Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. The United Kingdom has a wide variety of accents, and no single "British accent" exists. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.
Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England: an "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is some debate among linguists as to where Cockney speech ends and Estuary English begins.
Scouse, officially known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English, is an accent and dialect of English associated with the city of Liverpool and the surrounding Liverpool City Region. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive as it was influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh immigrants who arrived via the Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks, and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England. Natives of Liverpool are officially known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals.
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
Linking R and intrusive R are sandhi phenomena where the rhotic consonant is pronounced as sound between two consecutive vowels with the purpose of avoiding a hiatus, that would otherwise occur in the expressions, such as tuner amp, although in isolation tuner is pronounced the same as tuna. These phenomena occur in many non-rhotic varieties of English, such as those in most of England and Wales, parts of the United States, and all of the Anglophone societies of the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South Africa. In these varieties, the sound is pronounced only when it is immediately followed by a vowel.
This chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent English language pronunciations.
In English, many vowel shifts affect only vowels followed by in rhotic dialects, or vowels that were historically followed by that has been elided in non-rhotic dialects. Most of them involve the merging of vowel distinctions and so fewer vowel phonemes occur before than in other positions of a word.
The TRAP–BATH split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in Southern England English, Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English, South African English and to a lesser extent in some Welsh English as well as older Northeastern New England English by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long of PALM. In that context, the lengthened vowel in words such as bath, laugh, grass and chance in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A. Phonetically, the vowel is in Received Pronunciation (RP), Cockney and Estuary English; in some other accents, including Australian and New Zealand accents, it is a more fronted vowel and tends to be a rounded and shortened in Broad South African English. A trap–bath split also occurs in the accents of the Middle Atlantic United States, but it results in very different vowel qualities to the aforementioned British-type split. To avoid confusion, the Middle Atlantic American split is usually referred to in American linguistics as a 'short-a split'.
Most dialects of modern English have two close back vowels: the near-close near-back rounded vowel found in words like foot, and the close back rounded vowel found in words like goose. The STRUT vowel, which historically was back, is often central as well. This article discusses the history of these vowels in various dialects of English, focusing in particular on phonemic splits and mergers involving these sounds.
The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related accents and dialects known as Northern England English (or, simply, Northern (English) in the United Kingdom).
English in Southern England is the collective set of different dialects and accents of Modern English spoken in Southern England.
In the history of English phonology, there have been many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers. A number of these changes are specific to vowels which occur before, especially in cases where the is at the end of a syllable.
North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken North American English —what are commonly known simply as "regional accents". Though studies of regional dialects can be based on multiple characteristics, often including characteristics that are phonemic, phonetic, lexical (vocabulary-based), and syntactic (grammar-based), this article focuses only on the former two items. North American English includes American English, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English, which is more homogeneous geographically. American English and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with varieties of English outside North America.
New England English is, collectively, the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area. Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", some of whose accent features still remain in Eastern New England today, such as "R-dropping". Accordingly, one linguistic division of New England is into Eastern versus Western New England English, as defined in the 1939 Linguistic Atlas of New England and the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE). The ANAE further argues for a division between Northern versus Southern New England English, especially on the basis of the cot–caught merger and fronting. The ANAE also categorizes the strongest differentiated New England accents into four combinations of the above dichotomies, simply defined as follows:
Older Southern American English is a diverse set of American English dialects of the Southern United States spoken most widely up until the American Civil War of the 1860s, before gradually transforming among its White speakers, first, by the turn of the 20th century, and, again, following the Great Depression, World War II, and, finally, the Civil Rights Movement. By the mid-20th century, among White Southerners, these local dialects had largely consolidated into, or been replaced by, a more regionally unified Southern American English. Meanwhile, among Black Southerners, these dialects transformed into a fairly stable African-American Vernacular English, now spoken nationwide among Black people. Certain features unique to older Southern U.S. English persist today, like non-rhoticity, though typically only among Black speakers or among very localized White speakers.
The English language spoken and written in England encompasses a diverse range of accents and dialects. The language forms part of the broader British English, along with other varieties in the United Kingdom. Terms used to refer to the English language spoken and written in England include English English and Anglo-English.
Welsh English comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, a variety of accents are found across Wales, including those of North Wales, the Cardiff dialect, the South Wales Valleys and West Wales.
The sound system of New York City English is popularly known as a New York accent. The New York metropolitan accent is one of the most recognizable accents of the United States, largely due to its popular stereotypes and portrayal in radio, film, and television. Several other common names exist for the accent that associate it with more specific locations in the New York City area, such as "Bronx accent", "Brooklyn accent", "Queens accent", "Long Island accent", and "North Jersey accent"; however, no research has demonstrated significant linguistic differences between these locations.
The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant,, is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic accents, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments: when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, but a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound and pronounces them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/. When an r is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "better apples," most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position since it is followed by a vowel in this case.
The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The traditional dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English and may be unintelligible for outsiders. This dialect is distinct from and maintains more traditional characteristics than the dialect of Birmingham, which has been more influenced by standard English due to having been urban for a longer time. It has also influenced the accents of the towns and villages in the counties to the north, south and west of the region.
