The number of regional accents in England is staggering. Massive differences can be heard in towns as near as twenty miles apart. If you’re new to the Premier League or are learning more about British culture, here’s a helpful guide to the different accents you’ll likely hear at each of the 20 Premier League grounds around the league:
- Arsenal: North London, known as cockneys. Listen to an example of a north London accent.
- Aston Villa: Birmingham, known as brummies. Hear a good example of a Birmingham accent.
- Blackburn: Lancashire. Listen to a sample of a Blackburn accent.
- Bolton: Lancashire. Listen to an example of a Bolton accent.
- Chelsea: West London, known as cockneys. Hear a clip of a person from west London.
- Everton: Merseyside, known as scousers. Play this example of a Liverpudlian accent.
- Fulham: West London, known as cockneys. Example of an accent synonymous with Fulham.
- Hull City: Yorkshire. Listen to an example of an accent of someone from east Yorkshire.
- Liverpool: Merseyside, known as scousers. Hear a good example of a Liverpool accent.
- Manchester City: Known as mancunians. Hear an example of a Manchester accent.
- Manchester United: Known as mancunians. Listen to this example of a Salford accent.
- Middlesbrough: Listen to an sample of a Middlesbrough accent.
- Newcastle: Known as geordies. Hear an audio clip of a Geordie accent.
- Portsmouth: Listen to an example of a Hampshire accent.
- Stoke City: Listen to an audio sample of a Stoke-On-Trent accent.
- Sunderland: Known as mackems. Hear an example of a Sunderland accent.
- Tottenham: North London, known as cockneys. Listen to an example of the accent here.
- West Brom: Birmingham, known as brummies. Hear an example of a Birmingham accent.
- West Ham: East London, known as cockneys. Listen to a sample here.
- Wigan: Lancashire. Listen to an example of a Wigan accent.
As you can hear, it’s not only the football that’s different in the cities around the Premier League. The accents are also totally different.
You've got the Manchester teams in the opposite locations. United are in Salford and City are in Manchester.
Good catch Pedro. This is now fixed.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Spurs fans aren't Cockneys, you have to be born near the peeling of the bow bells. Only the Hammers can truely claim to be Cockneys, east end London.
Very interesting Chris. Really enjoyed this.
Fulham is right next to Chelsea, so shouldn't it be west London accent too.
It used to be that way, Paulie. But it has changed to encompass all Londoners now.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Thanks Chris. I was able to find a specific example of someone who lived in Fulham to provide that example. But yes, Chelsea and Fulham are both next door to each other in west London.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Very enjoyable piece, however i would say as a resident of Stoke-On-Trent all my 23 years on this planet, that guy has totally lost his roots. Not such a bad thing though. I think it is quite easy to lose the potteries accent as its not that strong. A lot of my friends who moved away to university seemed to come back sounding totally different. Only takes a few weeks to correct though.
wow gaffer, to a yank its amazing to actually hear the differences. you always hear of them, but never actually the dialects, intonations, and other dynamics themselves.
i'm sure its out there, but a study of the differing dialects here in the usa (besides the stereotypical new york/nj, boston, and southern accent) would be equally fascinating.
um not really…
in Philadelphia you can tell by neighborhoods..
my ear might be used to micro accents from different English accents.. but it is REALLY pronounced in Philadelphia
Traditionally, cockneys were born within earshot of the Bow Bells. But according to Wikipedia, The region in which “Cockneys” reside has changed over time, and is no longer the whole of London. As mentioned in the introduction, the traditional definition is that in order to be a Cockney, one must have been born within earshot of the Bow Bells. However, the church of St. Mary-le-Bow was destroyed in 1666 by the Great Fire of London and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. After the bells were destroyed again in 1941 in The Blitz of World War II, and before they were replaced in 1961, there was a period when by this definition no 'Bow-bell' Cockneys could be born. The use of such a literal definition produces other problems, since the area around the church is no longer residential and the noise of the area makes it unlikely that many people would be born within earshot of the bells anymore.
wikipedia is not really a good source.
you call a person from bruce grove a cockney and you'll get stabbed.
glad to see that West Ham has taken over all of London. eel pies for the the lot of ya. Cockney is NOT all of London, that is unless your thick and from Newcastle. ( and they include Italians in that as well)
and the only cockneys outside of the east end are maybe in Essex. and i don't mean David.
but the best is calling West Londoners Cockney. You might get run over by a 4×4 or clobbered with a bottle of 1984 French chardonny for sayin that
btw should have had this guy do the examples…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2QEm028lKA
get yous baggells for the egggelles. wit a cup of wuuder, den over to get a WahhWAHH Hoogey wit a tayysdeykake
ahh I miss delco
I'll add my voice (err) to the Cockney debate. The East London (and SW Essex) accent is different from that of the rest of London. To claim that supporters of Arse, Spurs, Chelsea and Fulham are Eastenders is pretty insulting. Don't forget the caste system still exists at some level in the UK…and those living at the East End of London have historically been further down the pecking order.
hi, the guy doing the east yorkshire accent isnt from hull. he sounds like hes near middlesbrough. hull accent doesnt really sound like anywhere else in yorkshire as there was alot of immigration to hull in the 1800s.
Mancunians and cockney accents are howwible
how it north london cockney?
that’s east london. A true cockney is born within the sound of the bow bells
The guy from Stoke has totally lost his accent. Even if he has one before. He sounds a bit like a posh Stokie (yes, there is such a thing). A proper Stoke accent is mixed between Yorkshire, Lancashire and a hint of Scouse. I live in London now and people can never place my accent.
Some people think Jamie Carragher’s accent is just hard to understand even though he is a Scouser. Everton and Liverpool share one accent. Cool though.
http://www.choicehow.com/2009/02/how-to-speak-scouse.html
T’ Bolton accent available on this website is utter ….pap. Nowt like our accent. and i mean nowt like it.Can tell she even spent time in Bolton but lived More Manchester…coz Ive lived there 19 years an all. So there.
I don’t care what wiki says. All the posters here are correct. People from north and west London are not cockneys in anyone’s stretch of the imagination. Nor are most east Londoners. The Bow Bells thing still holds; it’s the area where the Bow Bells used to be able to be heard even if they are long gone. It’s cultural. You can’t just include other areas in your culture – it doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying “Lets include Germans in the definition of British”.
p.s. I forgot to say, congratulations on this blogg, even with its inaccuracies. I wanted to show some foreign friends some clips of English people with regional accents. First I found the BBC site. It had clips from educated people with light Brummie accents, and Asians with Brummie accents, and Africans with Brummie accents. But no ordinary, traditional English people with Brummie accents. Typical BBC bending over backwards to please minority groups, and dismissing the indigenous English.
oh wow i love the smell of racism in the morning
and by ‘ordinary, traditional English’ you just mean white because they could be from France or Poland originally for all you know but so long as the accent’s there they’re ‘indigenous English’ to you right? and an asian or african person who’s from brum and speaks like a brummie isn’t one, wow thanks for clearing that up i’m so glad.
an accent is an accent is an accent.
I must say I was predisposed to be enthusiastic when I first stumbled across this link. Being a linguist (an ex-lancastrian one to boot) I had hoped these recordings might shed some light into the decoding of Corrie accents. The quality of the recordings is generally patchy – some decent others much less so. The ‘readers’ do not demonstrate accurately spoken vernacular and in most cases seem quite uncomfortable reading naturally. This results is dislocated diction, unnatural pauses and forced phrasing. I was also looking for West Lancashire accents – from the region where I grew up – Preston, Southport, Chorley but there are no major football teams from there (!) I would rather have heard samples of natural dialogue rather than the unnatural reading of an arbitrary and unconnected text. Good try, but I need to keep looking …
Paul, what do you expect? We’re a blog located in Florida, far away from the UK, so we had to use resources on the Internet to find audio of the accents. We’re not government funded and don’t have researchers we can tap into!
Cheers,
The Gaffer
It’s a very hard task you have set yourself, as Paul pointed out having people unused to reading aloud made for uncomfortable listening on the *brummie* accent, made especially so when the lady tsalking said she went to Kineton school which is a long way from Brum when it comes tom accents. Now I come from Aldridge near Walsall, which although only about 1o miles from Birmingham centre is in *the Black Country* we speak quite differently and Brummies calls us *Yam Yams* – from the the greeting *How am Ya?* . This accent is best summed up by the Walsall born singer Noddy Holder from Slade ((#So here it is merry christmas everybody’s having fun#), for a Brummie accent you need to look to Jasper Carrot the comedian or the lady featured in the clip talks more like Mark Williams who played Arthur Weasley in Harry Potter, he is from Bromsgrove but often *works* the accent.
Good luck with all your work!!
Mike
Im from America and must say Blackburn accent is amazing!!!