. You give me those few extra seconds then never a problem.
I’m Canadian. I’ve been all over Canada, met people from all walks of life, lived out west and in Toronto. I’ve never, ever, not even once heard someone pronounce “about” as “aboot” or “aboat”. I’m telling you it’s a myth, and the people that say they say it like that are just putting it on to sound interesting.
Yeah i’m Canadian as well, from Southwestern Ontario and I’ve never heard any Canadian pronounce it those ways. We pronounce about the same way as americans.
This was fun and interesting! I would have loved to see inclusion of more minority American accents, particularly a discussion of the origins and African-derived grammatical differences in African American Vernacular English, Gullah language, Yiddish-influenced New York English (expressions like “Who knew?”, and words like klutz, schlep, bagel, etc., are all direct from Yiddish), etc. - also, other Carribean accents, like Trini - maybe another video is in order?
Olly's video could have been forty minutes longer if he had included the many accents within Canada and the USA. Through another series, I learned that Florida, New York and other places - the deeper you travel within - the more you hear distinct accents and vocabulary used. And California is saturated with so much culture, each county/city has its own accent, slang, and vocabulary even though most Americans learn from an early age from books, TV media or social media. Pretty much similar to Canada, although Canada does have its Natives who [few] still speak their Native language which sounds distinct and the country's co-official language. I think it's called How The States Got Their Shapes (2011). Sorry for the long explanation. I was trying to remember the series' name. 😊 Yes, I heard Yiddish for the first time through the series too!
@@Ailurophile1984 Yes, you are correct. As I stated in my previous comment California has so much culture spread about, everyone is quite distinct and they have their own special events. I used to travel to Califonia pre-pandemic but I haven't done much travelling lately. The places are beautiful, and the people are (depending on where you visit) they are friendly and willing to help you if needed. Thank you for your input. 🏄♀ 🏄♂
I apparently speak with an “IB accent”. I’ve been in IB schools almost my entire life, being exposed to lots of different accents. Friends, teachers and even my parents all spoke differently. I personally think I sound American, but I’ve been told by Americans it sounds off. Canadian, British, American, Korean, Swedish and Indian accents/ dialects have all affected the way I speak :)
Fun fact about Australian accents: South Australians generally says “an” like in dance or prance like “ahn” in a very stereotypically ‘British’ way. It’s a bit of a shock when you go to other states and they just say one random sound differently, like Queenslanders pronouncing the word pool really strangely. It’s noticeable to the point that Australian comedy books point it out 😂
I must not get out enough in WA because I swear Australians have the least amount of different accents. I know there’s some, but it’s nothing like Britain or America
In Spanish, every country has their own standard accent (usually the one spoken in the capital city), but every region/province/state has a distinct accent too (and it’s not small differences, the accents can change a lot, usually what stays the same inside a country is the vocabulary and the distinct words they use, but the accents are really different one to another). I think the main difference between English and Spanish tho is that in English vocabulary does not vary as much, sure there are some different words, but in Spanish there’s multiple ways of calling everything, and usually a person only knows one (their native way) and sometimes a more “standard” one.
What leads you to believe vocabulary doesn’t vary much in English? It varies a good bit just in the States, not even considering all the other English speaking countries.
@@agme8045 It’s “what do you call it” not “how” and it’s called “coke” where I’m from. All of it. You’re only revealing your own ignorance. Whatever examples you have of different Spanish vocabulary around the world there will be a similar example from the English speaking world. Not to mention, you literally provided an example of three different words for the same thing. And it wasn’t even complete as you left some off because you don’t even know them. So you’re not really making a good point.
I guess it's the same with most languages. My language is Swedish, and at least a few decades ago you could hear what part of Göteborg (Gothenburg) someone came from by just listening to the accent, and I guess that was true for other places here in Sweden as well. These days people move around a bit more so it's not that distinct anymore, but I would be surprised if we had less than a hundred accents here in our little country. Some are very different from each other, some are so close that only a native speaker can hear the difference.
What fascinates me is how well you English in text. For example, I’m American, so I can read your English text and it’s perfect. You being a Swede one would assume English is not your primary language, but your vocabulary, punctuation and spelling is probably better than most Americans. But if I were to hear you speak English it would probably be with a heavy Nordic accent. It always amazes me how well non native English speakers can English in writing/text. Especially since this now world wide language came from such a small little island in the north west of Europe.
@@ImSpun13 I guess I could fake the accent to confuse the listener, but yes, I write much better than I speak. Thanks, by the way. One thing that's makes it easier when writing is that I can correct mistakes before hitting Enter. When I speak I can't go back in time and correct anything. I'm sure one or two mistakes slip through when writing some times as well.
My dad came to England in 1958 from Northern Ireland. When i was a kid i always thought it odd that my mates couldn't understand what my dad was saying. Now i am a grown man with three of my own kids, the eldest being 42 and to this day there are certain words my dad would say where they struggle to understand because of his accent!
American tourists in Costa Rica usually have a hard time understanding people in the province of Limón. It's quite similar to Jamaican patois, especially among older people who've been living there all of their lives. A lot of the locals do switch back and forth from a more standard English to the local accent/dialect. A lot of the locals who are not black also have the same accent and even speak patois. Most of the younger generation of black costaricans speak Spanish without an accent, but even a few decades ago, it was still common to hear fluent Spanish with a heavy Caribbean accent.
I was brought up in Warwickshire and as a result have a fairly neutral accent. I then spent most of mt 30s in the North East, this didn't really change the way that I spoke, but did make me listen. Even within the North East there was so much variety Geordie, Mak'ems, Smoggies, but also huge variety around Easington/Peterlee and then different again near Consett. Then I moved to New Zealand and while I don't think my accent has changed my vocabulary definitely has changed. This has resulted in family in the UK thinking I sound like a Kiwi.
You should also have a look at Spanish and its more than 22 different accents, besides their local and regional accents. That also enriches the language and its tons of local vocabulary, slang, expressions, etc that makes it as dynamic and lively tongue as English. I guess English is a global Franca Lingua, so it might be the main reason, for such variety of dialects coming from all over the world, even though, from those who do not have English as a native language. However the more a wide language is spoken, you'll notice more remarkable, colorful, and different accents like stars are in the sky.
I used to be able to tell an Oldham accent from a Manchester one (less than 8 miles apart) and both from a Bolton accent (11 miles from Manchester). Keighley is a town in the City of Bradford, and they have a distinct accent.
Well done! I am keeping this lesson and the former one in my library for those occasions, when I read about people complaining about this accent or that dialect of English from another country, where English is also a native language form. I am able to speak and understand about 4 major dialects, only because, I have spent years hearing them on SW Radio broadcasts (long before the internet even existed.) If you are patient with yourself and another native English speaker and not too rushed in your speech patterns and stick as closely as possible to speaking a formal language, than there will be less miscommunications events.
Growing up in Brooklyn I was sent by the nuns from my parochial school to speech therapy because I didn't pronounce my H in my TH's. For most of my adult life I've lived in New England. I used to hear the old New England accent (it sounded very British) but today I mostly hear the modern New England accent where most R's are dropped. One accent you missed was African American speech. Besides it's obvious African roots, it's influence has spread beyond the African American community and influence southern white speech.
Having grown up as Afrikaans in South Africa, then moving to Asia my English is a combination of British, American, Australian and Indian… everywhere I traveled,… we had to understand each other!
Can south African English speakers understand English dialect? I only ask as certain dialects on the east coast of English have a lot of Dutch and Frisian influence and Afrikaans is very similar to dutch
English is my home language, I'm from a mixed Indian and coloured family, and I grew up in a predominantly Afrikaans speaking region. I live in Latin America and most of my friends and colleagues speak English with American accents, and they say my accent sounds like a mix of British, American, Indian and Australian 😂
@@hastigehond I mean if a south African who can speak English and Afrikaans heard east English dialect that has similarities to dutch could they understand it?
English is both the GREATEST language ever and the MOST COMPLICATED language ever. Like just think about how many words we use that are used differently. It boggles the mind once you think about the different uses of the same word often spelt slightly differently. I applaud EVER person who speaks English as a second language.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Try guessing how a word in Japanese is pronounced just by looking at it. The difficulty of learning a new language depends greatly on ones mother tongue.
Wonder why it seems the whole world speaks English? Check out this fascinating video here! 👉🏼 ua-cam.com/video/bF-4ZmUdB1E/v-deo.html
NO. You're wrong. The American accent didn't start in the UK. The British have always sounded the way they are. American English developed on its own.
Where do you think the Anerican colonists came from? Duh... mostly from the UK. Some people in the southwest parts of America spoke Spanish before the British colonists arrived, but no one in what is now the USA spoke English until the 17th century, when the British colonists started arriving.
Prior the arrival of the Spanish and British, everyone living in what is now America spoke indigenous for First Nations languages: Iroquois, Algonquin, Cherokee, Navajo, Cree, etc. etc.
Same last name
@@DestinyAwaits19 Actually that's not quite right. There was actually a class reaction to the American Revolution in England that caused a radical change in accents there. The higher classes started exaggerating pronunciation to differentiate themselves from the lower classes. So in fact the English have gone through quite radical changes in pronunciation, ironically, due to the American Revolution.
@@glamberson Rubbish. How do you explain all the other accents in British colonies like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa? If the British spoke like Americans then their colonies would sound American aswell. But they don't. They all took off after UK accents and had slight tweaks.
When I was younger and lived in the North of England I met a guy who was able to listen to a local in an area about 30 miles wide and he would be able to narrow your birth place down to about 6 streets or roads...not 100% of the time but was well known for a success about 85% of the time. So not only do we have different accents we obviously are affected by those close around us.
Incredible.. yet in Australia, the accent is much the same for the whole country; New Zealand the same.
As an Liberian we are the closest to the United States when it comes to cultural, historical, religiously and traditional relationships with the United States because Liberia and the Liberians people is the only African country on the planet that was settled and control by the American Colonization Society which went back to Liberia in the 1800's that is why our English is similar to the American English, the Liberian flag , our culture, music, food and so much more is tie with in the American society
@@petesmitt That's because Australian colonisation was a very rapid growing process, with relentless people coming in from different areas of UK & Ireland, but also relentless and constant migration around Australia itself: gold rushes (& other mining), farming land, new towns & cities constantly established, hence professional opportunities for engineers, doctors, surveyors, lawyers, teachers etc.
This meant Australia would only develop a generic accent, and no specific regional accents, purely because of the constant shifting of the population around, which actually still happens today (I've been to school & work with people from every other state and territory, and I've lived in the same city my whole life!).
In Yorkshire the next valley has a different accent.....
@@andrewbray772 So true, when I was in the North east it was noticeable in the pit mining villages, move to another even just a couple of miles away and it was like moving to a whole new world, to be honest I think this effect is fading today as these villages all blend into one via expansion.
I like that you included Bermuda. Nobody really knows the island, just the triangle. I loved it when I went
I was very young when I went, all I remember was the trains, a cave and an aquarium.
LMAO this made me laugh cause I mostly know the triangle
There's Heather Nova, a very good singer-songwriter from Bermuda. 😊🏝️
@@simibro1709 I don't know who that is, but at least we got represented. I'm from South Africa btw
He forgot sean paul english tho
Lived in London for 75 years. The change in the dialect is phenomenal. So many words are completely different. South was pronounced sowth. Horse was howss. Now sarf and ors.
Yes, the East Ender gangsters are spreading their wonderfully refined accent far and wide.
I'm Brazilian. I appreciated your informative video. Thanks a lot ❤
Olly, I praise your work! It is such a pleasure to follow you and learn from your videos. I am a native French Canadian speaker, "Quebecoise" who is perfectly bilingual and the fact is not too many people take an interest in languages like you do. You should have mentioned in your video, the Normand conquest and how the French language influenced it.Merci Olly! Tu es le meilleur! 🙏
Hello I’m also Québécois
I'm not Quebecois, but I'm from Plattsburgh， NY。 When I was a boy the English was influenced by French. For example people would say "Hey whcha doin' der you?" Which is a loan translation of "Que est-ce que tu fais toi?" Now that is lost unfortunately.
I speak Guyanese Creole. Similar to other English dialects in the Caribbean region, it is based on 19th century English and incorporates loan words from West African, Indian, Arawakan, and older Dutch languages.
That's cool!
As an Liberian we are the closest to the United States when it comes to cultural, historical, religiously and traditional relationships with the United States because Liberia and the Liberians people is the only African country on the planet that was settled and control by the American Colonization Society which went back to Liberia in the 1800's that is why our English is similar to the American English, the Liberian flag , our culture, music, food and so much more is tie with in the American society
I heard the English spoken in the 1970s in the Bay Islands which are north of Honduras. Very interesting. They said they were descendants of pirates and the blacks from slaves. I am afraid it is being lost now because of TV and internet.
What fun. I had a friend from Roanoke many years ago. He sounded kinda English. He claimed it was because many families were descended from shipwrecked sailors.
In other words, it started as a dialect of English, but has evolved into it's own language.
Thank you so much! Loved your explanation on South African English 🇿🇦. You just missed one little detail that every city in SA has its own English accent and today it also differs more on social class rather than ethnic groups.
It’s the DBN-PMB accents that get me every time. I’m from the Great North btw
For sure. My wife is from Joburg but many of her friends are from Cape Town, and their accents are so different! Heck, my wife's father (who grew up in Vereeniging) has a different accent from my wife.
I'm from Dbn living in Cape Town and people would always pick up that my accent is from either Dbn or they think I'm from an English speaking person from Jhb
I'd say it differs more based on ethnicity than social class. Also, bear in mind that many POC can code switch to change their accent.
@@hastigehond Only in Cape Town is code switching is a major thing. The rest of the country it's more of which school you attended, what people you socialise with, where you work and live hence that is why social class is the more prominent factor everywhere else. I think CT is the exception because people still very much stick to their own and there hasn't been a blend of English across all groups yet in CT like in Joburg for example.
As a South African, I hear every accent you mentioned everyday and even as a native, it can be difficult to understand them all
Possibly Dutch... who influenced their accents
@@oraach we are the guys that brought the g's and the r's.
I've never heard that black accent in my life😂
@@oraach Afrikaans/Dutch influenced some, but not all South African English accents
@@roblucci2366 😂😂😂😂 They found the most ridiculous sounding black dude in South Africa. 😂😂😂😂 I couldn't stop laughing.
Ive noticed that in Scotland, not only do different cities have their own accents, but even smaller parts of cities. Smaller towns and even different parts of towns
Am from Kenya, I speak a variety of English known as Kenyan English, It is the official language of education, business and media in Kenya. Most people in my county speak it as a second language alongside Swahili and other indigenous languages, hence the different accents even to foreigners.
One thing i find interesting about Australian accents is that they are not particularly regional. Unlike the UK where people from Liverpool, London or Newcastle sound quite different you'd struggle to tell where in Australia you were from based on your accent. For such a large country the regional differences are small.
While we don't have very strong regional differences, you can hear the differences between how we speak in Victoria compared to QLD and the NT.
Unless they use terms like stobie pole or potato scallop/cake you generally have no idea where anyone comes from.
Never been to SA? where they say many vowels like the Germans.
This always confused me. They have a few accents, but they’re social/class based, not regional. It’s weird. It’s so big and filled with immigrants but they have no strong regional accents. Very weird.
There are vocabulary difference, I assume because like the US, it’s so geographically different that some Australians live around things that don’t even exist in the other states. But the accents aren’t different.
@B P have you never been to South Australia? Settled predominantly, and equally, between the German & the English. And their accent represents the most localised difference in Australia.
The East of Australia was a blend of Irish & English. Western Australia was predominantly English
I loved the clips you found to illustrate the video. That Aussie guy was a classic, and that clip got replayed here a bit n Oz and the fellow was interviewed again later so people could hear more of his classic "bogan" way of speaking. I think he went on to say how the guy in the car took off on foot and the guy being interviewed chased him in his undies.
I loved the way that guy immediately went into "storytelling" mode, or maybe "yarning". You can imagine him spinning it out into a fantastical yarn where you're not quite sure what's true - pretty typical Aussie thing to do, especially to bullshit foreigners, eg winding them up about drop bears and shark and spider stories. "Yarning" is a term well-used in Indigenous talk. I think Aussies like to think we are natural storytellers, maybe from many long nights around a campfire back in the day. Indigenous folk still have organised "yarn circles" and places dedicated for them. Journos love to tell you when they are on to a "great yarn", meaning they have a good story in the works.
Brilliant! 😄
Where I live in the US is right on the edge where Midwest and Appalachian and Southern dialects meet. Generally I speak a pretty mild midwestern “television” English. But I like to joke that when I drink my accent moves about 10 miles further south.
Hi there from Quebec city, Quebec Canada🇨🇦! Wow! Such an informative video! My favorite English is definitely the English spoken in Newfoundland. Their accent is unlike no other! They're awesome!
I really enjoyed this video- thank you. My English accent is a unusual mix- a little northern, a little southern, with hints of both Welsh and Cockney as a result of moving house a lot when I was a child. I also have a smattering of non-English words in my vocabulary for the same reason. Now I'm settled in the south of England, I have become more aware of my language peculiarities, especially when my children use similar terms back at me.
Decades ago I was in the car listening to a talk show on London's Capital Radio. A girl came on and when she started to speak my blood ran cold. I knew without a shred of a doubt she grew up locally to me. Towards the end of the interview she said she went to Tolworth Girls School (where Debbie McGee went and also my mum). TGS was less than a mile from my house. In Pygmalion, Henry Higgins was right - "[by his accent]...I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets"
In my area of West Yorkshire our dialect is heavily influenced by Norse. Words such as "ought" and "nought" are pronounced "owt" and "nowt". A street is a "gate" and a gate is a "bar" . Most people are not aware of the history of their dialects, but I find it fascinating!
My great uncle would tell me I was “skeggy” handed. I was told he was from Yorkshire
An American from California here. Yes, my "R" is strong, especially at the ends of words. I think the strong rhotic "R" creates a problem, in that makes the rolled or trilled "R" difficult to master. I can roll an "R" if I can, so to speak, get a running start at it. Even then, it's not quite what it should be. This being California, I'm surrounded by native Spanish speakers, any of whom can rip off a rolled "R" with ease, in any situation. They have my endless admiration.
I'm a Midwesterner from rural Illinois, so my accent is fairly neutral in the US, but I also spent a year in India, doing volunteer work in Karnataka, where I leaned some ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), but also returned having fairly naturally picked up some of the rhythm and stress of Indian English. Ofc, a few months back in Illinois and I drifted back into my Midwestern accent.
You might sound like people in Missouri ☠️ 🤢
@@Worldaffairslover Maybe a bit like people from Missouri, but not like people from "Missourah". They're very different places....
Central Illinois now but I grew up in far Southern Indiana, where the accent is like Kentucky and lives for 20 years in Chicago. Central Illinois is distinct from both. At this point, I might have all three accents collide in a single sentence.
@@CortexNewsService that Ohio river English
Midwesterners sound like Dutchmen if they spoke English as there first language. (Palatines)
Never come across your channel before, but just wanted to say how great that video was. Very informative!
I was born and bred in North Manchester, so my accent is a mixture of Manchester and Lancashire. I've also been living in West Lancashire for nearly 40 years, so I've probably picked up some of their nuances too!
There are 30 different Indian English accent depending on a person's primary language.
I come from a bilingual family that speaks tamil and kannada.
My accent is easy to understand for American and Canadian citizen but hard for other Indians.
Can you tell where someone is from in india based on how they speak english ?
@@dubmait
of course yes.
I can tell if they are from northern or southern part of India.
The people in the north can't pronounce the last syllable if it ends in a vowel.
Moreover they fill their mouth with paan parak,
a tobacco derived substance.
Continuous consumption of this substance prevent them from pronouncing the last vowel syllable of any word.
From plumber to carpenter,they skip the vowel at the end.
People in my city bangalore are known to speak fluent English and 5 other languages along with English because we live in Silicon valley of India.
We have no choice but to be a polyglot.
@@bharath2508 so in Ireland there are 6/7 accents. Some people say more. But ye you can tell if someone is from a certian area based on accent.
I didnt realise english was so engrained in india
@@dubmait
Bengali speakers can't pronounce va and use ba instead.
People from far east(7 states) use sa instead of sha.
Should will be pronounced as sould by a far east speaker.
The Indian languages like kannada,telugu,Tamil and Malayalam are derivates of Sanskrit.
One can tell Malayalam speakers apart from others.
Malayalam speaker say ungle instead of uncle.
The prominence of nasal sounds in Malayalam might be a reason.
Telugu speakers interchange ja instead of za.
North of india speaks a language derived from Arabic called hindi/urdu due to invasions.
Hindi and urdu are dialects of each other and have 90% similar words.
These languages make it difficult for them to be a polyglot by interfering with their pronunciation.
Unless a hindi/urdu speakers moves to a different region before turning adult ,they can't escape their strong accent.
We have 100s of languages and 1000s of dialects.
A college graduate from bangalore can identify 20 different English accents in India.
To identify them further I must focus on each and every word.
This is called primary language influence.
Thankfully I grew up in a bilingual family which reduces the primary language influence.
Such bilingual families are only found in cities like Bangalore.
Around 450 million Indians speak English fluently because we study in English medium schools.
Although we don't speak English with our classmates.
Our accent depends on our exposure to other Indians languages from a young age.
A lot of Indians these days watch Nolan's movies or cricket commentary and we pick the accent that we are more exposed to.
Check the accent of different uncapped cricket players in IPL, you will be shocked to hear different dialects.
@@bharath2508 I am actually more familar with indian languages than indian dialects of english. I already knew all the languages you have mentioned
One of My favorite varieties of English is Singaporean/Malaysian-English. A fascinating melting pot of linguistic influences that affected both vocabulary and grammar, as well as many particles that add layers of emotion/nuance. Love it!
I'm malaysian
I'm from Chicago. Been here my whole life, but my accent is primarily just a standard American accent. The thing about the Chicago accent is that there really isn't just one accent. There's actually about five distinct accents in Chicago and it depends on what your ethnicity is and what side of Chicago you're from. The stereotypical Chicago accent is really only spoken by one group of people in Chicago and that is the Irish American population of the south side, or the South Side Irish as we call them. Italians have their own distinct accents, as well as people on the north side, Hispanics, and African Americans. Like you can tell if a Hispanic person is from Chicago or if an African American person is from Chicago. Hispanics and African Americans in other parts of the country have a different accent
You forgot German and Scandinavian like accents in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
I lived in the Chicago area in the 70's. The Public Radio station played a funny comedy piece about "The Accents of Chicago" with various different people saying the names of streets like "Chicago Avenue" and "Lake Shore Drive" in exaggerated accents. It was pretty funny, I only heard it once and can't remember who did it.
My dad grew up on the South side during the depression, and he said "deese" "dat" and "dose" when he wasn't thinking. He called the living room the "front room".
@@binxbolling I wasn’t talking about accents in Minnesota, North Dakota, or Wisconsin. I was specifically talking about Chicago. My comment had nothing to do with accents of MN, ND, or WI. Why would an accent from MN, ND, or WI mean anything if I was only talking about the five distinct Chicago accents? Unless you meant to respond to the actual video and not my comment
@@melissapinol7279 oh neat
I’m from the southside of Chicago and the accent in my neighborhood was very different from what is commonly recognized as a Chicago accent. That sounds more north side to me. It’s my vowels that give me away, especially what my high school speech teacher called the dreaded “urban ‘a’”. And my dad had what he and his sibs called “the west side accent”. Kim sure things have evolved. I’m in my mid 70s and my dad would be almost 120.
South African English first-language speaker here. I can relatively easily distinguish which of the major cities of SA a first-language English speaker comes from. Even within those groups, there are many sub-groups, some of which get more coverage than others. The Afrikaans and Cape Street Taal you covered are often a result of it being spoken as a second language or where aspects of the accent are emphasised to emphasise wishing to be associated with a cultural group.
I've been told that a "normal" SA English accent, spoken by a first-language speaker, has one of the best chances of being understood in most other English speaking countries.
I'm Dutch-English bilingual. However during my childhood, I spoke English my Oxford English stepfather, our Cockney au-pair and my American friend. Oh, and I picked up quite a bit o Geordie when I lived in Newcastle. I love it when native English speakers try to figure out my accent and background. I've been called everything from Lancastrian or Canadian to Kiwi and South African.
I had many Dutch friends . They all spoke english well. A few were taught Oxford English and sounded to me , very English but most sounded American. I was always impressed by their language ability. I did find their rare mistakes interesting though . They were often in the use of an idiom. it would be technically correct but no native speaker would use it in that situation . I found that very interesting but could make no conclusions about that. I'm sure I did the same in my German and Dutch.
Actually half of those Viking words we still speak in Northern England unchanged. Nice to know! That little girl's accent is probably from my hometown or maybe a couple of towns over, West Yorkshire. I had a bit of difficulty cos she's a little kid and she's running her words together but I got most of it. My accent's basically the same.
While on a cycle trip from Land's End to John O'Groats with another American from Tennessee, and an Aussie from Brisbane, I got to experience many of the noted British accents. The most pleasant to my ear was around Lockerbie. All were easily understood till our visit to the Orkney's. Of course it only took a couple of words from me before everyone said, "A bloody American! How can I help you?" Despite warnings to the contrary, we were always well received.
Great video. Accents and idioms have always fascinated me.
I learnt to speak English from the Philippines as it was brought to us by one of our colonisers the US. But I’m more comfortable now using British spellings I’ve lived 14 years in Ireland. Because of that I still have rhotic R. English is fascinating as it’s an amalgamation of many ethnic European languages and brought to other parts of the world as it is with local extensions.
Thanks for this entertaining and educational video 👍
I bet you find the regional English dialects difficult after learning American English lol
Interesting, I come from the UK but moved to USA and I started using words like color and favorite without the u just because my text would automatically shift to it as if I made a mistake 😂
@@akoden2667 lol funnily enough my mother watches all these us true crime documentaries and she has started to say things like "he held up a gas station" instead of "he robbed a petrol station" and "the child's crib" instead of "the child's cott" lol
@@lightfootpathfinder8218 lol I still call the remote control a "zapper" and yeah I call it the petrol station sometimes and gas station other times.. My mother started picking up words like "hospitalized" instead of "in hospital" which I was told by my cousins still living in UK that they've started to adopt the same thing. It's become more common in England, do you think that's true? one thing that Americans tell me I say "sorry" too much and it makes me seem not confident, but I remember in the UK and talking within my family we say sorry a lot too. It's just polite. I have started to say skedule and appresheeate too lol. But I still say vitamin and mineral the British way. There's more examples I can't think of right meow.
@@akoden2667lol I think some Americanisms are said more now in England but it's at the expense of RP English not of regional or common English. Never really heard "hospitalised" in England tbh and like you said saying sorry is just good manners
location and time influence a lot... I live in the DC area and there are multiple accents that are very distinct ... the DC accent is very different from the Baltimore accent... And then the Counties in between have their own isms as well... fascinating video!
This is so crazy, I was born and now live in Nova Scotia, Canada. My father was in the military so we moved across the country as I grew up. From Alberta to Ontario, to New Brunswick and the finally arriving back in Nova Scotia. So every 4 years I'd have to get used to a new dialect and accent. The prairie provinces have a lot of Ukrainian and Russian immigrants so their mannerisms have slipped into the Canadian English dialect. The Ottawa region of Ontario is a jumble of Quebec French and Canadian English. New Brunswick has a thick Maritime accent along with a weakened Quebec French accent. Nova Scotia has a unique Maritime accent that derives from Scottish and Irish ancestors migrating from Newfoundland with Cape Breton Island having a very unique accent that is more akin to Newfoundland. Growing up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (even our city and town names come from the UK) my oldest childhood friend was born in Belfast and his family lived in Johannesburg SA before moving to Canada. So he had a mild Irish accent that disappeared not too long after moving here. His parents and two older sisters have very think Irish accents and his younger brother had a noticeable South African accent that he lost as well over time.
Another unique person I knew was a sub-mariner from Wales that moved to Canada and joined our navy. He his wife moved here in the 90's and they still 30 years later have a thick Welsh accent. I just think it's crazy that we all spoke English yet sounded SO different in such a small area...
Maybe you can tell me which of those dialects brought to Cape Breton the "haitch" pronunciation for the eighth letter of the alphabet?
You may have got that from Quebec. When speaking English we pronounce an H before words beginning with vowels. But we don't pronounce any actual Hs same as we don't in French. So instead of:
"Hi how are you"
We would say:
"'I 'ow har you"
Don't ask me why. Probably because we don't pronounce Hs in French. It just happens and people work hard to get their Hs straightened out.
@@carolthedabbler2105 What Michelle said...
@@michellesheaff3779 & Maddog -- thanks, that's plausible, but in this case I doubt it because only "haitch," was affected. A woman I met in Sydney circa 1967 complained that her children were taught to say "haitch" in school. I just now saw a couple of sites that say it's an Irish Catholic thing, so I suspect her kids attended a Catholic school where some of the nuns were Irish.
@@michellesheaff3779 Pronouncing H is a waste of time. 😂
I speak a variation of Europeanised South African Business English deliberately influenced by received pronunciation flavoured with South African Capetonian Afrikaans accented English. Sprinkled with some Xhosa vocabulary because most of the places I've worked are trilingual with English as the official policy preferred work language. It's impossible to get by effectively at work without at least a little trilingualism in Cape Town.
I speak the Singaporean English known colloquially as Singlish. One of the most efficient varieties of English influenced by other local dialects and languages.
But it is extremely hard to understand for people from outside of Singapore.
What do you mean by "efficient" in this context?
@@keithkannenberg7414 Just google for the efficiency of Singlish. I can't post links here apparently.
Not really efficient, I'd say. It's just a statement made by some rando blog out there. No scientific paper has suggested that, if you do have one, please tell me the title, publisher, and release year. I'd gladly read that paper if it's not just some stupid propaganda made by overproud nationalists.
It borrows a lot of phrases, ways of speaking, and sayings from Hokkien, Mandarin, and Malay. It's not that special to Singaporean either to be honest, some Malay and/or Indo Chinese can understand and speak Singlish just as well as the Singaporeans.
@@Felixxxxxxxxx Because it's not English.
Most languages have regional accents , all dutch sounds the same to me , but my dutch friends can tell what part of the Netherlands someone comes from , I also have it on good authority that Russian speaking accents are incredibly diverse . But the British Isles are so amazing with the diversity of accent ,considering the differences over short distances.
Yeah that's what gets me the variety in such a small distance
I live in the southernmost province of the Netherlands, and here the dialect is different in every town pretty much. If you go 5 km, it's already very different, so it's easy to tell where someone's from.
Dutch and English are extraordinarily vocabularised. Both just avoid compound nouns and invent words when needed. Accent diversity is extreme in the UK and I don't think anyone can properly explain it. Britain invented the modern world of travel and communication so why travelling a few kilometres results in entirely different accents is unclear but a source of fun.
Flemish Dutch sounds different than Dutch from the Netherlands some Flemish accent reminds me of accents from Scotland. Flemish Dutch has less throaty sounds.
One of the things I like about being British is the dialect diversity,
I live just outside Liverpool. Explaining to a Canadian that if you go 10 km east from here, people speak with a Lancashire accent, If you go 20 km to the north, people also speak in a Lancashire accent, but it's different from the other Lancashire accent. Then observe their brains explode.😊
Multiply that by all UK accents, and chuck in Gaelic languages in Scotland, Wales and NI-now you understand why I like it so much😊😊
I really like your films about different varieties of English. Interesting stuff. Fantastic!
Through a long history and international spread English acquired a large number of dialects and and an even larger number of local accents. In Glasgow as children we spoke a rhyming slang with one type of pronunciation plus a more standard southern Scottish English at school etc. Even over a short period of time pronunciation can change because English writing is not very phonetic to say the least. So we can have a standard way of writing while having a large diversity of pronunciation.
Would you consider extending this and looking at English accents in other former British colonies (eg. South East Asian English (e.g Singapore/Malaysia), Pacific islands, Caribbeans) and what differentiates an accent from a creole to a pidgin?
You could have touched on accents from the former British West Indies - Grenada, St Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana etc. Great variety there. Looking forward to that!
I love de Jamaican accent, mon! Harry Belafonte, Bob Marley, and Sean Paul-de be ma favorite singers! Kingston is a cool city-totally relaxed, not at all like London or New York-which are very hectic, always busy, busy, busy!
My wife was from Guyana and I went there twice. I couldn't understand a word they were saying the first time. Meh ga gaf vid ya tamara. Or as I would say "I will talk to you tomorrow." They don't say "i" it is "Meh" and me pronouced "me" So for "i don't know" they say "Meh ne know" "it is my first time to town" "meh firs time a tong"
@@jeffbguarinoas someone eith Guyanese parents I can confirm this is all correct but also find it funny reading you explain all these phrases in "common" english lol
@@jeffbguarinomight be cuz im from a different carribbean country but i would assume in guyana its actually "mih" not "meh"
@@ЛюбовьщенокЛюбовьщенок Yes you are probably correct. I could be off on the vowel sound.
This is the most interesting thing I’ve actually watched today, this week, this month, this year, ever
It’s nice you brought the diversity of English accents within India. A lot of it depends on schooling, how early kids are taught the language and the quality of teachers. So typically, you’ll have much greater fluency as you rise through socio-economic stratas although that’s not a necessary indicator since there’s a difference in fluency and diction between the urban and rural areas as well. So while you’ll definitely have that ‘Indian’ accent among a lot of English speaking Indians, typically it isn’t their first language (what they speak at home with family a majority of the time, for example). If one’s an upper middle/upper class urban kid in one of the bigger cities, chances are they’re likely to have a very neutral and polished accent with a very expansive lexicon as well.
I'm a Midwesterner living in South Korea. I've been told I have a very unique accent. Some people back home tell me that my accent has gotten stronger in the 13 years that I have lived here.
Each individual speaks in a way that is unique to them - their idiolect - which reflects their personal history, influences, circumstances and current context (i.e. it changes in different contexts). All this tends to pull language apart, but there is an equal and opposite force that keeps it together - the need to understand each other, and to feel part of a community, and to distinguish our community members from non-members. Nations and other identity groups, in their speaking culture, work the same way, at a macro level. What struck me about this video is that Olly supplied the history and some facts, while many of the clips showed people loving the elements that make their accents distinctive, and feel like home to them - there was an infectious warmth and happiness there, which was lovely to see and hear.
❣
Born and raised in the American South. Currently in metro Atlanta. Native accents around here vary from heavy Appalachian influence in north and northwest Georgia to something more akin to what most people would think a traditional southern accent is. The traditional southern Dixie accent exists, but it's rare. I find it a little more common from central Alabama over into Mississippi than I do in Atlanta (LOTS of Northern and Midwestern transplants here). My accent is somewhere between the Appalachian influenced and the more traditional. I believe the traditional Dixie style accent is more old guard and is being phased out, and I think that's a shame.
I appreciate all the quick history lessons in this video
I am from Newfoundland and the way that you showed is the way we USED to talk since that dialect it dying in replaced by other dialects but we still retain some words and we never use because we use since
The fact that I’m lucky enough to have Standard American Broadcasting English as my native accent is never lost on me.. it has made EFL teaching a much easier career!
Is your accent mid-Atlantic? I have an extremely neutral American accent, despite having been born in the Valley and thus literally being a Valley Girl. It helps having lived in Europe and gaining (then, alas, losing again) a British accent before the age of 10. I’ve also been an ESL teacher and I agree, a neutral accent is very helpful in that line of work.
Where I'm from, we call it ESL (English as a Second Language), so at first, I was thinking, "EFL...English as a first language?...no, that can't be right." Sorry. Then English as a Foreign Language made me think of this: ua-cam.com/video/3iJ9gnt7wNo/v-deo.html
@@shinyshinythingsmid atlantic is not neutral, it sounds haughty and british
For some reason I keep getting pushed english as a second language content on other social media apps and it's made me a lot more aware of the slang and the weird made up contractions I use in everyday English. For example, I caught myself saying, "Yardy did that" instead of "You already did that" it made me crack up lmao. Midwestern american English btw
I'm Canadian from Toronto and Montreal, and I never realized until you just mentioned it now, that I too say, "yardy did that" 😅
You’re right. That’s common.
For me, it’s more like “Y0WDY did that“.
Fellow Midwestern accent holder here. We tend to cut the g off of words ending in '-ing', and of course there is the semi-famous 'Ope!' said like the end of nope. We tend to insert that as an accident word, like if something gets dropped or you bump into someone.
We drop all Gs in Texas, too.
I have lived all over the US so my accent is a mix of standard midwestern and southern. I probably confuse people when I talk "normally" but then randomly use "y'all" in a sentence.
I am from Southern California but have lived in Wisconsin for half my life. Folks here still on occasion hear me speak and wonder where I'm from as I don't do the "raising" of vowel diphthongs as they do (similar to upper peninsula Michigan and much of Canada). I sometimes ask them to guess... I'll broaden my accent to Valley Girl if they don't hear the west coast slide right away. It's fun to figure out where folks are from based on accent!
I was born in New Jersey and grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania so I tend to code-switch between a Philadelphia/SEPA/South Jersey dialect (those watching at 7:41, please don't assume we sound the same as those from NYC or Boston), and something pretty close to General American. But my dad has an interesting way of speaking that I don't think is noticed very often: he was born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania's coal belt (not too far out of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre) and still carries with him a number of neat-ass shibboleths, and I think this might be a suitable place to discuss them:
1: Positive "anymore". Most English speakers only use "anymore" in negative statements like "we don't go there anymore" but in Pennsylvania you'll often hear people use it in a positive sentence to mean something like "these days" or "nowadays", such as on a long car trip: "hoo boy, gas sure is expensive anymore, heyna?"
2: Heyna. This is a tag question similar to how "innit" works for some English speakers over in the UK. "The weather's sure nice, heyna?" "Aw but she sure is a nice kid, heyna?" Sounds either like "hay-na" or "henna" depending on your taste, your intent, and possibly even which side of the river you're from. If you're lucky, and you're kicking it with the right kind of old-heads in back-country Luzerne County, you might even hear someone end their sentences with "heyna'r no?"
3: Calling bell peppers "mangoes". The reason for this was explained to me once when I was little, but I can't remember anymore.
4: A sprinkling of PA Dutch vocabulary. Neither my parents nor I are ethnically PA Dutch but it just kinda bleeds into the local lingo. So I heard "schnickelfritz" (a bothersome kid) a lot growing up.
5: The curious elision of "to be" in passive constructions. Most would say "the lawn needs to be mowed" or "the floor needs to be swept" but my pop always said "the lawn needs mowed" and "the floor needs swept"
6: A stock/stalk merger. Both are pronounced with a rounded back vowel (e.g. "the stawk market"). This one's interesting to me because not only do I not have it (despite having a very pronounced cot/caught split), but I've never really met anyone else who has it besides older people from NEPA.
I’m from a region called the Iron Range in northern Minnesota (it’s in that little triangular shape north of Lake Superior and south of the Canadian border). The area is definitely Minnesotan sounding, but also different with a number of unique features. This is due to European settlement patterns, but the settlements began as company towns for mining iron ore (I’m talking Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan actually striking a deal together to focus on different parts of the steel industry amounts of ore. And during WWII three counties in MN put out more iron ore than all the res of the Allied countries combined.) So this region had Americans, Cornish, Irish, Italian, Norwegioan, German, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Finnish, Swedish, Greek, Ojibwe, and more all in this relatively isolated string of towns. Logging and mining. So I grew up eating sarmas, potiça, pasties, gnocchi, porketta, venison, pheasant, ‘shore lunch’, wild rice, wild blueberries, etc..
The dialect has mostly leveled to more of a distinct accent I suppose. But folks outside of the States- people do sometimes have trouble understanding me, and can almost never guess where I’m from. Apparently in even in German it sounds more like an Irish accent than American. Guessing it’s the Minnesotan ‘oh’ sound. But the Range tends to be a little less nasally, a little more like idk monotone, and a little more Canadian than the rest of Minnesota. Yoopers (UP of Michigan) had the same sort of thing going on, and Yooper is a close cousin of Ranger. Together the regions account for most of the Finnish descendants in the US.
Get in there outdoors channel is a wonderful example of Iron Range English. ua-cam.com/video/wTd_RI9SlVg/v-deo.html
Charlize Theron also did a great job in North Country- she said it was the toughest accent she’d had to learn, that most take a few days but this took her a couple weeks.
Anyway, it’s a unique little bubble and most people don’t know about it. But if you read all that, now you do! :)
I read it, interesting.
What do you mean the region had Americans, Cornish.... Ojibwe. By Americans you mean English descent?
@@aldozilli1293 meaning people born in the United States (of varying European descent generally). By the other nationalities/ethnic groups, I don’t mean ‘descendants of people from [Cornwall, Germany, etc…], but people coming from those places themselves. So while there were many immigrants, there were also indigenous people of course already there and also people who moved to the area from elsewhere in the U.S.
That's what makes its so unique about every nation and its people.🇬🇧🇿🇦🇬🇧
im a french canadian and learned english at 18 yo from australian bogans. pretty unique
The accent game the guys play at 16:27 - 16:33 I really want to play that with my friends. Each of them has different backgrounds and accents, I'm sure we will have fun and learn something new. The last time I spoke to someone from Northern Ireland I had to pay close attention because I really wanted to understand and learn more. They were very nice, easy going and enjoyed teaching us - tourists - about their culture, plus the ale is amazing! 🍺
I'm a native Northern Californian. My twin brother and I spoke in a way that only our older brother could interpret. By age four we started to speak normally but became terrible mumblers. As a correction I learned to speak more slowly and to over-enunciate. The result is that people I meet often think I'm Canadian!
I was born in Colorado (he left out Rocky Mountain English on his American dialects list), grew up in central Texas (also missing), and then spent more than a decade in the Midwest, BUT also had a speech impediment growing up so I learned to over-enunciate my words. Nobody can EVER place where my accent is supposed to be from.
😅❤❤
They think you’re Canadian from lower BC, I’d guess. Some of the slowest speakers are on the west coast of Canada; folks tend to speak faster the further east you go.
(Same, I’d think, of the USA west vs east coasts.)
@@snotrajohnsonThis is certainly true....until you go south of the "Mason-Dixon Line" (for those who don't know, technically, it's the line that STILL divides the North from the South -- running between Maryland and Virginia, with Washington, DC being its own entity). Once south of it, the rate of speech slows down the further South you go😄
I speak Quebec English. We have a few differences in pronunciation with the rest of English-speaking Canada, a lot of vocabulary that comes from the French-speaking majority around us, and a lot of code switching because some things are just easier to express in French.
Franglais.
@@herknorth8691 Franglais is not the same as Quebec English. Non French speakers wouldn’t understand Franglais. But they would understand Quebec English very well with some clarification about vocabulary on occasion.
@@camorrell I had no idea that Franglais was a real term. I grew up in Alberta and there were some native Francophones that would interject French words into their otherwise English speech. My brother and I spoke French as a second language and he came up with "Franglais" to describe that phenomenon, or at least I thought he did!
I speak Québec English too! I go to the dépanneur (convenience store), eat doré (walleye fish) and incorporate French-Canadian "sacres" (religious-based cursing) in casual speech.
Vive la différence!
Though Quebec English is the correct term, I'm not certain that Quebec English is the most accurate description. I'd say it's more a Montreal Island/South Shore thing. In the Ottawa Valley/Outaouais, I don't think that anglos who live in Quebec have a distinct sound and way of speaking to our neighbours in eastern Ontario.
Kenyan English varies by location because of people's different native languages. However, people growing up in more diverse environments, such as Nairobi, tend to pretty much sound the same. Rolling r's at the beginning of words, not pronouncing r's after vowels. And in some cases, actually being more influenced by American English.
Standard Canadian English, we tend to pronounce all but the silent because of a rule letters. But I grew up in Toronto ("Torana") which had people mistake me for American when I moved to Vancouver. I tend to think of Toronto as 'The Greatest American City North of the Border' which amongst Canadians is a minor but accurate insult, and can be also reflected in their speech which can be closer to American Broadcast English than Standard Canadian due to people not pronouncing all the letters.
Not sure if any other Australian can relate but the Māori form of English seems to be getting more and more common (at least in Queensland)? For me doesn’t really sound out of place at all. I’d guess it’s because there’s a significant amount of islander peoples and kiwis who are coming over here.
I grew up in Bermuda so it was cool to see Bermudian English being included as it is a lesser known variation of English. The most common way of describing Bermudian English that I have heard from friends abroad is that the accent sounds like a mix of American, British and Caribbean accents all put together which gives it its uniqueness.
I'm originally from Canada (Alberta, specifically), and have lived in the USA (Wyoming & Colorado) for over 13 years. Interestingly, I was always accused of having an "American accent" when I lived in Canada, even though I was born and grew up there. Now that I'm in the USA, when people here learn that I'm from Canada they express surprise that I "don't have an accent". When I talk to people from Canada, I now think of them as having an accent, even though I didn't before.
I spent a few weeks in Australia several years ago and after I was there for a week, everybody started asking me what part of Canada I was from - and I have always lived the US! Apparently being surrounded by a bunch of people speaking Australian English caused me to exaggerate my vowels of my native mid-Atlantic East Coast accent just enough to sound like I was from Canada.
I live in Southwestern Ontario and in Ontario we have the same accent as most americans, the standard american accent. So i never understood, I still don’t, when people say “Canadian accent” because to me the Canadian accent is the same as the standard American accent.
I speak mix of Welsh English and East Anglian English, Which is always fun when your friends don't know what you're saying. I must say the Welsh accent used isn't very common, especially in the south, it has it's influences and you can here it in a lot of speech but it's not particularly strong, it's most prominent in the older population of farming communities. I think something that could be interesting to discuss would be the influences that the internet has had on language around the world, such as is British English becoming more Americanised?
The Welsh accent used doesn't exist at all here in North Wales...sounded like a parody of Gavin and Stacey......
I love how Andrea Riseborough masters every accent watch, "Shadow Dancer" for a perfect Northern Irish accent. Then watch "To Leslie" for a perfect blue collar Texas accent. Both amazing films.
Some languages have dialects that are actually unable to understand each other. Where an accent turns into a dialect is probably a fuzzy line but the fact that so many different accents can actually communicate effectively in English is interesting. Comparatively few are so far apart that speakers cannot casually converse.
2 minutes in and I'm loving this video, Bruva keep it up!!!
As a Geordie I LOVE the sketch you started with. Did you know that even in the north east the accent varies. You can tell if someone comes from south or north of the Tyne. Also my brother has lived in Bermuda for over twenty years and I've visited many times. I remember my first visit. The accent was definitely NOT what I was expecting.
Btw, I don't like people saying a British accent. It's like saying somebody is speaking with a European accent (ie which one?). Britain is England, Wales and Scotland. Nearly always when Americans say someone is speaking with a British accent they mean English.
Also did you know that the RP clipped accent promoted by the BBC you mentioned was actually based on an early phonetic model that they later realised contained a mistake. In normal spoken English the /ee/ sound has a slight -y sound at the end and the /oo/ sound has a slight -w sound at the end. You can hear it most clearly if there is another vowel sound afterwards. 'I see a man' is pronounced 'I seeya man' and 'I do a job' is pronounced 'I doowa job'. That's why they ended up with this very artificial clipped version making these exaggerated ee and oo sounds without the y/w glides at the end. Basically, it was wrong.
I once lived in the Tyne valley, I think roughly 30km west of Newcastle. The accent there was noticeably different from the Newcastle one. In Newcastle they would slightly pronounce all the sounds in "boat", ie bo-at.
@@VanillaMacaron551 Well spotted!! The other clue is the schwa sound at the end of words like 'better', 'river'. In Newcastle it tends to come out as almost an -a sound 'betta', 'riva'. In Durham we pronounce it as 'bettuh, rivuh' like everyone else. I do think these regional differences are changing though as communications mean we hear each other all the time and also people move around and live in different areas. I've heard people from Ashington in Northumberland speaking just like Newcastlers.
In the midwest, we also do the "no yeah" and "yeah no" as well as "yeah no yeah". Our accent tends to get a bit more nasally at points.
I mostly only hear the "yeh, nah" in Australia, not the opposite, which sort of makes sense as it kind of means "yes I understand what you are saying, but no".
it's odd but some of us grew up living all over the US. Our accents are a combination of various from north to south and on to the west. Hard to pin down by many
Honestly, as a Brit, it's hard to pin down the vast majority of American accents other than a few obvious outliers, most of you simply sound like standard American to us. I've always thought it strange that such a small island as Britain has such massive variance, you can travel just a few miles and people sound completely different (Edinburgh is a pretty small city but has several distinct accents, and I live about 15 miles away and sound like none of them, and I'm about 30 miles from Glasgow but they practically sound like a different country lol), but in America you can travel for hundreds of miles and people still sound the same
@@notaname8140 There is more variety in accents in UK because English spoken a lot longer than in in United States. In addition, majority of the people stayed within their communities before Industrial Revolution. This allows different accents to change from village to village. In the United States, the most variety in accents are in the east vs the west coast for the same reasons.
@@dawnpalacios8312 Weird, I'm not from the US and can hardly tell the difference between east-coast and west-coast (unless they are exaggerated stereotypes), but I can easily tell from, say, a Texan accent vs a Midwesterner from Ohio (I had a friend from Cincinnati).
EDIT: Also, I respectfully disagree with your hypothesis. I don't know if there's really more variety in the UK, but if there is, it has nothing to do with "they have been speaking it for more time than in the US", since American English descends from British English, both have been spoken for the exact same time, i.e. since whenever English can be considered to be born. Also, the US had a huge influx of migrations to a lot of areas (while in the UK there was a huge influx of migration to mostly the urban centers), where people from all over the world influenced the accent.
@@San_Vito It's a hypnosis but from fact. Here is a UA-cam clip in the subject
ua-cam.com/video/H1KP4ztKK0A/v-deo.html
I think Americans move around much more than do Brits. Around 20 years ago I spent several days in Atlanta for a conference, and I never heard a Southern accent! Most of the US is pretty cosmopolitan and you often have to work hard to find any regional accents in recent decades.
I've had the pleasure to know many English speakers from many parts of the world throughout my adult life. In my mind, understanding a number of the accents requires me to figuratively shift gears in my brain. My "cerebral transmission" often got quite a workout during the hundreds of global conference calls. Good, and interesting, times.
Very interesting background information. Thank you. Of course, almost all languages know enormous variations, based on historical and social peer group background. Even in a small place as Flanders, people who are used to Limburgs have difficulties understanding Westvlaams.
When I was 16 my family went to visit friends who lived in a rural part of Ireland. They rented some of their land to a guy to graze his cattle.
I was peaking to him, but didn't understand what he was saying. I asked him if he spoke English and he got really angry. Still had no idea what he was saying, but later one of our hosts confirmed he *WAS* speaking English.
I just thought he didn't have good craic.
I grew up in southern California on a skateboard & surfboard in the 1980's. I really did have the whole "Dude, that's raaad" CA surf town kind of accent loaded with slang. Like, cool, rad, hot, baaad, on and on, my vocabulary and pronunciation was what you've seen in the movies that apply to this small culture. As an adult, I moved halfway up the state and in business, I had to polish my accent and drop most of the slang. Now I'm living in Mexico, and I speak American national TV English, plus Spanish, of course. I speak English slower and with zero slang because on any day, it's likely that I'll be speaking to someone whose first language was Spanish, Canadian English, Canadian French, Portugese, Italian, an indigenous language of Latin America, or any extreme American English because my clients are from all over the world. I'm often understood because of Hollywood. American movies and TV shows are playing almost everywhere in the world.
I'm from the southern part of Sweden. I can't remember when I actually learned English, apart from specific moments such a finishing reading my very first book in English (Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban ofc). I grew up naturally consuming a lot of both British media (Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers, Monthy Python etc) as well as American media (songs, movies). I was born 1,5-lingual you could say as my mom was Swedish and my dad was Croatian (he didn't really speak Croatian to us as kids so we never became 100% fluent which pains me to this day). But English was just sort of there all of a sudden and I honestly can't remember what it was like before I could speak it. In school my English teacher spoke with a British accent, but I guess I leaned more towards an American dialect. No offense to Brits, but I felt I was putting on a show if I spoke British.
After spending time some with Americans, I came to realize I wasn't actually speaking with an American accent. But I was so convinced I did not have the typical Swedish accent with its UPs and DOwns (which stems from Swedish being a very 'melodic' language). However, I'm from the south, meaning not from Stockholm where the dialect is more distinctly melodic. But also, the southern dialect continuum, which I'm a part of, is distinctly different from the rest of Swedish dialects, so my English accent would be quite different from the majority of Swedish accents you'd normally hear.
Anyway, that has just gotten me to think about dialects and accents in general. I think it's interesting to let native English speakers in on the experience of learning English as a second language, since its such a global phenomenon that they don't get to be a part of. They're born into their accents. But us second language learners, we are served a buffet of dialects which we can arbitrarily choose from when we first start learning it. Like, why couldn't I adopt the Indian dialect? Perhaps the Jamaican accents suits my personality better? Obviously the media we consume and our environment will greatly affect our choice. For example, I have Swedish friends who have spent more time in Australia whose accents therefore have a lot of Australian characteristics, and other Swedish friends who have spent more time in the UK and therefore speak more British-ly. We get together and it's three Swedes with accents akin to American, British, and Australian, and it feels natural. There's no rule saying we should all talk in a certain way.
And that gets me to final realization. None of us really have a true American, British or Australian accent. And I don't have a "Swedish accent" either. I've come to find that I have a "Vincent-dialect". I have a way of speaking English that is particular to me, as does every single English speaker in the entire world. I think the pressure of having to mimic a standard English dialect as well as you can is something that resonates with a lot of people who have English as their second language. But really, pronunciation is not a requirement for fluency. We simply have our own voices. And instead of letting that pressure affect your confidence and flow when you're talking, it's better and more freeing to just let your natural voice lead the way, and be proud of how you've mastered a language and made it your own.
Yeah, my accent in English is an unholy mixture of some kind of American one (because of all the media we consume), British English (probably most like RP, that we learn in school) and my own Swedish accent (born and raised in the so called center of Sweden - definitely not Stockholm, but I do have the melody down). Like most people's accents it has been influenced by my life and what media I have chosen to consume. When I studied English at university, I had to try to analyze what my accent actually was. Made the teacher laugh by calling it an unholy mixture. :)
What most people in Sweden try to to is to at least not sound as horrible as most of our politicians do. They don't even try, it seems. As long as we don't, it's probably fine. If people understand you, it's probably fine. Ah man, that means that the way our politicians speak is also fine! Oh well...
Great video! I speak Bedfordian English and am told I sound like the queen so much by Americans!
At 5:38 that is actually a guy from Northern Ireland, he is from my mum's hometown of Dungiven near Derry. His name is Ruairi, I remember how happy and fun he was to speak to one day in the town
I saw an urbex video on UA-cam where they were speaking a weird type of French I had never heard before despite 8 years of French lessons. I had to ask where they were from. Turned out they were Canadian and I can tell you Canadian French is a lot more "divergent" from Paris French than Canadian English from London English.
Yes it is! Even when we speak English.
French Canada was more of less isolated from French influences after the British conquest of 1759. For all intents and purposes, there was nearly zero immigration from France to Canada, nor from Canada to France. So, now over 260 years or more later, they have diverged.
@@denisosullivan2956 Norman French has always been different than Parisian French.
Canadian French has certain slang words that other French speakers don’t use. I’m a bilingual Canadian, bilingual in English and French. I don’t use any slang in French. What kind of French do you speak?
Born in England, raised in New Zealand now living in the US. Having an English father and American mother took the edge off our Kiwi accent. I still sound unmistakably kiwi but when I go home, most locals sound pretty extreme. Many expat kiwis I know in the US have picked up an American twang as the majority western states US accent (that you hear in movies and on TV) is quite strong and after 16 years, I’ve had to exert considerable effort to resist the twang by enduring the quizzical looks of Americans and repeating myself. And don’t forget the slang - there are over 300 words in everyday use that NZers use different from Americans.
@stan1510 That's called "rhoticity". There are several non-rhotic accents, so there's actually no "correct" way to pronounce certain words, just accent/dialect variations.
@stan1510 It's only the rs After the vowel in a syllable that are lost (well, more like they became a modifier to the vowel). Some US accents are like this, and Most non-US dialects of English are like that too.
The Newfoundland accent here is spot on. Nova Scotia - sounds like a very rural accent, not common. JJ seems to do that fake/exaggerated accent schtick, likely to bring interest to his channel. No one says aboot or aboat, or "aroond" unless they are trying hard to put on a fake Canadian accent. Most Canadians do a very quick 'ow', keeping the lips very close, in contrast to the mid-west/ southern American where the mouth opens wide to say 'aBOWt' (bow as in to bow one's head)
I don't know where Americans get that [aboot or aboat, or "aroond" ] from. I never hear it here in Toronto. I agree with the very quick ow in about.
Western Canadian here. I do say it sort of like aboat, but still not as exaggerated as the example clip, sort of like how JJ says house, as opposed to most Americans who say it more like “hAOs” or “aBAOt”.
That example audio was kind of a weird pick, she sounded more like a New Englander than a Canadian to me personally.
@@meteoman7958 I'll never understand how Canadians are so unaware of their own accents and culture, nor will I ever understand how it's not obvious why an accent is perceived differently depending on ones own accent.
For Canadians who think the "aboot" thing is a myth, try saying "cow" five times, and then say "house." There's a difference between "ow" and "ou." Our about sounds normal to us, but it sounds like "aboot" to foreigners (except Scots) because they don't distinguish between those two diphthongs.
That JJ person does, as you said, exaggerate the Canadian aʊ diphthong, although he's about the least Canadian person I've ever come across.
@juliansmith4295 funny cow reference. The ow in cow is exactly what I hear when a midwest/southern American says house. I've also heard ottawa valley people say "Melkin kews" (milking cows)
This is so interesting. For the most part I really don't have a hard time understanding, it just takes my wee brain a couple of more seconds to fumble through it. You give me those few extra seconds then never a problem.
I’m Canadian. I’ve been all over Canada, met people from all walks of life, lived out west and in Toronto. I’ve never, ever, not even once heard someone pronounce “about” as “aboot” or “aboat”. I’m telling you it’s a myth, and the people that say they say it like that are just putting it on to sound interesting.
Yeah i’m Canadian as well, from Southwestern Ontario and I’ve never heard any Canadian pronounce it those ways. We pronounce about the same way as americans.
This was fun and interesting! I would have loved to see inclusion of more minority American accents, particularly a discussion of the origins and African-derived grammatical differences in African American Vernacular English, Gullah language, Yiddish-influenced New York English (expressions like “Who knew?”, and words like klutz, schlep, bagel, etc., are all direct from Yiddish), etc. - also, other Carribean accents, like Trini - maybe another video is in order?
Olly's video could have been forty minutes longer if he had included the many accents within Canada and the USA. Through another series, I learned that Florida, New York and other places - the deeper you travel within - the more you hear distinct accents and vocabulary used. And California is saturated with so much culture, each county/city has its own accent, slang, and vocabulary even though most Americans learn from an early age from books, TV media or social media.
Pretty much similar to Canada, although Canada does have its Natives who [few] still speak their Native language which sounds distinct and the country's co-official language.
I think it's called How The States Got Their Shapes (2011). Sorry for the long explanation. I was trying to remember the series' name. 😊 Yes, I heard Yiddish for the first time through the series too!
@@hameley12It seems like in California the accents are a lot more ethnically based than they are regionally based
@@Ailurophile1984 Yes, you are correct. As I stated in my previous comment California has so much culture spread about, everyone is quite distinct and they have their own special events. I used to travel to Califonia pre-pandemic but I haven't done much travelling lately. The places are beautiful, and the people are (depending on where you visit) they are friendly and willing to help you if needed. Thank you for your input.
🏄♀ 🏄♂
I apparently speak with an “IB accent”. I’ve been in IB schools almost my entire life, being exposed to lots of different accents. Friends, teachers and even my parents all spoke differently. I personally think I sound American, but I’ve been told by Americans it sounds off. Canadian, British, American, Korean, Swedish and Indian accents/ dialects have all affected the way I speak :)
Thank you for including Bermuda. We're ignored so often in these types of videos😅
Cracking video. Very much enjoyed it.
Northwest American.
My wife is a Kansan (from Kansas) but grew up in Brisbane (Brizbn). 😁
Great vid! Love your work!
Fun fact about Australian accents: South Australians generally says “an” like in dance or prance like “ahn” in a very stereotypically ‘British’ way. It’s a bit of a shock when you go to other states and they just say one random sound differently, like Queenslanders pronouncing the word pool really strangely. It’s noticeable to the point that Australian comedy books point it out 😂
Pasty ..parsty...newcastle...newcarstle.............SOUTH OZ DIDN'T HAVE ANY CONVICTS
@@subaruwrx3381 LMAOOOOOO 😆... I mean it is true though
I must not get out enough in WA because I swear Australians have the least amount of different accents. I know there’s some, but it’s nothing like Britain or America
In Spanish, every country has their own standard accent (usually the one spoken in the capital city), but every region/province/state has a distinct accent too (and it’s not small differences, the accents can change a lot, usually what stays the same inside a country is the vocabulary and the distinct words they use, but the accents are really different one to another).
I think the main difference between English and Spanish tho is that in English vocabulary does not vary as much, sure there are some different words, but in Spanish there’s multiple ways of calling everything, and usually a person only knows one (their native way) and sometimes a more “standard” one.
What leads you to believe vocabulary doesn’t vary much in English? It varies a good bit just in the States, not even considering all the other English speaking countries.
I think the main difference that’s really noticable is seseo/ceceo and how you pronounce ll
@@BP-or2iu you are right!! How do you call it? Soda? Fizzy drink? Or pop? Omg so much diversity!! 😱
@@agme8045 It’s “what do you call it” not “how” and it’s called “coke” where I’m from. All of it.
You’re only revealing your own ignorance.
Whatever examples you have of different Spanish vocabulary around the world there will be a similar example from the English speaking world. Not to mention, you literally provided an example of three different words for the same thing. And it wasn’t even complete as you left some off because you don’t even know them. So you’re not really making a good point.
Their own dialect actually. A lot of people, including the presenter of this video, don't understand the distinction between accent and dialect.
I guess it's the same with most languages. My language is Swedish, and at least a few decades ago you could hear what part of Göteborg (Gothenburg) someone came from by just listening to the accent, and I guess that was true for other places here in Sweden as well. These days people move around a bit more so it's not that distinct anymore, but I would be surprised if we had less than a hundred accents here in our little country. Some are very different from each other, some are so close that only a native speaker can hear the difference.
What fascinates me is how well you English in text. For example, I’m American, so I can read your English text and it’s perfect. You being a Swede one would assume English is not your primary language, but your vocabulary, punctuation and spelling is probably better than most Americans. But if I were to hear you speak English it would probably be with a heavy Nordic accent. It always amazes me how well non native English speakers can English in writing/text. Especially since this now world wide language came from such a small little island in the north west of Europe.
@@ImSpun13 I guess I could fake the accent to confuse the listener, but yes, I write much better than I speak. Thanks, by the way.
One thing that's makes it easier when writing is that I can correct mistakes before hitting Enter. When I speak I can't go back in time and correct anything. I'm sure one or two mistakes slip through when writing some times as well.
The work that went into this video is amazing.
My dad came to England in 1958 from Northern Ireland. When i was a kid i always thought it odd that my mates couldn't understand what my dad was saying. Now i am a grown man with three of my own kids, the eldest being 42 and to this day there are certain words my dad would say where they struggle to understand because of his accent!
American tourists in Costa Rica usually have a hard time understanding people in the province of Limón. It's quite similar to Jamaican patois, especially among older people who've been living there all of their lives. A lot of the locals do switch back and forth from a more standard English to the local accent/dialect. A lot of the locals who are not black also have the same accent and even speak patois. Most of the younger generation of black costaricans speak Spanish without an accent, but even a few decades ago, it was still common to hear fluent Spanish with a heavy Caribbean accent.
I was brought up in Warwickshire and as a result have a fairly neutral accent. I then spent most of mt 30s in the North East, this didn't really change the way that I spoke, but did make me listen. Even within the North East there was so much variety Geordie, Mak'ems, Smoggies, but also huge variety around Easington/Peterlee and then different again near Consett.
Then I moved to New Zealand and while I don't think my accent has changed my vocabulary definitely has changed. This has resulted in family in the UK thinking I sound like a Kiwi.
I never really gave it much thought but the premise that English is the most accented language in the world is surely true.
You should also have a look at Spanish and its more than 22 different accents, besides their local and regional accents. That also enriches the language and its tons of local vocabulary, slang, expressions, etc that makes it as dynamic and lively tongue as English. I guess English is a global Franca Lingua, so it might be the main reason, for such variety of dialects coming from all over the world, even though, from those who do not have English as a native language. However the more a wide language is spoken, you'll notice more remarkable, colorful, and different accents like stars are in the sky.
I used to be able to tell an Oldham accent from a Manchester one (less than 8 miles apart) and both from a Bolton accent (11 miles from Manchester). Keighley is a town in the City of Bradford, and they have a distinct accent.
Well done! I am keeping this lesson and the former one in my library for those occasions, when I read about people complaining about this accent or that dialect of English from another country, where English is also a native language form. I am able to speak and understand about 4 major dialects, only because, I have spent years hearing them on SW Radio broadcasts (long before the internet even existed.) If you are patient with yourself and another native English speaker and not too rushed in your speech patterns and stick as closely as possible to speaking a formal language, than there will be less miscommunications events.
Growing up in Brooklyn I was sent by the nuns from my parochial school to speech therapy because I didn't pronounce my H in my TH's. For most of my adult life I've lived in New England. I used to hear the old New England accent (it sounded very British) but today I mostly hear the modern New England accent where most R's are dropped. One accent you missed was African American speech. Besides it's obvious African roots, it's influence has spread beyond the African American community and influence southern white speech.
I think southern white speech probably influenced African American English actually.
Or I should say originally influenced black American speech.
Having grown up as Afrikaans in South Africa, then moving to Asia my English is a combination of British, American, Australian and Indian… everywhere I traveled,… we had to understand each other!
Can south African English speakers understand English dialect? I only ask as certain dialects on the east coast of English have a lot of Dutch and Frisian influence and Afrikaans is very similar to dutch
English is my home language, I'm from a mixed Indian and coloured family, and I grew up in a predominantly Afrikaans speaking region. I live in Latin America and most of my friends and colleagues speak English with American accents, and they say my accent sounds like a mix of British, American, Indian and Australian 😂
@@lightfootpathfinder8218 Afrikaans has not influenced all varieties of South African English.
@@hastigehond I mean if a south African who can speak English and Afrikaans heard east English dialect that has similarities to dutch could they understand it?
English is both the GREATEST language ever and the MOST COMPLICATED language ever. Like just think about how many words we use that are used differently. It boggles the mind once you think about the different uses of the same word often spelt slightly differently. I applaud EVER person who speaks English as a second language.
that's CLEAR.
and keep in mind that you can't guess how a word is pronounced just from writing.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Try guessing how a word in Japanese is pronounced just by looking at it.
The difficulty of learning a new language depends greatly on ones mother tongue.
I'm a Notherner here. South Yorkshire 😊