Useful Notes / British Accents

Received Pronunciation (Posh/Educated/BBC/Queen's English/RP/Oxford)

Nobles, geniuses, snobs, the Battle Butler, the Quintessential British Gentleman, the Evil Brit, and people who studied in Oxbridge or worked for The BBC. The "tapped r" sound (used in a few other British accents) is commonly but inaccurately parodied as "veddy" (for "very"). American media often makes the mistake that all Brits speak RP. It should be noted that, in simplistic terms, there are two forms of RP in everyday use — Moderate and Heightened (or, as some people tend to call it, Trad). Both follow the same rules of pronunciation, but Moderate is more relaxed and tends to be encountered more amongst the young, whereas Heightened is far more strangulated, plummy, and generally only encountered in older people. Elizabeth II used Heightened RP, whereas her grandson Harry uses Moderate, for example. It is also important to note that almost ALL upper-class people in the UK, regardless of the region they live in (from Cornwall to Scotland), speak RP — it is an accent of social class, as opposed to region. There used to be an American equivalent called Mid-Atlantic English which was entirely affected — very few people naturally spoke that way — but it was phased out starting in the mid-20th century.

• The BBC used to insist on everyone speaking a modified version of RP ("BBC English" did discourage some distinctive upper-class pronunciations that were seen as erroneous, such as pronouncing "ng" at the end of words as a simple "n"), but this is no longer the case (generally using "Estuary" with a tinge of their native regional accent if it isn't Estuary), although some of the old announcers still use the accent.
• In US media this accent is most commonly associated with the Wicked Cultured (see also: Evil Brit). Although not always — Alfred Pennyworth of Batman used to speak in RP.
• This is Rowan Atkinson's accent. At least for general usage. Atkinson also does a very good Geordie accent (mostly used on older NTNON sketches) on account of being from County Durham.
• Also the accent of Richard Dawkins.
• Chap Hop artists Professor Elemental and Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer have made this accent popular of late.
• Terry-Thomas' RP accent was so famously affected that most people today who pretend to do an RP accent are probably just doing a bad impression of Terry-Thomas without realizing it.
• "Posho" JP from Fresh Meat. At one point he states proudly, "I have the kind of accent that makes foreigners shit themselves."
• The Hon. JACOB REES-MOGG. Also, the late, lamented Bryan Sewell. Both speak a version of RP known as Heightened or Trad(itional). It is also jokingly known as "posher than the Queen" — but note, it is not the same as Sandhurst (which see) because the latter is strictly a military accent (and Army in particular). In Rees-Mogg's case, this—along with his political views—has led to his being occasionally dubbed the "member of Parliament for the eighteenth century."^note Ironically, Rees-Mogg is Catholic, and thus would not have been eligible to become an MP until after the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act... in 1829.
  • Before getting into the attributes of Trad RP, it's worth noting that Dr Zev Cohen in Mass Effect speaks it flawlessly (to a Briton's ears). Strangely (and amazingly), he is played by a Canadian, Dwight Schultz. Listen to him here.
  • Juntao in Rush Hour. Listen to it here. Likewise, Pendrew in Sleeping Dogs (2012). Both played/voiced by Tom Wilkinson.
  • Pandemic comes out pen-demic. Quarantine comes out quad-enteen with something between a d and an r.
  • You can instantly tell a Trad RP speaker by the so-called "-our glide". This applies to words that rhyme with hour—-not words that rhyme with honour or colour. For instance, "only for an hour" can come out "e-wnly for an aaaaaah" (the e-w sound is like in the name "Edward" without the d). By the same token, year comes out yah. Trad RP speakers also "glide" the final y in words like "history", which comes out histor-rear. Terry Pratchett once described this as "organised yawning"—-which to be honest isn't far "orf"!
  • Craig Brown, in his hilariously waspish biography Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, phonetically transcribes the late princess' 1981 Desert Island Discs radio interview, where her pronunciation of the word "yes" is brilliantly (and accurately) written as "ears".
  • Conversely, Trad RP speakers "tighten" the ou sound when it's by itself. Mouse is almost indistinguishable from mice; a fairly faithful Funetik Aksent would be meice, but note that the e sound is the one in met (if you're speaking proper English).
  • Finally, "moss" comes out morss, "cross" likewise crorss, "off" becomes orf (or sound as in "bore"). Some, but not all, Trad RP speakers will 'tap' certain r sounds (the ones between two vowels); the sound used is the same as the t in "better", pronounced Yank-fashion.
  • The accent can be listened to here and here (political content alert). Alan Rickman also spoke a variant of RP midway between Standard and Trad.
  • A fairly popular drinking game in the UK is to bite down on a pencil or cigarette lighter inserted in one side of the mouth (Cigar Chomper style) and say one of the usual elocution exercises. In increasing order of difficulty: "chubby bunnies", "round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal rudely ran", "amidst the mists and fiercest frosts, with barest wrists and stoutest boasts, she thrusts her fists against the posts, and still insists she sees the ghosts" (thank you Stephen King). The idea is to talk and still be understood — if you can't be, take a drink. This essentially forces you to speak Trad RP or the American equivalent; try it without the pencil or lighter and see.
• 'Oxford' RP is reasonably distinguishable from 'standard' RP, at least for those of us who live in Oxford, anyway. Might have been caused by a slight mixing with the 'Rose Hill'/'Jericho' accent.
  • To clarify: Jericho is a small area of Oxford, which used to be a bit of a slum (and it's still not got a great reputation). Many inhabitants moved to Rose Hill (another small area of Oxford) and brought their accent (and unfortunately, the reputation) with them. The accent might indicate someone being lower-class, rough or criminal.
  • For an example, Lyra in Northern Lights associates with people from the Jericho area, and Philip Pullman transcribes some of the way she therefore speaks into her dialogue. Note the use of 'ent' for 'haven't' and 'isn't', particularly: 'That ent right!' or 'I ent got it!'.
• Also known through out the country as 'The Telephone Voice'. Anyone with a strong dialect who expects to speak to a non-local over the phone will most likely attempt to speak with RP. Also used by customer facing workers and anyone else who wishes to be understood first time. It's not uncommon to be served in a shop by an assistant who sounds like they could be serving the Queen herself who will then turn to a colleague and instantly start speaking with the broadest local dialect you've ever heard. This explains the aforementioned American misconception. Almost all Brits CAN speak RP, they just may choose not to.
• An exaggerated form is used by the Red Arrows aerobatics team. Commands are issued in a metronomic and modulated manner that emphasize the vowel in each syllable, resulting in radio communications sounding incredibly posh. This is done to be as clear as possible and to help the pilots anticipate upcoming maneuvers. Other British aerobatic teams mimic this way of speaking over the radio when performing.

Sandhurst (the REAL posh accent)

Essentially an exaggerated form of Heightened RP, this accent is almost never heard in fiction, the only exceptions being British made war films of the 30s, 40s, and 50s... and Monty Python.

The accent of the British Blue Blood, RP with a blocked nose and a mouthful of marbles.

So-called for its use by the product of the Elite Military Academy of the British Army, for the longest time an institution that you joined because Daddy was a General. Accordingly, because this accent is localised to one particular branch of one particular profession, there aren't many opportunities to hear it; by the same token, if the "example" doesn't have a military rank, he/she's probably not an example.

Examples:

• Tim-Nice-But-Dim, the creation of Harry Enfield
• Any number of sketches by the Pythons, all of who spoke BBC RP (at least on stage) but as a product of Footlights had plenty of exposure to real life upper class twits
• Captain James Blunt of the Life Guards (part of the British Army's elite Household Cavalry, the Praetorian Guard that protects His Majesty the King) has the definitive Sandhurst accent. (No shit. That's where he got his education.) Not an upper class twit — more Royals Who Actually Do Something.
• It's hinted that Rear Admiral Michael Oversteegen in the Honor Harrington books talks like this, in Funetik Aksent. Although, technically, he's Navy, and not British.
• In the The Two Ronnies sketch "Crossed Lines", ginger Gerald (played by Ronnie Barker) wears a striped regimental tie, carries his hand in his blazer à la Napoléon Bonaparte, and talks in a comically thick Sandhurst accent (implying he's ex-military).

East London (Cockney)

A character with an East London accent will very often be involved in some form of criminality. They can either be London Gangsters (such as anything played by Vinnie Jones ^note although he is from Watford in North London) or a Loveable Rogue. The more Cockney the accent, the more likely to be the latter. Double that if he uses impenetrable Cockney rhyming slang. However, there are exceptions to the rule — Badger from Firefly is a bad Cockney and Ray Winstone has played good (although often aggressive) East Londoners on a number of occasions.

• Strangely, on Canadian television Cockneys tend to be light-hearted, street-smart small businessmen — fruit vendors, gardeners, and the like. A gangster Cockney would be considered about as likely as a pearls-and-china culture maven hailing from Yellowknife. You do get characters like this in the UK, but they tend to be found in period works.
• There is also "Mockney", putting on the accent for effect.
• A good fictional example is 2-D from the Gorillaz, whose accent is thick to a comical degree.
• Interestingly, we know a lot about the development of Cockney thanks to Charles Dickens — he was using a Funetik Aksent for Cockney characters as early as 1837 writing The Pickwick Papers, so we have a written record of how it sounded two hundred years ago, including the fact that proto-Cockney had a rather German-sounding W-V substitution.
  Weller: "Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list cos his mother's uncle's vife's grandfather vunce lit the king's pipe vith a portable tinder-box."
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the proles tend to have Cockney accents (or an approximation thereof) while the Party members tend to speak something closer to RP, in keeping with George Orwell's socialist views of the hardworking and industrious working people versus the snobby, power-hungry elites.
• Bit character Constable Smiley in Reno 911! has something between this, Estuary and mild touches of Brummie. His brief existence in the show had the main characters thinking of him as a kind Mary Poppins sort of character due to his accent and niceties when he first met them. In actuality though he verged much closer to being a Evil Brit criminal type being underhanded, violent and self-serving in all he did (though only Garcia is aware of his brutality) all with a chipper Cockernee accent.
• The English comedian Russell Kane has noted that whereas in most British accents, talking loudly is perceived as being threatening whereas talking quietly is regarded as friendly and non-threatening, in Cockney it's the other way around; Cockneys who shout are merely being exuberant, whereas Cockneys who talk quietly are very, very scary.
• Bizarrely, Josef Stalin has a Cockney accent in The Death of Stalin. According to the director, he didn't want fake Russian accents distracting the audience from the story, so every cast member kept their normal accent. As strange as it sounds, the accent somehow makes Stalin (for the brief time that he's alive and onscreen) both more human and more intimidating.
• Michael Caine has a Cockney accent, and so does almost every character he plays.
• The Small Faces were from east London, and several of their songs (most notably "Lazy Sunday") feature singer Steve Marriott using a theatrically exaggerated accent.
  "Loyzee Sundee ahfternoon
  I've got no moind ta worry
  Clowse my oyes and drift awaiiiyyyyy..."
• Cream drummer Ginger Baker's Cockney accent was clearly apparent in the few songs he sang (or, more accurately, spoke) with the band.

Estuary

A fairly recent development. Think of it as the compromise between the refinement of RP and the palatal easiness of Cockney. The London middle class, so to speak. Based on RP, but also incorporates a number of elements traditionally associated with Cockney and other plebeian southeastern dialects (notably, pronouncing "t" as a glottal stop, fronting "th" to "f" and "v", and pronouncing a hard "g" in "-ing" words). Mostly spoken in southeastern England on the estuary of the Thames, but increasingly co-opted by people with higher levels of income and education who mock Received Pronunciation as too stuffy and pretentiously ridiculous. As a result, it (or a slightly more refined variant thereof) has increasingly become the default "newscaster" accent of media based in London (ie most of it). Has risen in profile in recent years to the point where it's become more-or-less "neutral" and may replace RP completely.

• Russell Brand is a good example of this accent. Adele as well.
• Michael Caine approximates this in most of his roles. It was much stronger in his youth: his performance in Sleuth was one of the first times an actor had used the accent in a film.
• David Tennant, a native Scot, adopted the Estuary accent for his portrayal of Casanova and the Tenth Doctor.
• South East England, specifically the county of Kent, has its own, fading, country dialect (Captain Jack Sparrow has it in modified form, almost certainly derived from Dartford natives Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who both sport the Kentish lilt); a cousin of the 'Mummerset' below. However, this is quite different from Estuary English—among other differences, the former is rhotic; the latter is not.
• In the Medway towns area another accent is discernible; sometimes called 'Chav' (derived from a Romani word for 'child') or locally 'Chathamese' (from the town of Chatham, where its worst excesses are spoken). It includes local words like 'chaw' for 'to take', and is itself replaced by another accent on the Isle of Sheppey in the Medway estuary.
  • A variation of the chav accent originated in East London and has spread elsewhere, which sounds like that associated with Black London accent combined with the white chav accent. This is often known as 'Jafaican', or in politically correct terms 'Multicultural London English'. This accent has some unusual variations compared to started English — for instance 'you' may be pronounced like 'yoor', and 'like' be pronounced like 'lack'. In that sense it is closer to a Nigerian or Scottish accent. Like a lot of accents, it varies in how strong it is depending on the area. The garage and grime genres of music often feature people with this accent; a notable example is Dizzee Rascal.

East Anglia (The Bootiful East)

• Famous turkey magnate Bernard Matthews sums up the whole region for many people. His catch-phrase Bootiful!, from the TV adverts for his turkeys, is pure Naaarfuck
• Speaking of Naaarfuck,^note  Norfolk, to the perplexed. you haven't lived until you have heard a denizen of Narridge ^note Norwich pronounce the word "road". It comes out sounding almost but not completely like "rude".
• Norfolk people use their placenames as traps to catch the unwary. Thus:
  • Costessey - pron. Cossey
  • Wymondham - pron. Windham
  • Happisburgh - pron. Hazeborough
• Anyone meeting Suffolk accents for the first time might close their ears to the actual sense of what's being said, listen to the rising and falling cadences of the intonation, and hear Dutch more clearly than English. You might just as well be in Flanders or Holland. As with Yorkshire and Denmark, this speaks volumes for the centuries of contact and trading links with the nearest landfall on the other side of the North Sea.
• Oddly, frequently confused by actors for the West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar. This is probably due to the fact that both are considered to be the two main "yokel" regions of England. Stereotypes common to both is that a lot of the people are rustic farmers.
• The vast majority of the first settlers of New England in North America were from here. As such, the accents of the northeastern United States still bear some resemblance to their East Anglian ancestors.

The West Country (Mummerset)

Stock accent for a broadly defined region stretching from Cornwall through to Somerset and old Wessex. Plenty of "oo-ar", while chewing a stalk of hay (stalk, not stack); associated with intellectual challenge, broad ignorance and depthless cunning, and usually used as comic relief. In the US, it is mostly associated with "Pirate-speak", due to its proximity to seafaring towns like Bristol and Plymouth. The dialect actually has a very distinct history, as it is probably the most purely Saxon speech found in England (which is to say, relatively unaffected by the Viking and Norman invasions). Indeed, several features of the dialect would be familiar to German-speakers, such as the use of the words "be" and "bist" instead of "am" and "is" (for example, "I be" instead of "I am"). Two notable features of the accent include strong rhoticism and the voicing of "f" and "s" consonants, which therefore become "v" and "z." The classic example of the latter feature is the county name of Somerset, which would be pronounced "Zummerzet." Cornish English, and to a lesser extent Devon English, carry some influence from the Celtic Cornish language.

• In Somerset can be found explanatory T-shirts with local expressions: 'Where zat to? Yer tizz' ('Where's that? Here it is.') or proper job (pronounced 'pruppar jaab') 'that's been done right'. Familiarity is marked by the expression 'my love'.
• The exception being Wiltshire-born Phil Harding, an archaeologist who appears on the long-running Time Team archaeology programme, speaks with a broad West Country accent, looks like a poacher, has a worrying affection for digging very, very big holes (he's the one most likely to call for the JCB) and knows pretty much all there is to know about ancient pottery. But he still gets used as comic relief.
• TV star zookeeper Johnny Morris came from Bristol. On his show Animal Magic it showed.
• More accurate programs set in this area will contrast working class Mummerset with upper-middle class RP. Associated with much fearful pointing at planes, shunning of cameras in fear of their soul, etc.
  • Careful observation will reveal a "Yokel Belt" stretching from Cornwall to Norfolk, with a generally common sort of drawl but of course the usual regional variation. Ooh-arr is Somerset and Dorset for example. Cornish tends to be more piratical sounding. Softer consonants to the east (suff-uhk vs zummerzet).
• Despite not really being part of the West Country proper, the Isle of Wight was heavily influenced by the region, and shares more in common with its accent than with the Received Pronunciation and Estuary accents seen in the rest of the South East; in addition, the Isle of Wight dialect shares much of the regional words familiar to people from the West Country, and even has quite a substantial number of their own; for example, you're likely to hear the phrase "Somewhen" ('at some time'/'at some point') quite a lot, which is almost never seen anywhere else, though it does have an approximate equivalent in German.
  • And while the Isle of Wight is the most pronounced example of this, western fringes of the South East still preserve some West Country features, particularly in working class speakers. A good example is Ricky Gervais, whose accent has a mixture of Estuary and West Country features. He had a modest upbringing in Reading, a town roughly equidistant between London and the West Country.
• There's a good reason for Cornish accents being "Pirate sounding"; the connection was sledgehammered into the public consciousness by Robert Newton's depiction of Long John Silver (originally not even "Captain", mind) in the 1950 film version of Treasure Island. He refrained from putting on a more classy RP acting accent and used his native Kernow drawl instead to make the character a little more low-class and exotic... arrr, an' so 'igh profyle a depikshon 'twere, Pirates 'ave shared what be 'til then a rougher brarnch o' the classic farrmurrs' (an' tin-miners') acsent to this 'ere day.
  • However, it's actually an interesting example of Truth in Television. Estimates for the regional origin of pirates actually put the plurality (note, not the majority) as being from the West Country. This presumably because of the amount of press-ganging which went on in the region and the tendency of press-ganged sailors to desert or mutiny and take up as pirates. For example, the legendary Blackbeard was probably born in Bristol. Black Sam, meanwhile, who is thought to have been the richest pirate of all time, was from Devon, as was privateer Sir Francis Drake.
• Most of the characters in The Archers have accents from this part of the country.
• Hagrid has a Somerset accent in the Harry Potter series. In fact, his classic line from the films "Yer a wizzerd, Harry" may be the most familiar bit of West Country English to non-UK viewers.
• Wheatley in Portal 2 has a West Country accent (as with his voice actor, Stephen Merchant, who is from Bristol, no Fake Brit here), which fits with his character as being well-meaning but rather dim.
• Hot Fuzz:
  • Most of the cast displays the accent, being that the movie is set in a fictional West Country town. Star Simon Pegg was born in Gloucester and director Edgar Wright grew up in Wells, Somerset.
  • Taken to its logical extreme where one scene features three people with varying strengths of accent, so that Nick needs Danny to translate the barely understandable PC Bob, who in turn is translating for the even more incomprehensible local farmer.
• Samwise from The Lord of the Rings has a West Country accent, with an underlying flavour of Sean Astin's native California.
• A really local example can be heard in the original TV version of The Singing Detective; the flashback scenes to Marlow's childhood are set in the Forest of Dean, where the series writer Dennis Potter grew up. It's a small area to the north of the West Country and bordering Wales where the accent is/was similar to the West Country accent, but which in other ways was seriously idiolectical; at one point, the main character's father says "Him cont hurt tha'", meaning "He can't hurt you", and elsewhere the main character as a boy says "Better show our Dad, ant us?" meaning "We'd better show this to dad, hadn't we?" Potter noted that his own dad used to ask him "'Ow bist thou, o' butt?", meaning basically "How are you, buddy?"
• In Solomon Kane, James Purefoy used his natural Somerset accent to play Devon native Solomon Kane. Reasonably appropriate, at least by Hollywood standards.
• Ever since the switch from pure narration to voice acting in Thomas & Friends, Duck and Oliver have had thick West Country accents, which makes sense given where the Great Western Railway ran.
• The Wurzels' "Combine Harvester," a 1970s UK novelty hit, makes good use of the accent.
• Joe Talbot of the punk band Idles sings in his native Bristol accent.
• This Country is set in an unnamed village in the Cotswolds, where people speak in thick Gloucestershire accents. Show creators and siblings Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper grew up in Cirencester, which is the main village of the Cotswolds.

Black Country (Yam Yam)

Often confused with the Brummie accent (Black Country folk can be resentful of this). Preserves many traits of Middle English and Early Modern English. Therefore, can be difficult for people who are unfamiliar with it to understand. Doesn't appear on TV much. If you were wondering, the Black Country is a loosely-defined area in the English West Midlands, to the north and west of Birmingham and to the south and east of Wolverhampton, so-called because the area was heavily polluted during the coal-mining days of the Industrial Revolution.

• It is worth noting that there is no such thing as a real 'Black Country accent' in the same where there is no real 'British accent'. Black Country is a dialect that varies from town to town. People from Halesowen for example, can be distinguish from those of Netherton just down the road.
• Simon Templeman's character in Just Shoot Me! had a Black Country accent. Many American viewers complained that it was an unrealistic attempt at a British accent, probably because when Black Country(wo)men speak in full on "yam yam", it sounds like they're making it up. Even if they're long-term friends of yours. There's some element to it that makes it sound like they're about to crack a joke and go back to their "real" voice any second, in all but the most sombre situations.
• Anita and Me is probably the best fictional example of a Black Country accent.
• "Doris Day" "No, she didn't" ... only funny if you're familiar with Black Country Dialect.
• I bin (been) and I bay (be), I was and I wor (wasn't), I have and I hate (Haven't), I con (can) and I cor (can't), I will and I wo (won't), I dew (do) and I doe (don't), I sholl (shall) and I short (shall not), I must and I mo (mustn't).

Birmingham (Brummie)

The Birmingham accent. Sounds whiny and unattractive to many other Brits, so is often given to whiny or nerdy characters, e.g. Barry from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Interestingly, a poll has revealed that this is considered to be the least attractive British accent. Weirdly, a scientific (somewhat) study has found that the accent is the funniest and the best to use when telling jokes, and it polls as popular with foreigners. It should also be noted that many people from Birmingham insist that what the rest of the country considers to be a Birmingham accent is in fact a Dudley accent.

• Ozzy Osbourne, whose singing in his natural accent was cited as a reason Black Sabbath's music sounded much darker than most music at the time. Sometimes practically unintelligible, as lampshaded in a phone network ad. Though his (non-singing) unintelligible voice is most likely due to him being so brain-fried.
• Particularly Jeremy Clarkson's take on it, or Barry himself (his actor isn't even from The Midlands, for crying out loud — it's FAKE Brummie). Neither sound anything more than a shallow mocking of the actual one; typically far too flat/monotone, and the vowels are all off — nowhere near mangled enough! They manage a reasonably good Midlands accent, but it's probably more off towards Bromsgrove or somewhere (JC's take on it — and probably Barry too — is seemingly based on that of British Leyland workers being interviewed while on strike at the Longbridge plant, which is about as close to Bromsgrove as it is to the major urban/innercity areas of Birmingham, with the classier areas of Edgbaston et al in-between). That, or it's actually a Staffs/Stoke/Coventry twang (all of them also on the M6...). Dudley is more "Black Country", fiercely distinct in itself. Real Birmingham-area accents, as found on people such as Carl Chinn or (ugh) Tony Butler, are far more animated, sing-song (though not quite as much as Geoorrwwdie or Liverpoo'ool), and occasionally hard to decipher when the words stray too far from RP either in pronunciation or straight-out dialect. Just try to get them give a reasonable reading of "I wanted to go home, but they wouldn't let me take my bike on the bus". Also, there's an overemphasis on G's when we try to speak proper instead of slurrin' it.
• Oddly enough, these assumptions can be averted outside of England if tropers of a certain age think back to all of the Duran Duran interviews they remember and recollect how Nick Rhodes and John Taylor spoke. Both of these people are born-and-bred Brummies with definite and distinct Birmingham accents, yet they drove girls (and gay men) crazy throughout the world, in part because of how they spoke. John Taylor was even one of the biggest teen idols of the '80s, with millions of teen girls plastering his posters all over their bedroom walls and hanging onto every one of the words he spoke. Nick and John — two childhood friends making "Brummie" sound sexy around the world since 1981.
• Timothy Spall has perfected this accent, and most appearances of his play off British stereotypes of a working class Brummie "twonk" (idiot), particularly his appearance in the Red Dwarf episode "Back To Reality" as the video game engineer.
• J. R. R. Tolkien, who grew up in Birmingham. Surviving recordings reveal that he spoke with an upper-class Brummie accent, a kind of cross between the Midlands accent and Oxford-style RP. Ian McKellen's line delivery as Gandalf was consciously modeled after Tolkien's voice.
• Although Jeremy Clarkson likes to mock it, Top Gear and The Grand Tour have a better star for representing the Brummie accent: Richard Hammond actually is from Solihull, a suburban town just outside Birmingham, and it becomes obvious whenever he talks.
• Well-known comedians such as Jasper Carrot, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, and John Oliver, and rock stars such as the afore-mentioned Ozzy Osbourne and the founding members of Black Sabbath, Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, and Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, all hail from Birmingham and have distinctive working class Brummie accents.
• Professional wrestler and former WWE UK champion Pete Dunne is from the Chelmsley Wood area (which is technically in Solihull, if you want to get picky, but it's considered part of Birmingham) and has a fairly thick Brummie accent. It's much easier to hear in shoot interviews, as he usually tempers it a bit for promos and the like (probably so the non-Brits watching can understand).

Liverpool (Scouse)

The stereotype of criminal activity is fairly common, often involving stealing car wheels or stereos. Also often portrayed as Roman Catholic as in Carla Lane eighties sitcoms like Bread or serious movies like Antonia Bird's Priest or the work of Terence Davies. Hence, the city has one of the highest percentages of Roman Catholicism in the country — it was often first port of call for Irish immigrants particularly from the early 19th century onwards. The connection between Ireland is still strong today — as Dublin has often been used for movie locations set in Liverpool and vice versa. Scousers are portrayed as fun-loving and highly likely to be the comic relief (see Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, which in itself came from Harry Enfield sketch — which also came from the soap opera Brookside). The Bill is notable for the fact that four out of five Liverpool-originating regular characters have ended up dying violent deaths. Also, you know, The Beatles.

"Scouse"—essentially a blend of Lancashire English with strong Irish and Welsh influences—has changed a lot over the years, adding to the confusion. The word now can refer to a whole range of accents. What used to be closer to a Midlands accent has gotten higher in pitch, faster in delivery, and a touch more nasal. For example, if the Beatles said "That's not fair," fair comes out as "fur." If a contemporary Liverpudlian said, "She's wearing a fur coat," fur comes out as "fair."

• Dave Lister in Red Dwarf is a Scouser, as is Craig Charles.
• Just mentioning The Beatles would've sufficed for 99.9% percent of people reading this...
  • Of the four, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are probably the best examples of the dialect. John Lennon was raised in a relatively well-off household, and Paul McCartney's mother specifically wanted him to speak a less regional variety of English, so they never has particularly strong accents. Harrison and Starr, on the other hand, came from lower-class families and carried their Scouser speech with them well into the Beatlemania period. Reportedly, Lennon's aunt was horrified by the strength of Harrison's accent upon first meeting him. Eventually, years spent in America (Lennon and Starr) and southern England (McCartney and Harrison) greatly dulled their accents.
  • The best examples of the accent in the band's songs probably come from those sung by Harrison, specifically those from 1963 to 1966. However, Lennon, a talented mimic, affected a very thick Scouse on "Polythene Pam," from Abbey Road.
  • However, the Beatles are also a big exception to your average Scousers in that you can understand them.
• Wakko Warner from Animaniacs has a Liverpool-ish accent despite being ostensibly American, because Wakko's voice actor, Jess Harnell, modeled the character's voice after Ringo. ^note  They later got told by an English fan that Wakko's accent was a perfect.... Birkenhead! The large town over the Mersey from Liverpol is very similar in accent, as you'd expect (but NOT the same - it can be a Berserk Button for some Birkenheaders). Harnell was philisophical about the this, remarking that "Close only works in horseshoes - and accents, apparently!"
• One of the vultures from Disney's The Jungle Book (1967) had a heavy Liverpudlian accent. Of course, he was also a send-up of Ringo. The vultures were designed based on the Beatles, and Disney even wanted the Fab Four to voice them.
• Another rather famous Liverpudlian is Anne Robinson of The BBC's consumer affairs show Watchdog and subsequently (and much more infamously) The Weakest Link, although her accent is effectively indistinguishable from RP.
• A more common appearance of the more 'genuine' Scouse accent is in interviews given by local born footballers playing for Premier League clubs Liverpool and Everton FC, since it's not altered by speech training. Notable examples include pundit and former Liverpool vice-captain Jamie Carragher; his former captain and current Glasgow Rangers manager, Steven Gerrard; and former Manchester United and D.C. United captain (currently manager of Derby County) Wayne Rooney. While they're fairly comprehensible, one of Liverpool's former Dutch players, Dirk Kuyt, once remarked that when a group of Scouse players started talking to each other, it was practically gibberish to everyone else. This includes other English players.
• Pat Phelan from Coronation Street.
• Cam down, cam down.

Manchester (Mancunians/Manchestrian/Manc)

Associated with ITV Granada and Coronation Street, along with general mouthiness.

• A very similar accent is Christopher "Lots of planets have a North!" Eccleston's Ninth Doctor from Doctor Who.
• A very notable example is DCI Gene Hunt from Life on Mars (2006) and Ashes to Ashes (2008).
• Practically the entire cast (except for the main character's first girlfriend, who is from Wales) of the drug-dealing sitcom Ideal. It was made and set in Manchester. It displays quite a range of Mancunian accents — from very broad to very subtle.
• Almost the entire cast of Waterloo Road, as the school is set near Manchester... again a variety of accents, including a few outside accents.
  • Though most of the local characters speak Mancunian, the typical Rochdale accent in real life is a variety of East Lancashire (see above) and can sometimes be picked up in background chatter.
• The South Manchester accent is rarely seen in media; it sounds upper (or at least middle) class to most other Mancunians by association because a lot of the more upscale districts of Manchester are south of the city, and has more of a Midlands sound to it than a typical Manchester accent.
  • Probably the nearest you'll get to South Mancunian accents in TV drama is Emily Bishop in Coronation Street; her actress comes from a south west suburb of Greater Manchester.
  • While not prevalent in the Harry Potter films (due to having next to no dialogue), Afshan Azad, who plays Padma Patil, comes from Longsight, itself roughly in South Manchester.
  • This is probably what Daphne Moon was striving towards in Frasier. To people living in Stockport, Sale or Wilmslow, it wasn't a bad stab at a South Manchester accent. (Which has plenty of downmarket scallie areas for the roguish Moon clan to come from; Ardwick, Wythenshawe, Brinnington, Hattersley...) Had Jane Leeves opted for a North Manchester accent, American viewers would have needed subtitles!
• Shameless (UK) is another series set in Manchester and includes many authentic accents within the cast.
• Bet Sykes in Pennyworth.
• A notable real-life example is Karl Pilkington, the Butt-Monkey producer of The Ricky Gervais Show and presenter of An Idiot Abroad.

Lancashire

Sounds a bit like Yorkshire (a lot like it to most). Rhoticism varies throughout — Eastern and Pennine areas more prone to rhotic accents like Jane Horrocks in Absolutely Fabulous or most of the Northern comic characters played by Stephen Fry. South Lancashire is not a rhotic accent — see St Helens comedian Johnny Vegas. Overall, vowels also tend to be a bit more rounded (especially noticeable in the 'oo' sound in words like 'book', which in Lancastrian comes out as more like 'boo-wuk'). Cricket fans can contrast the commentary of Geoffrey Boycott (Yorkshire) and David Lloyd (Lancashire). But for the love of god don't get them mixed up.

• The bungling stop-motion animated inventor Wallace speaks like this (no surprise, considering he apparently lives in or near Wigan).
• A notable example of a Bolton accent is the sitcom Phoenix Nights, which also happens to be where star and co-creator Peter Kay hails from.
• Jon Anderson, the lead singer of the legendary progressive rock band Yes, came from Accrington. His rhotic northeast Lancashire accent was plainly obvious in many of the band's songs.

Yorkshire (Tyke)

Rural with a twist of lime and 256-bit encryption. Noticeably archaic ("thee" and "thou", somewhat altered, are still used in conversation in rural areas) with broadly shifted vowels compared to Received Pronunciation, Yorkshire dialect is heavily influenced in both vocabulary and phonemes by (of all things) Danish, thanks to invading Vikings long ago. As a result, it can, at its worst, be absolutely impenetrable to non-Brits, to the point of not sounding like English at all. Even other Brits can have trouble. "Lighter" Yorkshire accents can still sound like the speaker is "swallowing his words" due to the rumbling, mumbling character of their voices and the changing of T to a glottal stop (see below). Americans know this accent best from the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch made famous by Monty Python (though it actually came from At Last the 1948 Show). For a sample, see the county song "On Ilkla moor Baht'at", though despite the aforementioned sketch the accent is most often associated with blunt speaking, with hard-headed and intractable speakers nonetheless being unfailingly honest. In this regard, Yorkshire can be seen as the Texas of English Accents; both also tend to drop Gs from verbs ending in -ing and to use "y'all", though Texans are far more famous for it.

• The number one source for the Yorkshire accent on American television: All Creatures Great And Small. The vets don't have Yorkshire accents (they all speak RP or Estuary despite the fact that the real James Herriot was actually from Glasgow), but most of the farmers do.
• Number two being Sean Bean in Sharpe — despite the Cockney origins of the character in the books! This actually ended up becoming an extraordinary piece of Ascended Fanon, with author Bernard Cornwell loving Bean's performance so much that he went out of the way to explain the accent by writing into Sharpe's backstory that he went on the run from London to Sheffield as a boy to avoid being sold as a chimney sweep. 'Red Riding' also shows some examples of generic screen-Yaaaarkshire accents too.
• Heartbeat, anyone?
• If a character uses the word "reight/reet", "owt" or "nowt" (for "right", "anything" and "nothing"—the last two come from "aught" and "naught"), and greets people by deadpanning "Now then", you're in Yorkshire. Unless he's Fred in Coronation Street. T' is also a good giveaway, although if the Ts are actually pronounced the actor has probably never been farther north than Portsmouth. The Yorkshire T' is actually a glottal stop, sounding more like adding a T sound to the end of the preceding word: "I've been down t'pit" is pronounced "I've been downt pit". Ts in the middle of words aren't immune, either; "butter" comes up as "buh'er".
• Brett Domino is an example of a Yorkshire (Leeds) accent on YouTube.
• 3-year old Millen gives you the gist of it.
  • Those Americans who watch old Last of the Summer Wine episodes will recognize this as the accent of "Compo" Semmonite.
  • The alternative greeting is, "'Ey up," as used by certain Essex-born persons who identify as Northern in an attempt to avoid any remaining doubt in their accent. Or your choice of "Ey up pet" or "Ey up duck", if you're being familiar. "Ey up me duck" is also known to be a common greeting from those of Derbyshire and the East Midlands. "Chuck" is nice one too. Which means "chicken". It's not clear what poultry has to do with any of this.
• It's essentially a true to life Running Gag that a Yorkshireman can go to the next town and be instantly recognised and identified (and often ridiculed) for not being local. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Barnsley, Pontefract and Leeds all have their own dialects and accents that are immediately identifiable to someone who lives in any of them (and sometimes there are even dialect differences within different areas of those same cities), despite them all not being more than 30 miles from one another.
• The best reference for old English — they still use many of the 'archaic' words, and still drop the annoying 'v' from ever. If there is a way to mangle words in order to say them quicker, in the way the Spanish squish all their words together, then a Tyke will find it. Thither, hither, and whither, though, are all still used for there, here, and where, without a hint of sarcasm at all.
• In Real Life, someone from Yorkshire will either shorten or lengthen the vowel sounds depending on the sentence. However, none actually say Yaaaaaark-shire. They say Yohrk-shuh, shortening both vowel sounds.
• They all have a low voice, possibly one which causes them to grumble. Even young girls. Girls can sing Soprano to Tenor without a problem, and some older women down to Bass.
• Game of Thrones lead Sean Bean insisted contractually on using his native Sheffield accent for Eddard Stark — and many of the Stark household fell into line behind him, using variants of Yorkshire with hints of Geordie and Scottish.
• Even in Victorian times, a local cleric noted that a large part of the words which make the Yorkshire dialect unique are actually Danish. Indeed, in his time, along the coast there was often more mutual intelligibility with Denmark than with the rest of England. As the Rev. Morris noted, the Danish of the Dales was dying out in his day.
• Downton Abbey is set at a North Yorkshire country house and a few of the servants and many of the village folk have Yorkshire accents on full display. Of particular note are Anna, Daisy, and William, whose actors all have natural Yorkshire accents (Anna is played by Joanne Froggatt, from Littlebeck in North Yorkshire; Daisy is played by Sophie McShera, from Bradford in West Yorkshire; and William is played by Thomas Howes, from near Doncaster in South Yorkshire).
• Jodie Whittaker, born and raised in Huddersfield, gets to use her full-on West Yorkshire accent as the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who. Interestingly, she otherwise rarely gets to use her natural accent on film.
• The Hull accent is notable for being distinct from even the accents in the rest of the East Riding of Yorkshire, being the only major city in that ceremonial county. Notable features of a Hull accent include the ø sound replacing the "o" in words like goat (sounding more like "gurt") — Hull comedian Lucy Beaumont's shibboleth "Er ner, there's sner on the rerd"^note Oh no, there's snow on the road is a severe weather warning.

North East

Mainly Geordie, the urban accent of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (and by extension other regions of Northumbria, but local prejudice will mean they hate you for not knowing the tiny, local variations). Ranges from "distinctive" to "nearly incomprehensible to non-Geordies", which is often played for laughs (as in the case of Alan Partridge's friend Michael). Associated with macho, beer-drinking, sexist guys, especially thanks to the comic strip Andy Capp (actually from Hartlepool), the adult comic Viz and the show Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and easy young women who don't wear coats (or much else) when out clubbing even in the middle of winter. Don't call someone from Sunderland a Geordie (similarly, don't call anyone from North of the Tyne a Mackem, as the two groups have quite the rivalry between them — You Have Been Warned). Another famous North-Eastern accent belongs to Marcus "Day 42 in the Big Brother house" Bentley, who often exaggerates his natural accent for effect. Ant and Dec are also Geordies.

• Geordies are depicted as constantly using the word "like" as punctuation, like, and they only have one vowel, man. "Æ"... This is also the one part of England where the letter "r" is pronounced gutturally, as it is in standard French or German.
• A relatively famous and easily accessible example of the Sunderland accent is interviews with current Liverpool FC captain Jordan Henderson, originally from there before moving to play for Liverpool as a young man. Like previous examples involving footballers, the lack of speech training means that the accent is more or less genuine (if increasingly Scouse-inflected after nearly ten years in Liverpool) and there's lots of material.
• When the Boat Comes In set in Northumberland, features a title song sung in the local dialect and enough use of the word "bairns" (children) to make it inadvisable to use that as part of a Drinking Game.
• Reality TV show judge and hair product peddler Cheryl Cole is the most famous Geordie at the moment. After her comes those cheeky Geordie homoerotic goblins, Ant and Dec.
• Gina McKee is from Country Durham. Contrast her usual accent in this interview with the voiceover on this "Life in The North" BBC trailer where she hams it up a bit.
• QI had an episode "Hodge-Podge", where, after Northumberland comic Ross Noble speculated on what circular-triangle confection might look like, Phil Jupitus noted that the best three words of the English language are "Toblerone-Rolo Combo" as spoken by one with the Geordian accent.
  • Speaking of QI, this clip demonstrates what happens when Stephen Fry gets waylaid by Geordie.
• Creature Comforts has a fast-talking Geordie mouse who muses on everyone in Newcastle calling each other 'man' even if they're a woman.
• Teesside accents are usually grouped with other North East accents — comedy double act Vic Reeves (Darlington) and Bob Mortimer (Middlesbrough) have pronounced Teesside accents.

Northern Ireland offers three main flavours of the local accent:

• Belfast accents tend to be harsh.
• Western accents ((London)Derry/Tyrone/Fermanagh) tend to be softer.
• Irish Sea/North Channel coastal accents which are a mix of two with a hint of Scottish for good measure. The Scottish connection is explained by the fact that in the seveteenth century, a great many Scots—mainly from Ayrshire, as well as the Borders and Galloway—settled in the region. In fact, some people in County Antrim still speak a dialect of Scots.

Some natives of counties of the Irish Republic which border NI have accents that sound recognisably more "Northern" than "Southern", because they're in the geographically north part of the island. See also Irish Accents.

One of the most notable sounds in the Northern Irish accent is "ar". People speak into their jaws, again audible when the "ow" sound is used. So when you next meet a Northern Irish person ask them to say "An hour in the power shower", and it comes out as "An arr in the par shar". Also, "ow" is pronounced more like "oi", leading to Hilarity Ensues when it comes to "how now brown cow". This sound is particularly distinctive because it tends to be retained by Northern Irish people even when otherwise they are toning down their accent (such as newsreaders presenting national news): in the middle of an otherwise RP-sounding sentence (which might also be Trad RP as spoken by Sewell or Rees-Mogg) we will be told that the Prime Minister has announced that interests rates will come "dine". Although again, this is not the same all over Northern Ireland. People from (London)Derry do tend to pronounce power — "Pau-yer". Also see "k-yar" for "car", "say-vin" for "seven" and "fill-um" for "film". The key to speaking Irish Sea Coast Norn Irn — talk through your nose and drop the middle out of every word, or drop half the syllables. Spaces are optional. "I went to see the doctor" becomes "Aahwentuh se thu doc'er". You can see English people's brains stop dead as they try to decipher it. Trying to talk to anyone from Pakistan, Africa or Jamaica is a lost cause.

Long story short — we have the same amount of regional variations in accent, in an area smaller than Wales, as in the rest of the UK.

Stereotype: Inevitably, Western Terrorists taking random elements from the Villain tropebook.

Fictional examples:

• Jim McDonald in Coronation Street — an alcoholic wife beater, so he was.
• Give My Head Peace
• How NOT to do a Northern Irish accent — the infamous Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "If It's Doomsday, It Must Be Belfast".
• Rory Flanagan in Glee. It isn't distinguished as Northern Irish by any characters in show, probably due to the writers not wanting to get into complicated politics, but it's a Derry accent like the actor's.
• A large portion of the cast in the BBC drama The Fall (2013), which makes sense, as it's set in Belfast.
• The majority of the cast of Derry Girls speak with Derry accents, save Gerry (from the South), and James (English).

Real-life examples:

• Jackie Wright, Belfast-born sidekick/Butt-Monkey on The Benny Hill Show.
• Ian Paisley — "criminality" used to be one of his favorite words.
• James Nesbitt of Murphy's Law fame, who commonly subverts the NI accent stereotype by regularly playing good guys.
• Nadine Coyle of Girls Aloud has an exaggerated Derry accent.
• As mentioned above, Damian McGinty, who rose to fame after winning The Glee Project, and now plays Rory Flanagan on Glee, has a Derry accent.
• Colin Morgan, although he shifts to an English accent for Merlin
• And of course, Liam Neeson who tends to use his natural Ballymena accent in most of his films, though his accent is quite muted and soft.
• James Burke, The BBC's main science reporter in The '60s and The '70s, known across the Pond as "That Guy Who Made Connections" speaks in what sounds like RP to an American, but upon closer listening is very clearly Derry with English schooling from the age of 11—that habit of dropping into rhoticity gives it away.
• Van Morrison, when speaking and not singing, betrays his East Belfast roots.

General

The "generic Scottish" accent seems to appear far more in the US, especially cartoons. Often kilt-wearing. See Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons, The Scotsman in Samurai Jack, Scotty in Star Trek, and Duff Killigan in Kim Possible. Stereotypes include a bad temper, a dislike of the English or being generally miserable and miserly. The latter is present in the Headcases caricature of Gordon Brown.

• The miserly portrayal of Mr. Brown really isn't accurate (warning — contains terror in the form of Alastair Darling).
• There's as much a generic Scots accent as there is an English or American (...or French, German etc) one. Put together a native each from Glasgie and Edinbrarh (i.e. Glasgow and Edinburgh) and see how much common dialectic ground there is between them.
  • In a Glaswegian accent, the names of the cities would be 'Glesca' and 'Embrah'.
• American imitations of "Scottish" may be barely recognisable to natives of Scotland.
  • Probably related to Mike Myers's London-ish English in Austin Powers being about as accurate, and not that much different (nor either that far removed from his everyday Canadian lilt)? Also...
  • This may be because the American film depiction of the Scottish accent is actually closer to Welsh.
  • In a segment on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver described Scottish as "that accent that you think you can do, but actually can't."
• The word "No" is detained at the Scottish border and "Naw" reigns supreme—except in the West Highlands and Hebrides.

Borders

• These are usually a bastard combination of whatever bit of Scotland is to the immediate North and whatever bit of England is to the immediate South. True examples of this dialect are harder to come by now, but it is notable for pronouncing the words "you" and "me" as "yow" and "may."

Edinburgh

• Edinburghers have an accent that is often hard to discern. A fair few, especially from middle and upper classes, speak a kind of RP with a few Scottish idioms or odd pronunciations thrown in here and there. Others speak in a similar fashion to Glasgow. Generally, an Edinburgh accent sounds similar to a Middle England one, but with a distinctive Scots twang to it. This probably due to centuries of strong English presence in Edinburgh, as well as the city's historic loyalty to the British Crown (in the independence referendum, Edinburgh voted 61.1% "No"—one of the highest in the country, well above the national average of 55.3%).
  • Morningside: A sub-type of Edinburgh accent. Very posh, and also very rare as a genuine first accent. What is far more common is people affecting it to lend an air of sophistication. Maggie Smith is perceived to have one, despite being born in Ilford and being the daughter of a Weegie and a Geordie (and actually speaking with an English accent approaching RP in reality), due to her featuring as the title character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, who probably affected one (Brodie is native to Edinburgh, but her earth-shattering pretentiousness makes it probable that she is just putting on an MS accent).^note There's actually a rather funny story about Smith's efforts to do research on the accent. (Starts at about 0:54.) Thus, whenever she plays a Scot, it is practically mandatory for her to have her "Brodie" accent. Professor McGonagall talks like this.
    • A Harry Enfield sketch sees a "Scotsman" with an affected, Morningside accent walk into a pub in England and proceed to criticize everything around him as being worse than it is in Scotland. This is then contrasted with another, seemingly drunk Scotsman in the same pub (probably a parody of Billy Connolly) with a Glaswegian accent.
  • The above are descriptions of middle- and upper-class Edinburgh accents. Working-class Edinburghians, as seen in films such as Trainspotting, have a much stronger accent than implied above: Ewen Bremner as Spud in particular has a particularly impenetrable version of it. Unlike the stereotypical Glasgow accent, which is spoken at the back of the mouth, the Edinburgh version is front of the mouth and tends to be sharper, less booming and guttural, and spat out rather than grunted.

Glasgow

A strong Glaswegian accent can sound like a separate language to an outsider. Whenever you hear a comedian speaking drunken pseudo-Scottish gibberish, he, knowingly or not, is lampooning a Glaswegian accent. Characters with strong Glasgow accents are usually violent alcoholics. Even if the programme is set in Glasgow, the character with the strongest accent will be a violent alcoholic. In fact, the Violent Glaswegian is a trope in its own right on British Telly. Lighter Glasgow accents usually imply much the same as Liverpool. The accent is usually referred to as "the patter" by natives of Glasgow. Once identical to the regions that surrounded it, the dialect of Glasgow changed, like Liverpool, in the nineteenth century due Irish immigration (both Protestant and Catholic).

• Legendary comedian Billy Connolly is probably the best-known speaker of the Glasgow patter, both in the UK and internationally, and has become a go-to as a voice actor for Scottish characters in American animated films.
• Much of George MacDonald Fraser's McAuslan series — one entire story is narrated by McAuslan, and the books contain a glossary of "Glesca peculiamanarities."
• Jamie from The Thick of It and In the Loop. Actor Paul Higgins is technically from Motherwell, but that's part of Greater Glasgow anyway. Malcolm Tucker is very much an educated Weegie, as is Armando Iannucci.
• The Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who has a distinctly Glaswegian accent—which makes sense, given that he's played by Peter Capaldi, who played Malcolm Tucker.
• Callum from Far Cry 3 not only holds a very heavy accent, he fits the Violent Glaswegian trope perfectly right down to the tracksuit and trainers.
  Ay! Kin we go? I'm fair scunnered waitin' on you tae stop playin' wi' yer fannies, so c'mon tae fuck 'n let's pikey the fuckin' engine off the cunts so we can get off this fuckin' island!
• For a Real Life example look for any recording of interviews or panels with Grant Morrison, Robbie Coltrane, or James McAvoy.
• Kelvinside - The posh bit of Glasgow: A Kelvinside accent is very clipped, and mangles vowels (most notably turning "a" into "e"). Usually only used by female characters and indicates extreme snobbishness. A common gag is for a character to drop her Kelvinside accent when annoyed, implying it's a pure affectation. A similar Edinburgh accent is Morningside.
  • The main female characters in Rab C. Nesbitt, Mary and Ella, are prone to adopting Kelvinside voices which invariably drop when confronting their husbands — whose Govan accent remains constant in the series. Such is the impenetrable nature of the Govan accent, many viewers used Ceefax subtitles to understand what was actually being said.
  • If you are wondering what a "posh" Glasgow accent sounds like then listen to presenter Anita Manning.
• And to listen to some East End of Glasgow accents watch some Mister Glasgow. And Glasgow Television.
• A huge part of the many comedy programmes that have been emanating from Glasgow over the past twenty years or so, including Chewin' the Fat, Still Game, and Limmy's Show.

West Scotland

There are various dialects in the Ayrshire area, but it's worth noting that it's very close to good old Robert Burns (who gave us many well-known poems and songs such as "Auld Lang Syne", "Address to a Haggis" and "(A Love Is Like) A Red, Red Rose"). Burns was a native of Alloway in the region and proudly used his dialect in his poetry at a time (the end of the eighteenth century) when it was considered hopelessly provincial. This sparked a resurgence of interest in it. You can get an understanding of the accent quite well by reading his poems out loud. It should be noted, however, that Burns' poems are written in Scots, which is often considered to be a Germanic language in its own right (i.e. separate from English) due to its lack of mutual intelligibility.

Dundee

• Dundonians have a broad accent. It is perhaps best known for pronouncing the "i" sound in "my" or "lie" as "eh." This is best illustrated by this forum post "Dundonian for beginners":
  • Eh fell doon the Wellgate steps an meh peh went skeh hegh.
    Possibly the best known example of Parliamo Dundee, the unfortunate in the example has tripped at the top of some stairs and his/her pie (a well-known local delicacy) has described an arc in the sky before descending to earth.
  • The next one is for those more advanced in Dundonesian studies, as it relies heavily on glottal stops.
  • Twa pehs, twa plehn bridies an'an'inyin'in'an'a.
    Our speaker has entered a pie shop (possibly the world-famous Wallaces {Land o' Cakes}) and proceeds to order two pies, two plain bridies, plus an onion bridie.^note A bridie is a type of Scottish pasty. It is so much better than the crap they eat in Cornwall.
• There is also "BBC Scots", used on both sides of the border, which is a sort of cross between a very toned down Dundonian accent and RP. The BBC's male Announcer talks like this, as does Today programme presenter Eddie Mair. A similar sort of accent is spoken in Broughty Ferry — the Dundonian equivalent of Morningside or Kelvinside.

North East Scotland

A somewhat deep accent though not as abrasive as Glaswegian, usually associated with farming, fishing and 'teuchters'. Has its own very distinct dialect. Put someone from Aberdeen, Fraserburgh or Elgin in a room with a Glaswegian and they'll probably have some difficulty understanding each other. Usually referred to as "Doric," it has an influence from Scandinavian due to historic trade links with Norway.

• How they speak up in Moray and Aberdeenshire is so distinctive that it barely resembles the common image of Scottish dialect/accent.
• The "wh" letter combination is frequently pronounced with an "f." This leads to phrases such as "Fit ye daein?" ("What are you doing?")
• Star Trek's chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott spoke in a softened Aberdeen accent, as did actor James Doohan even off-camera—although it was not actually his own (as an Irish-Canadian). He picked it up from a fellow soldier during World War II.

West Coast Highlander

Only ever seen in specifically Scottish programmes. A lilting speech, very strongly influenced by the grammar and pronounciations of Scottish Gaelic. Male characters with this accent are invariably called Donald, Rory, Duncan, Murdo, Dougal, or Malcolm.

• Despite being set in the Scottish Highlands, the accents on Outlander are more Ayrshire than Argyll. For a true example of the accent, the man speaking at the beginning of this video would be a far better example.
• The band Runrig from the isle of Skye has many songs in Scottish Gaelic, and their Highland accents are clearly audible in English-language interviews.
• In Chewin' the Fat, the "Sluich" sock puppets are a parody of this, as are the constantly-harassed documentary presenters.
• In Doctor Who, Jamie had this accent in his first serial, but when the character became a regular he switched to a generic "BBC Scots" accent.

Orkney and Shetland

Very rarely seen in the media, the dialects of these two island groups carry very strong Scandinavian influences. In fact, a language known as Norn, similar to Icelandic, was spoken on the islands into the nineteenth century.

Often used for comic relief, but more in a Funny Foreigner-style "they have their own ways" manner. In terms of sound, some have compared it to a light Indian accent, of all things. When it comes to impersonating the accent for comic effect, it's quite common for an attempt at one to slip into the other; this, of course, says more about impersonation than it does about the many (fine, noble, steeped in history etcetera etcetera) qualities of the actual accents in question. Often described as "singsong" or "musical", partly because of the tonal aspect and partly because Wales is associated with singing in the popular imagination.

• There doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement that there's a distinct difference between northern and southern Welsh, either. There's a hundred miles of mountain between each coast, or between Cardiff and Swansea and the Valleys...
• People from Swansea can sound very English and a family can have members with different accents, so someone with a Scottish or even Canadian accent can pop up.
• The grammar and usage of the Welsh language tends to influence Welsh English, even if its speakers do not speak Welsh itself. This manifests through a combination of verbal tics and a variety of 'slang' words and phrases where Welsh words pepper English language conversations, or new words that have descended from the anglicising of Welsh words have formed. The most notorious example of 'Welsh-English' is Wenglish, the English dialect spoken in the Valleys. More generally, however:
  • Verbal Tics can include such things as ending sentences with it "is it?" and "look you" (basically the equivalent of "...you know?").
  • A common verbal tic of Welsh people is to tag 'mun' on the end of a sentence to emphasize it. EG: 'Wales isn't in England, mun!'
  • A peculiar turn of phrase that confuses non-Britons and non-Walian Britons alike is the Welsh phrase 'now in a minute'. For example: 'I'll be there now in a minute!' Does the Welsh person mean they'll be there now, or that it'll be a short while before they arrive? (Tip: it means 'I'll be there as quickly as I can, but I'm not sure how long it'll take me'.)
• North Walians have many different accents, but if you're going for mid north Wales (Rhyl, Colwyn Bay, Llandudno), they have more of a mixed accent — a mix of Manchester/Liverpool/North Walian Welsh. It's difficult being someone who has lived in all three, plus Bangor (north Walian version), because the person who has lived there has a strange accent that is basically Welsh, but with Scouse and Mancunian tinges. It can make people think the person is anything but Welsh, and it makes the sound of spoken Welsh all the more interesting.
• Flintshire is an interesting case as it is largely on the very border with England and in fact begins in the outer suburbs of Chester. Whilst the coast is Anglicised, some Welsh is still spoken in the hinterland. The town of Buckley (Y Bwcle) was built on the brick-kilns and lots of English people from the Black Country moved in to work in bricks. Although the brickworks are long since played out, the Staffordshire influence persists, and can be heard in the Buckley accent. And people from the town of Flint insist they are "off Flint" rather than "from Flint".
• Welsh people who have lived in both South and North Wales can end up sounding quite odd as certain vowels are pronounced slightly differently, and spoken Welsh can be pronounced slightly differently, too. It can cause confusion as to whether the speaker is from the north or south, and even make locals think that the speaker is mocking one accent or the other.
• North Walians tend to take the word "gog" as a name as opposed to an insult.

Stereotype: Liking sheep. A lot. This comes from the fact that up until fairly recently, there were more sheep in Wales than people.

Fictional examples:

• Absolutely: Frank Hovis, Denzil and Gwyneth and spin-off characters Barry Welsh and Hugh Pugh (all featuring Welsh comedian John Sparkes).
• Gavin & Stacey: the Wests, Nessa (tidy).
• Hi-de-Hi!: Gladys Pugh (ditto her actress, Ruth Madoc, born in Norwich but grew up in Llansamlet near Swansea).
• Pobol y Cwm: Set in Southwest Wales, where they love to mention which characters are "gogs" (from gogleddol, "Northern")
• Torchwood: Gwen, Ianto, Rhys, and their family members.
• Howl's Moving Castle has Christian Bale as the very Welsh Wizard Howl in the English dub. While he usually uses an English accent and considers himself English, he spent a large chunk of his childhood in Wales and can — and does — turn it on when he wants to.
• The redone Dalish Elves in Dragon Age II all have Welsh accents, especially your resident party Dalish, Merrill, who is voiced by Eve Myles (of Torchwood fame).
• In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the main protagonist Edward Kenway is from the Welsh port town of Swansea much like his actor Matt Ryan so naturally he has the accent. Bartholomew Roberts has a Welsh accent too since he's from Little Newcastle like his Real Life counterpart.
• "Sketch" (real name: Lucy) in the second season of Skins.
• Fiona Patton's The Granite Shield focuses on an alternate Wales, whose citizens speak in questions and end half their sentences with "eh."
• Yes, Minister has Joe Morgan, a trade unionist with a thick Welsh accent, who appears in the first series finale.
• The fairies of Ni no Kuni speak with a heavy Welsh accent, almost always ending each sentence with "mun."
• Jeff on Coupling. The character was not written to be Welsh, but the actor, Richard Coyle, who is not Welsh, read for the part in a Welsh accent for some reason, and it stuck.
• Llan-ar-goll-en: The town residents have both Northern and Southern Welsh accents. Examples:
  • Northern: Prys, Radli, Tara, Dr. Jim, Beti
  • Southern: Ceri, Mrs. Tomos, the Mayor, Mia

Real life examples:

• Rob Brydon
• Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Nerys Hughes
• Many bands and musicians, such as Super Furry Animals, Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia, Tom Jones...
• Actor Peter Wingfield, who used his own accent as ''Highlander’s Methos.
• Welsh born actor Geraint Wyn Davies of Forever Knight fame.
• Morfydd Clark is of Welsh origins and uses her accent to speak Elvish in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Mixed accents

More common in Britain than other parts of the world, due to the close proximity different regions have to each other. Usually happens when either you have two parents with different accents or when the parents are from one region but they moved to a different one when the child was still very young. Often leads to many questions along the lines of "So where are you from?" which the poor mixer will have to deal with everywhere they go. In these days of multiculturalism, this can lead to gems such as Pakistani-Glaswegian or Italian-Aberdonian. A very likely risk of attending university, there is only so long you can live with a Welshman, a Scouser and a Brummie before your accent does whacky things.

• Attend the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and after three years, at the very least you will be referring to the city as Naurridge and talking about a kind of street as a rooud. Some people have left with full-blown Naaarfock accents.
• James May admitted on the YouTube channel Head Squeeze that his accent is a mix of West Country (where he was born and lived as a child), Yorkshire (where he spent his adolescence) and London (where he's lived most of his adult life).

Gibraltar

Gibraltarians have a more Latin accent than the rest of the UK (being the closest thing to Truth in Television for The Queen's Latin), due to their location in Southern Europe near the southern tip of Spain in the Mediterranean, a large chunk of the population being bilingual and Gibraltarians being descended more from Spaniards (especially Andalusians), Italians (especially Genoese), Portuguese and Maltese than the rest of the UK. As a result of their location and descent, they also have their own distinct language, Llanito, which is a composite of British English and various Southern European languages, particularly Andalusian Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Maltese.

Hong Kong

Special mention goes to Hong Kong, a former colony of the UK. Most of the citizens speak English with a mostly British and Cantonese accent. See Maggie Cheung for an example.

• In the English translation of the Excel♡Saga manga, Sumiyoshi's lines are in the Geordie accent.
• The '90s North American dub of Sailor Moon has Luna speak Received Pronunciation.
  • And the original Japanese dub has Minako use Received Pronunciation when speaking English. After all, she did live in London for a while...
• Anime characters who sound inexplicably British are all over the place in dubs, such as Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh!. The idea is to make these characters sound polite and well-educated, the stereotypical RP accent being the closest the English-speaking world has to "ultra-polite Japanese". It's similar to how the stereotypical Southern US Accent is used to portray The Idiot from Osaka in some English Dubs.
• In the English dub of Pokémon: The Series, all princesses, their butlers and maids speak in British accents. And terrible ones.
• In the English dub of Infinite Stratos, Cecilia Alcott speaks in a British accent to give an international feel for the series.
• In the English dub of Black Butler all of the characters have some form of British accent, mainly because it's set in Britain.
• Of course, England in the English dub of Hetalia: Axis Powers has one. It's an exaggerated RP accent to go with his British Stuffiness. However, when he gets drunk, he will lapse into a Cockney accent and start ranting at the nearest person, who is usually America.
• Greg Ayres does a fairly well-done RP accent as Negi Springfield, the child-teacher protagonist in the anime incarnations of Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Well done it may be, he's actually doing the wrong accent because both Ken Akamatsu and an early volume of the manga stated that Negi was originally from Wales.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood takes place in 19th century Britain, so all of the characters speak in a British accent in the English dub.

• Actual Brit Peter Sellers' 1979 album Sellers Market has a nearly 16-minute sketch, "The Compleat Guide to Accents of The British Isles", based around working in as many regions and associated stereotypes as possible: London Cockney, Received Pronunciation, Suffolk, Birmingham (as a joke, the speaker is actually Indian, something which is becoming increasingly the case in Real Life...), Yorkshire, Scotland, Glasgow, Liverpool, Wales, and the West Country. In addition, there's a Fake American narrator, and fake Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen in a montage early on.
• Have I Got News for You's Paul Merton has two British accents to be used at any point when impersonating someone he doesn't know: An exaggerated Cockney accent (eg: "Oi've been down the Colliadah!"), or an incredibly upper class RP accent, accompanied usually by a mimed tea cup (eg: "I'm a ferret, dontcha know!").
• Eddie Izzard's routine Definite Article features a bit where she goes on about Pavlov and his dogs. For whatever reason, she decides to do Pavlov as an expatriate Welshman in Russia.
  • Eddie Izzard of course has a natural British Accent of her own but about the Welsh thing: She doesn't have a Welsh accent (although she did live in Skewen for a while as a child) but she has a tendency to slip into one no matter what foreign accent she's trying to do (which is how we get a Welsh Pavlov). She even did the Welsh-Indian mix thing:
    Eddie Izzard: [as an Indian taxi driver] What were you talking about?
    Eddie Izzard: [as herself] [makes awkward noises] The demons... they come in my mind, I've... What part of Wales are you from?
    Eddie Izzard: I am from Swansea, actually. My... er... my mother's from Swansea, my father from Mumbai. I'm an Indian Welsh person and my accent is. [trying to do a Welsh-Indian accent] Somewhere. In-between. The two. Don't you know. Boyo. Probably. I understand. And cooking is very difficult.
    Eddie Izzard: ...
    Eddie Izzard: Would you like a steering wheel?
    Eddie Izzard: I'm fine, thank you, I've just... I've just eaten.
• Scottish comedian Katia Kvinge demonstrated a selection of accents from all over the British Isles in this mock weather forecast (warning: NSFW language). Although Dubliners weren't impressed.

• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Mad Scientist Brainstorm is noted to speak with a British Accent, leading to occasional moments of hilarity when his method of pronunciation clashes with the rest of the cast's (presumably) America English styles, such as arguing with Bluestreak over the pronunciation of the word "necro". Given his dialogue otherwise shows no hint of an accent, it's most likely Received Pronunciation.
• The Boys, written by Northern Irish Garth Ennis about an American CIA team made up of an Englishman (Butcher), a Scotsman (Wee Hughie), an African-American guy (Mother's Milk), a mute Japanese girl (the Female), and a (guy probably pretending to be a) Frenchman (the Frenchman), naturally have a lot of accent distinctions. Showcased in the Breaking the Fourth Wall bonus comic to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
  Wee Hughie: Hullowerr! I'm Wee Hughie, wan o' the Boys. I've turned the accent a wee bit, 'cos I ken you Yanks like that...An' lastly, fir twenty bucks a heid, mister Butcher here—
  Butcher: Hello.
  Wee Hughie: Accent...
  Butcher: Sorry, mate. 'Ello. Cor blimey, apples an' pears, I love Lahndan town...

• The author of Child of the Storm includes a broad variety of British accents and has noted that, in cases where there's a Funetik Aksent, he's tried to keep as close to it as possible — including Hagrid's famous West Country accent.
  • Aside from Hagrid, the most notable example is Sean Cassidy, who — in a reconciliation of comics and films — is Irish-American, but has spent the vast majority of his adult life in Ireland and Scotland, resulting in a slightly strange mish-mash accent that he can emphasise or de-emphasise based on the impression he wants to give (though it thickens noticeably when he's upset).
  • Jonothon 'Jono' Starsmore a.k.a. Chamber, who appears in the sequel has a notably Cockney influenced accent, with the verbal tic of "luv" appearing frequently. This remains even when he's speaking telepathically.
  • Betsy Braddock, true to her upper-class English origins, but also in keeping with her attitude as a rebel, is written with a broadly RP/Estuary accent — while she also uses "love", the spelling indicates a more refined accent than Jono.
  • Similarly, Peter Wisdom is also upper-class English by background, as Regulus Black. However, he violently rejects that identity, and consciously roughens his accent to something closer to the Cockney end of Estuary — though RP sometimes creeps through when he's not focusing on it.
  • Doctor Strange speaks in a refined RP accent, though his natural accent is indicated to be Welsh (or at least, considering how old he is, Welsh is the closest approximation), and he uses a modern softened Welsh accent from time to time.
  • This also applies does Wanda, Strange's former student, and her father Magneto, who is written with Ian McKellen's RP delivery in mind. Neither is their natural accent — Wanda was raised with her Roma relatives somewhere undisclosed in Eastern Europe until she was in her early teens, and Magneto is naturally a German (specifically German-Jewish, though his ancestry is Polish, and he's fluent in Yiddish). Both are explained in text: Wanda was raised by Strange from early adolescence and learned English from him, while Magneto is noted as a natural linguist who picked up English at Hogwarts (after Auschwitz was liberated, he was assumed to be magical, so he was taken for care at Hogwarts) from its mostly upper-class faculty and studied at Oxford.
  • Charles Xavier, as a half-English former Oxbridge man (he studied at both), retains the refined RP used by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy.
  • Nathaniel Essex a.k.a. Sinister speaks in a clinical RP (though not quite as refined as Strange's), which makes sense, given his canonical background as a Victorian gentleman scientist — though here, he's indicated to be considerably older.
    • As a result, Maddie, who he raised as his right-hand and Living Weapon, uses much the same accent, even after she turns on him.
  • Harry's accent is indicated to be Estuary, which makes a certain degree of sense, given that he grew up in London's commuter belt.

• Various Disney movies inexplicably lend a British voice to their villains, adhering to the Evil Brit trope, even if none of the other characters are British. Captain Hook, Scar, Governor Ratcliffe ^note He and John Smith are both supposed to be Englishmen, and yet John Smith sounds more like an Australian, due to being played by Mel Gibson., Judge Frollo...
• For The Aristocats there are three characters with this accent. The goose sisters Amelia and Abigail are visitors from England who are visiting Paris. Marie also has this accent mixed with a mid-Atlantic accent, which is odd since her mother Duchess has a French accent and her brothers Toulouse and Berlioz have American accents when all the cats are supposed to be French. Marie was voiced by a young Louise English, who is British. ^note Louise would later be featured in the British show The Benny Hill Show in the late '70s and '80s.
• Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda, likely due to the Evil Brit and Rule of Cool appeal. Most of the main cast are standard American, and only Monkey and Mr. Ping are voiced by Chinese actors. Viper is voiced by Lucy Liu, so speaks with an American accent but with noticeable Chinese influence. Tai Lung was voiced by Ian McShane, using his normal voice. He is perhaps best known for playing Lovejoy.
• Wolfwalkers takes place in Ireland and was made by the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, so most characters have Irish accents. However, Robyn and her father Bill are from England and they both have distinctly Northern accents (Sean Bean uses his native Sheffield accent as Bill), while the Lord Protector (a fictionalized version of the British statesman Oliver Cromwell) uses Received Pronunciation.

• Trainspotting delivers a film entirely steeped in various Scottish accents from the relatively "posh" Edinburgh dialect to the angry "Weegie" alcoholic. Justified in that the film takes place in Edinburgh for the most part. The characters even lampshade other Scottish accents such as Sean Connery.
• Johnny Depp's accent in Pirates of the Caribbean is noticeably British; it's difficult to determine what kind of British, however. Analysis suggests East Anglia, shading towards Estuary, and based on Kent-born Keith Richards.
• Virtually all of the evil characters in Star Wars speak with British accents, while the Rebels have American accents. Some of the actors even put on accents to observe this rule — Wedge Antilles is played by Scottish actor Denis Lawson with a Fake American accent, while Darth Vader speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent rather than James Earl Jones's natural Mid-Western dialect. There are a few exceptions though, like Admiral Motti (the first person we see Vader Force-Choke) and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is decidedly good and has a British accent.
  • A meta-example: The main reasons why David Prowse didn't do Darth Vader's voice was a) he had a tenor speaking voice, and b) he had a West Country accent, which is quite possibly the least intimidating British accent there is. He spoke all Vader's lines during filming before being overdubbed by James Earl Jones. Apparently, Prowse had no idea his voice had been replaced until the premiere of the film.
    • "Ee, the force is strong in this 'un!"
    • Jones's real accent is a mish-mash due to his moving from Mississippi to Michigan, but for Vader he uses a very proper, carefully enunciated, ambiguous mid-atlantic accent.
    • Rick Moranis in Spaceballs manages to imitate this accent as Dark Helmet when the mask of his helmet is down.
  • Natives of the planet Coruscant (the cultural center of the galaxy) tend to speak with a British accent.
    • Grand Moff Tarkin's homeworld was Eriadu, which was not a Core World but aspired to be.
    • Carrie Fisher makes a vague attempt at RP when Princess Leia is talking to Tarkin on the Death Star, but really only manages to pull off a stiff American accent with a British lilt. (Broken Coruscanti, perhaps?) In any case, when no longer having to appear formal to Imperial Officers, Leia drops the British attempt and speaks with a generic American accent. This somewhat infamous use of Mid-Atlantic actually fits in well with Star Wars being a Genre Throwback to The Golden Age of Hollywood.
    • Queen Amidala (when speaking formally, as to the Trade Federation) attempts to use some sort of stilted, ultra-formal accent that sounds RP-ish, but mostly just awkward.
  • It is understood in the EU that this world's RP accent is the Star Wars Universe's Coruscant accent. The Empire probably encourages the use of the Coruscant accent throughout the military. ^note  Real-world militaries often break recruits of their accents in favor of a neutral or military-specific speech pattern. Until recently, many units were organized locally, and thus all the men of a given unit had the same accent. If an enemy read a soldier's accent correctly, they might be able to infer the identity of his unit; combined with other information, this could give away the unit's location.
  • The original trilogy of films encountered some criticism for being Anglo-centric, although the Imperial officers like Tarkin who speak with English accents are clearly meant to be "bad guys" based on the stereotype of the evil British aristocrat and Imperialist while the Rebel Alliance characters usually speak with more "homely" American accents (granted, Obi-wan was a good guy and had a British accent, but his actor Alec Guinness was British). The suspicion is that they tried to overcompensate for this during the Prequel Trilogy... an attempt which backfired in spectacular fashion. Instead of aliens speaking with British accents, they had borderline offensive Chinese accents (Trade Federation), a Middle-Eastern accent for a scrap dealer (Watto), and a nails-on-chalkboard high-pitched Caribbean accent (Jar Jar Binks). Then again, Count Dooku still had a Received Pronunciation accent... because he was played by Christopher Lee!
• Speaking of hooligans, Charlie Hunnam's antipodean-leaning Cockney accent in Green Street is the worst ever English accent by an actual English person.
• Hot Fuzz takes place in the fictional village of Sandford in The West Country; naturally, Gloucestershire accents are the norm, some so thick they require translation (sometimes in three steps: farmer to village man, village man to local cop, local cop to out-of-town cop). The village square was actually the City centre of Wells, Somerset.
• The Full Monty has Robert Carlyle (a Scot) playing a Sheffielder, requiring a South Yorkshire accent. Both he and the rest of the cast do a pretty good job (Mark Addy, for one, is from Yorkshire). However, it isn't a Sheffield South Yorkshire accent. Sounds more like Doncaster, actually.
• Mary Poppins features Dick Van Dyke playing chimney sweep Bert with a notoriously exaggerated Cockney accent (occasionally slipping out of it during some lines of dialogue and on the occasional sung verse). Van Dyke's accent is often ranked as one of the worst attempts at a "British" accent by an American actor, a factor acknowledged — with good humor — by Van Dyke on recent DVD releases of the film. (It's also why he didn't use one in the later Chitty Chitty Bang Bang even though his character's father and children all had proper British accents). One English language coach in the movie industry reported that the one thing practically every director says to her in productions with English accents is "I don't want anyone to sound like Dick van Dyke."
• In the Harry Potter films their accents conform to their place as a Freudian Trio with Hermione speaking RP (Superego), Ron with a more regional dialect (Id), and Harry being somewhere in the middle (Ego).
  • Each member of the Weasley family has a different British accent due to the different origins of the actors, such as the Black Country accent of Smethwick-born Julie Walters, aka Molly Weasley. Or The West Midlands accent of her husband Arthur, played by Mark Williams of Bromsgrove, just outside Birmingham. However, this is basically Truth in Television: RP (or at any rate faintly Brummised RP or EE) speakers with full-on comedy Brummie parents are far from unknown. Regional accents tend to be a lot stronger in people's parents these days as RP and EE bulldoze regional accents into nothing, especially with accents generally seen as rather undesirable like Brummie and Yam Yam. Unremitting, terminal Geordies are also rarer than they were.
  • Luna, who lives near the Weasleys, is Irish. Rhys Ifans, who is Welsh, played Xenophilius as a Fake Irish to match Evanna Lynch's accent.
• The 1993 film version of The Secret Garden features a wide range of accents, but most notable is Dickon's broad Yorkshire. (His sister Martha sounds much closer to Received Pronunciation — which is consistent with the book, where it's explicitly noted that she is required to when she's at work and only slips back into broad Yorkshire in moments of high emotion.)
• Angelina Jolie adopts a rather convincing RP accent for her roles as Lara Croft in the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films and again as Franky in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
• Gwyneth Paltrow pulls off surprisingly convincing Estuary English in Sliding Doors, becoming one of very few Americans indeed to successfully use the word "wanker" without sounding like an American trying to use the word "wanker". Her more RP accent in Shakespeare in Love is perhaps less surprising, but pretty decent.
• In Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams' character adopts a generic British accent while dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire. Notable in that a British character points out that it's a generic sounding accent, and he's unable to tell where in Britain she's from. (It's mainly a form of Lowland Scots.) And this was a Fake Brit character as well (played by Irishman Pierce Brosnan) for meta-irony.
  • Of course Brits all go "Why's he doing a Scottish accent?" No confusion for those who speak the language.
• Don Cheadle attempts a British accent in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels; its bad. Really bad. But also intentionally.
• In Love Actually, pretty much every character has a British accent of some sort (it's set in London!). However, a notable mention is Colin, who is convinced he can pick up any girl in America because of his accent. It's funny because it works (to a ridiculous degree)! The point of the storyline is that it's Truth in Television cranked up to eleven for the sake of comedy.
• Lampshaded in Shooting Fish. Dan Futterman's character (an American playing an American) tries putting on a British accent while pretending to be a local workman. He drifts across several accents in the course of a few minutes, even managing to change between two or three in a single sentence, and leaves one of the marks commenting "I think one of them was Australian."
• Twin Town is set in Swansea, and basically works as an introduction to the accents and syntax of English as spoken in South Wales.
  Fatty Lewis: You two boys behave yourselves now today now.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula mostly has British characters played by U.S. actors while the Brit thesps get to play "continentals". Especially notable for Keanu Reeves' bizarre rendition of RP outdoing both Dick Van Dyke and Natalie Portman by some distance.
• Recall the special mention for Hong Kong? The Chuck Norris actioner Forced Vengeance showcases this briefly as Norris is given a physical by a Hong Kong doctor.
  Doctor: Right. Drop your pants, mate.
• Withnail and I has Withnail and his Uncle Monty speaking in RP accents, since they both went to Oxbridge. The Other Wiki tells the tale of the nameless protagonist and his accent:
  "Paul McGann was Robinson's first choice for "I", but he was fired during rehearsals because Robinson decided McGann's Liverpool accent was wrong for the character. Several other actors read for the role, but McGann eventually persuaded Robinson to re-audition him, promising to affect a Home Counties accent. He quickly won back the part."
• Sean Connery's elongated Scottish lilt, especially as James Bond ("Yesshhh, Misssshhh Moneypenny") has been often parodied. Most other 007s have gone for something more RP.
• Character actor Terry-Thomas was known for his affected RP accent.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service:
  • When posing as Chester King, aka Arthur, Eggsy drops his Estuary accent and gleefully picks up a posh Received Pronunciation one.
  • Coincidentally as the real Arthur dies, he reverts from a posh Received Pronunciation accent to a Cockney one.
• Almost every actor in The Death of Stalin uses their natural accent, which meant Stalin himself has a Cockney accent and Molotov has Michael Palin's RP with a hint of his native Sheffield. The exception is Jason Isaacs who portrays Marshal Zhukov with a broad Yorkshire accent rather than his own.

• Usually the way Americans are exposed to Yorkshire is through The Secret Garden, as the book transliterates the housemaid Martha's Yorkshire dialect, including "thous" and "thees" ("Canna thy dress thysen?").
• Similarly Bram Stoker's Dracula contains dialogue written in phonetic approximation of a North Yorkshire accent (specifically Whitby). Much of this dialogue — written by an Irishman attempting to replicate the local turn of phrase — is especially difficult to understand when read from a modern perspective, coupled with the fact that the book is over a hundred years old and the working class Whitby dialect suggested by Stoker is effectively obsolete nowadays.
  • There is a free podcasted audio version of the book produced by Librivox and read by primarily American voices. One reader's brave attempt to reproduce this Whitby accent they were most likely completely unfamiliar with has to be heard to be believed. The result sounds closer to Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonating Sean Connery impersonating a drunken pirate, and is one of the most bafflingly bad accents you will likely ever hear.
• The Harry Potter series features accents from all over the British Isles, since that, apparently, is Hogwarts' catchment area. Accents are usually kept off the page, however, with a few exceptions, such as Hagrid's fonetik West Country burr. The obviously Irish Seamus Finnigan refering to his "Mam" is less noteworthy as many dialects right across the British Isles use the word "Mam". Despite Hogwarts being located in the Scottish Highlands, very few characters in the series have broad Scottish accents.
• Redwall:
  • The series is absolutely packed with Funetik Aksent dialogue, mostly based on real accents. Burr aye, ee molers iz ee best known. Vermin tend to be generic pseudo-Cockney/thug/piratical, or with completely fictional accents such as Wraith's Trrrilling Rrrs, though there were two in Salamandastron who spoke with a noticeable Brummie twang (especially in the audiobook) and the Big Bad characters tend to use Standard English.
  • And in the first book, the extreme accents are Lampshaded when the sparrow's dialect is treated like a foreign language.
• The Infernal Devices:
  • Tessa's brother Nate, despite being from New York, has one of these. He uses "oughtn't" on several occasions. You know, like every American^note Consider the time period, though. It's not too hard to believe that the educated Gray siblings would use what they perceive as more refined word choice—even though it isn't, but merely British English vs. American—regardless of nationality.
  • Thomas has a tendency to slip into his East End accent when outside the Institute.
  • Oddly enough, the Welsh William Herondale speaks no differently to any of the other characters raised in London ^note  unless the author wants to use him to slip in some gratuitous Welsh anyway though this could be explained by him actively hiding his accent.
• The Nac Mac Feegle in Discworld speak in an approximately Glaswegian accent. Inspired, according to Pratchett, by McAuslan.
  • In Raising Steam, Dick Simnel is written with an identifiable Bolton accent
• In the bodice-ripper Romance Novel Whisper to Me of Love, the hero is both surprised and suspicious to find that despite her slum upbringing and Cockney accent, the heroine can speak just as well in the King's English (as it was known back then). She explains that her mother insisted that she and brothers learn to speak properly so as to move in upper-class circles.
• Audiobooks of StarWarsLegends tend to give Coruscant natives British accents. Mara Jade has one and Jaina has aspects of that combined with her dad’s Correllian accent. Many Imperials have it also.

• In Headcases, a British political satire show (think Spitting Image in CGI and you're in the right area), David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, is portrayed with two accents. In his press conferences, he is portrayed in a suit with a lower-class, "chummy" accent. When he returns to his house, his accent becomes much posher and he acquires a top hat and monocle (Cameron is an Old Etonian). William Hague is a permanently drunk Yorkshireman (he hails from the area and the thing references his very dubious 2001 election claim that he'd drunk 14 pints of beer a day as a teenager).
  • Note also the differences between the "public" and "private" accents of Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren in the same show.
• Doctor Who is an interesting case, due to the length of time it's existed and the number of people who've played the title role. There are various fanwank ideas over why the Doctor's accent changes, too.
  • The first six Doctors, and the Eleventh, used RP pretty consistently. (Although Tom Baker, especially, could slip to his native Scouse occasionally — see Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.)
  • Sylvester McCoy used his native Scottish accent, a first for the series.
  • Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor is an interesting case — McGann, who's from Liverpool, makes a game attempt at RP, but it fades in and out. (McGann, on the DVD Commentary, chalks it up to being tired during the shoot.) In Big Finish Doctor Who, he relaxed considerably, but you can clearly tell when he's being particularly emotional, because his accent tends to get more Scouse. It doesn't sound so bad... at all, in fact.
  • Christopher Eccleston has a Salford/Manchester accent and keeps it for his role as the Ninth Doctor. Rose Tyler even questions the Ninth Doctor's accent after he reveals himself to be an alien.
    Rose: If you are an alien, how comes you sound like you're from the north?
    The Doctor: Lots of planets have a north!
  • David Tennant (from Scotland) takes on an Estuary accent and John Simm (Lancashire) takes on a similar accent with a slightly Northern influence when portraying Time Lords. (In the episode "Smith and Jones", the line "Judoon platoon upon the Moon" was put in purely to torture David Tennant because it makes him struggle to hide his Scottish accent on "oo" sounds.) Also, in "Tooth and Claw", the Tenth Doctor temporarily adopts a Scottish accent, but rather than his natural one, it's hilariously exaggerated.
  • Karen Gillan's Amy Pond maintains a distinct Scottish lilt despite having spent most of her life in Gloucestershire — the Doctor notes that if she's kept the accent, she clearly doesn't belong there.
  • Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor has a pronounced Glaswegian accent; this has been the source of a number of jokes.
    The Doctor: I am Scottish. Haven't I? I've gone Scottish?
    Barney: Yes, you are. You are definitely Scots, sir. I, I… I hear it in your voice.
    The Doctor: Oh, no, that's good. [practices the 'oh' sound] It's good. I'm Scottish. I'm Scottish. I am Scottish. I can complain about things, I can really complain about things now.
  • Jodie Whittaker uses her natural Yorkshire accent for the Thirteenth Doctor.
  • Spinoff Torchwood includes bi-dialectal John Barrowman's Capt. Jack Harkness using an American accent, as well as three characters—Gwen, Ianto, and Rhys—with Welsh accents. While Gwen and Rhys's accents change very little, Ianto's notably comes and goes from very distinctive in the pilot to more vague as time goes on, and eventually getting "more Welsh" in particularly emotional moments.
• Call the Midwife is set in the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s, and there is a lot of Cockney and near-Cockney accents (especially among patients, but also with Fred), but the variety of accents on display are also used to enhance characterization and denote social class. Examples include:
  • Sister Evangelina has a brisk southeast London accent, which suits her no-nonsense demeanor (and working-class background). Nurse Cynthia has the same accent, although she is far more softly spoken.
  • Shelagh Turner (formerly Sister Bernadette) speaks with a very gentle, soft Scottish accent befitting her sweet character.
  • Nurses Jenny, Trixie and Patsy all speak with a moderate, middle-class RP accent (Patsy's is a little more clipped and jolly-hockey-sticks; Trixie's is slightly forced), which provides great contrast with their cockney-accented clientele, and emphasizes the palpable class chasm between nurse and patient.
  • The same goes for Doctor Turner, who's very well-spoken, the effect heightened by being The Stoic (and Mr. Exposition) as well.
  • Chummy, as the most patrician of all the characters, speaks with a marvelous heightened RP accent, and peppers her dialogue with old-fashioned, typically rah expressions like "what-ho", and "old bean", and refers to her mother as "mater" (characteristic of aristocratic children sent to boarding school, as Chummy was).
  • Sister Julienne speaks with a soft, mostly-RP accent slightly influenced by her actress's West Country origins.
  • Patsy's girlfriend Delia is Welsh, and speaks with a pronounced Welsh accent.
  • Nurse Crane speaks with a noticeable Leeds accent, which initially sets her apart from the rest of the nurses.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • Gaius Baltar is one of the few characters with a non-American accent and normally speaks in RP. When he assumes his native Aerelon accent, he speaks in a Yorkshire accent. As Baltar explains, he grew up a farmer's son on a poor working-class planet, but always dreamed of moving to the capital planet Caprica. He got accepted to university on a scholarship, and due to his innate scientific genius and hard work he rose to become a world-renowned scientist (sort of their version of Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins). Always ashamed of his working-class accent, since he was 10 years old he consciously practiced to re-train his neutral speaking accent to be more refined (to the point that he has to concentrate to speak with the Yorkshire accent). Of course, what actor James Callis pointed out is that most people on Caprica do not speak with a British accent, and the exact rules of which accent come from which planet were laughably inconsistent throughout the series. But then this is ruined when we are shown his father in season 4, who seems to speak in a mangled West Country dialect. This could be fanwanked from being from elsewhere on the planet.
  • Mark Sheppard uses an Irish accent that sounds distinctively "London Irish" for Romo Lampkin. This fits quite well for the character — he's probably from Caprica, as he had been a student of Joseph Adama, but he could have been an immigrant from elsewhere (like, erm, Joseph Adama).
  • Jamie Bamber suppresses his London accent in favor of an American one, to match Edward James Olmos (his character's father). Olmos wore blue contact lenses in exchange. This got a bit annoying at sci-fi conventions throughout the show's run, because inevitably someone would always ask Mr Bamber about his accent and how he got used to using it. However, his father is American, so it's not really that surprising that he's at ease with it. He's also a fully qualified linguist, holding a Master's Degree in French and Italian.
  • In The Smoke, Bamber had some trouble pulling off a working-class accent while playing a London firefighter, given that it was different from his natural upper-class one.
• Firefly: Genuine London-born Mark Sheppard using a London accent as Badger. However, the actor comes from a different class background than the character, so it's an interesting case of a genuine Londoner with one type of London accent having to fake a different London accent.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The most famous example is Spike, played by James Marsters with a painful but gradually improving attempt at a Cockney/Estuary accent. During flashbacks he also uses a similarly decent RP accent. This leads to a bit of a shock when you hear him with his natural Californian accent!
  • On the other hand there's Giles, played by actual Brit Anthony Stewart Head with an RP accent (in contrast to his natural Estuary accent).
  • Drusilla's accent is admittedly a bit "Cor blimey guv!" theatrical Cockney, but she gets the actual pronunciations correct on the whole, unlike James Marsters who is far more hit and miss/jarring to a UK native with his accent.
  • There's also Wesley; Alexis Denisof is American, but lived part of his life in the UK, allowing him to be fairly convincing as Wesley.
• Merlin: Anthony Head used his own Estuary accent for Uther, while Katie McGrath keeps her Irish accent. Colin Morgan uses a more British sounding accent than his natural Irish accent. Bradley James doesn't seem to alter his much.
• Primeval being set in London manages to get a wide variety of British accents in there outside of the normal RP such as Abby and Connor. But the fourth and fifth seasons were filmed in Ireland so a lot of the cast are Irish actors trying to do British accents. Ruth Bradley (Emily) and Ruth Kearney (Jess) are Irish and hide their accents very well but you do get the occasional extra failing awfully and one episode (filmed in Wicklow) had a man with a passable accent but his mother had a thick Irish accent.
• The British comedy 'Allo 'Allo! is set in France, and it's presumed everyone speaks French there. The running gag on the show is that whichever accent one is using represents the language he or she is speaking. So Germans speak with German accents, French with French accents etc. When Michelle speaks English to the British airmen, it's presented as her accent changing from comedy-French to British RP. 'Now listen, chaps...' One of the supporting characters is Officer Crabtree, a British spy with a comically inept grasp of French, despite masquerading as a gendarme. His French is represented as Britsh RP with random, jarring vowel shifts, e.g.: "Good moaning. Outside your coffee was this bunch of diffodols and dosies. Pinned to them is a nit. Pardon me if I love you but I have my dirty to do."
• In one episode of Kingdom (2007), northerner Lyle is complaining about the Household Cavalry regiments of the British Army being exclusive to the upper class. We hear another northern accent — it's one of his working-class school mates. ^note Lyle is from Oop North — Stockport — and one episode of Kingdom sees him return there. More generally, Kingdom is one of the few series on television to get that there is a distinction between Norfolk and Somerset. Stephen Fry, who despite how he sounds grew up in Norfolk, probably insisted on it.
• Special 1 TV (formerly I'm On Setanta Sports) used a variety of stock British accents. The Wayne Rooney puppet has a generic Scouse accent, caller "Alex in Manchester" (a.k.a. Sir Alex Ferguson) speaks with a generic Glaswegian accent, and caller "Dave in Newcastle" (a generic Newcastle United fan) speaks Geordie.
• The 2007 remake of Bionic Woman featured an episode in which actress Michelle Ryan, who in real life speaks with a rather posh RP accent, but who in the series adopted a midwest US accent, was allowed to revert to her natural accent for a few scenes in which Jaime Sommers had to impersonate a British woman. Needless to say, it was a pretty ham-fisted excuse for the lead actress to show off her natural accent.
• In Sanctuary, Amanda Tapping, who normally speaks with a Canadian/Ontario accent, adopts RP for the character of Dr. Helen Magnus. Tapping almost averts the trope owing to the fact she was actually born in Essex, but she's lived in Canada since she was three and is never heard using the accent in interviews.
• Then there's Stargate Atlantis, where Paul McGillion (Scottish parents) plays Doctor Carson Beckett, whose family moved to Canada when Beckett was two.
• David Anders played English-sounding villains in Alias and Heroes. He does the accents so well that it often surprises people that he is from Oregon and speaks with an American accent in real life.
• Philip Glenister, DCI Gene Hunt in the original UK version of Life On Mars and its sequel Ashes To Ashes, speaks with what is presumably intended to be a Mancunian accent, despite originating from considerably further south. However, his efforts to replicate an American accent for a subsequent ITV drama, Demons, were less successful...
  • Ashes To Ashes has an interesting mix of British accents. You have Glenister, Dean Andrews (Ray) and Marshall Lancaster (Chris) using Mancunian; Keeley Hawes (Alex) uses her RP, which works because Alex is fairly posh; Montserrat Lombard is from London and speaks RP in real life, but uses Estuary for Shaz; and Daniel Mays (Keats) uses Estuary as well.
• The Thick of It is a veritable smörgåsbord of British accents, but by far the most famous is Malcolm Tucker's thick Glaswegian Scottish accent. In a nod to the real-life "Scottish Raj" in the Labour government, Olly remarks about how everyone in the Number 10 press office seems to be from Scotland (the most notable example being Jamie, Malcolm's assistant in the specials).
• Farscape, the noted science fiction series of the early 2000s, was produced in Australia and, except for American lead actor Ben Browder and the occasional guest star, its cast was made up primarily of Australian actors. While most actors retained their Australian accents, notable exceptions were those playing "Peacekeepers" or "Sebaceans" who often (but not always) adopted some form of "British" accent, in particular the recurring villain Scorpius, played to the hilt in Evil Brit mode. On several occasions Browder's American character impersonates Peacekeepers and also has his consciousness taken over by Scorpius; in both cases, he adopts a mild RP accent (which makes him sound rather bored with what's going on around him).
• Something of a Real Life example—Mark Ballas of Dancing with the Stars is the British-born son of Corky Ballas (American, lived in the UK for years) and Shirley Ballas (British) who lives in the U.S. Most of the time in the rehearsal footage and interviews, he sounds more or less American, but sometimes he slips into a very odd, possibly Estuary British. Whether it's an affectation or he just switches isn't really clear.
• Another Real Life example: John Barrowman of Torchwood fame has a US accent but was born and raised in Scotland. In a documentary he was shown visiting his parents, whom he speaks to in his original Scottish accent.
  • Barrowman made an effort to learn an American accent when his family relocated to America as a child because he was being bullied. He and his sister are what they refer to as "bi-dialectical" and can switch between their American and Scottish accents at will.
• Pobol y Cwm, a Welsh-language opera sebon full of accents from all over Wales, and even the occasional Sais wandering in from England and looking around in terror.
• Saturday Night Live: Don' You Go Rounin' Roun to Re Ro' is a can't-miss British film, if you like movies you cannot understand.
• The BBC's 1983 adaptation of Robert Westall's The Machine Gunners provides a sound grounding in Geordie accents and pronunciation. Notable in that virtually everyone in the serial, children and adults alike, speaks with a Geordie accent. Only a few of the Grammar school teachers have RP ones.
• Daphne Moon from Frasier speaks with a Mancunian accent, despite the fact that Jane Leeves was born in Essex and raised in Sussex. For some inexplicable reason, most of her family appearing on the show do not have Mancunian accents. Her brother Simon, for instance, speaks with a broad Cockney accent.
• Law & Order: UK. Set in London, featuring accents from every part of the city and the UK and all the socioeconomic classes therein. It's even a slight plot point in one episode—Matt Devlin, who is of Irish ancestry (it isn't clear if he was born there as well), noticeably thickens his Irish brogue in order to gain the trust of a young prostitute he's questioning and is able to pinpoint almost exactly where in Ireland she's from based on her accent.
• Apparently, real Brit Claire Forliani used an accent on CSI: NY that was awful even to other real Brits. Jane Parsons was another British character and hers was much better.
• Highlander: Christopher Lambert used a generalized Scottish accent in the original film, but Lambert's natural French accent made it a bit odd sounding. Duncan in the series used a somewhat Scottish accent for flashbacks but the modern scenes weren't too far from Adrian Paul's normal British accent. Peter Wingfield kept his Welsh accent for Methos.
• Bramwell features the posh accents of the upper-class Bramwells and those in their social circle, the Cockney accents of the patients and staff at the East End clinic (as well as the servants of the upper-class set), and Irishman Dr. Marsham.
• On ER, though it's never specified where in England she's from, British surgeon Elizabeth Corday's accent indicates an upper-class background and education, as does Neela Rasgotra's. However, when the two meet, Elizabeth asks Neela if she's from the East End, to which a miffed Neela replies, "No, Southall". Neela's annoyance is likely because Elizabeth assumed she was from a working class background based on her ethnicity (she's Indian), when her accent should clearly have indicated that she wasn't—the East End of London has historically been one of its poorer, non-white neighborhoods, while Southall is the opposite.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Butler Geoffrey has a very posh British accent (his portrayer was born in Saint Lucia, but moved to England when he was 9), presumably gleaned from years of working for the upper-class and pinpoints exactly where his British date grew up, to the point where he only misguesses that she lived on the second floor of the building rather than the third within minutes of hearing her equally elegant, yet not as refined dialect. There's also the Lord and Lady (his daughter) who visit Geoffrey. While the Lord clearly has an upper-class accent, his daughter's, strangely enough, isn't nearly so.
• Mad Men: Lane Pryce apparently went to public school (although probably not a good one, since he appreciates that in New York, "nobody asks where you went to school") and speaks RP; so does his wife. In a sea of fairly neutral American accents,^note Sometimes intentionally so; we know that at the very least Paul Kinsey is suppressing a serious Joisey accent, and given her totally Brooklyn family—all that squawking by her mother and sister about "the Howly Fahthuh!"—Peggy's newscasterese has to be practiced Lane stands out.
• Downton Abbey is another smörgåsbord of British accents:
  • The Crawleys are all very thoroughly RP (with the exception of Lady Grantham, who is American and speaks with a General American accent). This is thoroughly expected, since they are an earl, their daughters, his mother, and their cousins who are upper-middle-class educated professionals.
  • The Crawleys' cousins, the MacClares, also all speak in RP, even though they are Scottish. This is, again, fully expected, since they are even more aristocratic than the Crawleys (Hugh MacClare is the Marquess of Flintshire).
  • The servants range widely:
    • The most common accent is Yorkshire—the majority of downstairs actors having been recruited from the county or from nearby Lancashire—with Alfred and Mr. Mason (William's father) being particularly bucolic. As noted above, Anna, Daisy, and William's actors are all actually Yorkshire born and raised.
    • Mrs Hughes is from Argyll and has a recognizable soft West Scots accent.
    • Gwen's actress Rose Leslie is actually Scottish aristocracy, and her real-life RP accent contrasts very much with the Yorkshire accent she affects as Gwen.
    • Miss Shore has Sharon Small's full Glaswegian accent.
    • Branson, of course, has a fully Irish accent (which was very technically a "British" accent at the beginning of the series in 1912).
  • Dr Clarkson has a soft, educated Edinburgh accent—the same as his actor, David Robb.
  • The policemen who come to arrest Mr Bates at the end of Series 2 are clearly identifiable as being from the Metropolitan by their definitely East End/Cockney accents.
• The Vampire Diaries' Original vampire family, though they were Vikings who migrated to what is now Virginia, speak English with an English accent, because they learned to speak it in England.
• Game of Thrones has its characters use appropriate accents for their location — and station. Sean Bean and the Stark clan use appropriately Grim Northern accents, as do the Wildlings. The Baratheons tend more Midlands. Those from the South generally use RP, or at least quasi-RPish accents suitable to the South of England (e.g.: King's Landing commoners will often speak in an Estuary accent—see Gendry and Hot Pie), with the more precise, posh and clipped the accent also serving as an indicator of status (and/or villainy). Peter Dinklage's slightly more floral and exaggerated take is character-appropriate and serves well (and all in all pretty good for a Jersey boy from Morristown—although that accent slips in once in a while).
• Peaky Blinders has a few:
  • The Shelbys are Brummies, with some Irish influence (being a few generations out of Ireland, with their father Arthur Sr and eldest brother Arthur Jr being the most Hibernian). The actors do varyingly good jobs of it; Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby does it well, although he slips around some words (like "strategy"); Helen McCrory (as Aunt Polly) is rather less convincing. Some of the other actors do a decent job of doing a West Midlands accent, but come up more Black Country than Birmingham.
  • DI Campbell and Grace Burgess are Northern Irish Protestants and have strong NI accents. Sam Neill, who plays Campbell, was actually born in Northern Ireland but moved to New Zealand as a child; he's widely praised for his excellent accent in this performance (it helps, of course, that he was coached by Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt).
  • Actually, "Irish business" is a recurring theme, and so both Northern and Southern Irish accents appear in series quite a lot.
  • Black Country shows up very thoroughly with Billy Kimber and his lads.
  • The London gangs, including Alfie Solomons, have (of course) Cockney accents and similar.
  • May Carleton is super-posh and speaks in an RP to match.
• Geraint Wyn Davies used his natural Welsh accent as Nick Knight on Forever Knight. The character is actually from the French/Belgian region of Brabant but the flashbacks don’t change much.
• Pennyworth: Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon) speaks with a Cockney accent as homage to Michael Caine's roles. Meanwhile, the unpredictable Bet Sykes (Paloma Faith) has a distinctive Mancunian accent and uses Mancunian expressions, and the accent of Wallace "Dave Boy" MacDougal is unmistakably Scottish.

British rock singers frequently change their accents while singing to make themselves sound a bit more American or at least "mid-Atlantic" (much as many American singers try to sound Southern). Others will just adopt a generically "British" accent for no apparent reason. Thus singers who enthusiastically embrace their regional accents are at least somewhat noteworthy.

• The Beatles, especially John Lennon, were fond of using exaggerated joke accents in recording sessions. From Revolver onwards, they started using them in the final versions of songs as well. John Lennon managed to sneak his exaggerated Liverpudlian accent into such tracks as "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Maggie May" (from Let It Be), and "Polythene Pam" (from Abbey Road), to name a few. An equally jokey London accent is used at the start of "Two of Us" (from Let It Be).
  • George Harrison had a particularly thick Scouse accent and never tried to hide it, either with the Beatles or in his solo work.
• Nick Drake's upper-class English accent is audible in his singing, and his relaxed delivery is a big part of the exotic feel of his songs.
• John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground, sings in his native Welsh accent. The accent is on clearest display in "The Gift" (on White Light/White Heat), where Cale is actually just reading a story written by Lou Reed over the music. People unfamiliar with Welsh accents listening to the track for the first time often ask what an Indian dude is doing on a Velvets album. The better-educated tend to have to explain that it's John Cale, and that he's from Wales....
  • Similarly, Sting was accused of putting on a faux-West Indian accent on his early work with The Police. He really wasn't. He's a Geordie. his Newcastle accent was accetuated more in his singing. People not familiar with the north-East of England made the error a lot.
• Arctic Monkeys are from Sheffield (well, near Sheffield), and don't let anyone forget it, singing with full-on South Yorkshire accents that would do Sean Bean proud.
• Lena Meyer-Landrut, the German winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2010, sings with a Cockney accent. She blames her English teacher.
• Madchester bands like The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans and the like.
• Folk music is one genre in which the singers accent is played for all it's worth. Kate Rusby, a Barnsleyite, often stresses a strong Barnsley accent in her songs. Averted with the (British) Spinners' version of The Calton Weaver, which they did with one of the phoniest Glasgow accents ever. (They were from Liverpool.)
• Both Murdoc and 2D of Gorillaz speak with Cockney-ish accents, with 2D's being the stronger of the two.
  • For that matter Damon Albarn's singing voice (especially on their early work) is far more Cockney sounding in his singing voice than it is in real life.
• Shirley Manson of Garbage has a powerfully Scottish accent, but sounds practically American when she sings...mostly. Listen to "I Think I'm Paranoid" and pay attention to how she pronounces "paranoid." She sounds like a cartoon character.
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor keeps her strong London accent when singing.
• Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator sings for the most part with a strict RP delivery. Notable exceptions are his Afrikaner accent on "A Motor-bike in Afrika" and his Cockney accent on "Polaroid".
• The Proclaimers are fairly well known in Scotland for singing in a broad Scots accent, and Glasvegas (although less well known) have an even more audible, very Glaswegian accent. Biffy Clyro also sing in a slight Scottish accent, though it's not nearly as obvious as the other two examples.
• Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr's accent started off obviously Glaswegian, but by the time of Street Fighting Years, had taken on significant Irish influences, which endure to this day.
• Kate Nash doesn't attempt to disguise her Estuary accent, which has an interesting effect on her cover of the aforementioned Arctic Monkeys' "Fluorescent Adolescent."
  • For this matter, Lily Allen sounds exactly like a typical North Londoner right down to the way she enunciates her lyrics.
  • and The Twang do this incredibly well as well. They're Brummies.
• Maxïmo Park's Paul Smith has a very clear North-East England^note  Don't confuse Newcastle and Middlesborough, they don't take it well accent he sings with.
• Terrorvision are from Bradford, but for their first album Tony Wright tried to suppress his accent and adopt a fairly neutral transatlantic accent. From the second album onwards he started using more of his natural Yorkshire drawl.
• Joe Strummer of The Clash was very well spoken in real life but sang with a Cockney accent.
• Many Americans were surprised when Adele accepted her multiple awards at the 2012 Grammys and she spoke in her Estuary accent.
• Amy Winehouse similarly sung like her musical idols but spoke with a brash working-class London accent.
• Jon Anderson of Yes also has an ethereal, angelic singing voice but a very rural Lancashire accent in his speaking voice.
• Steve Marriott of The Small Faces and Humble Pie never went out of his way to disguise his East London accent, but given the chance on the Small Faces album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake to sing songs in a music hall style he turns it up to eleven, complete with rhyming slang.
• The vocalists for the Mystery Jets (mostly Blaine Harrison but also William Rees) are unabashed middle-class Londoners and sing in clearly Estuary accents.
• Laura Marling (a frequent collaborator of (the) Mystery Jets, incidentally), is a Blue Blood from northeastern Hampshire and sings in a Home Counties accent that depending on your perspective either is or approaches Moderate RP.
• Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell always sings in her native soft Glasgow accent.
• A slightly amusing thing happens in "Barriers" by Birmingham punk band Templeton Pek. Is it "pain" with ai or ei? For whatever reasons the first one in the song is with ai, the second with ei.
• Thomas Dolby's voice is essentially a London RP with hints of Oxford (where he went to secondary school) and East Anglia (where he'd go on holiday), which was also influenced by his living abroad amongst British expats as a child. He sings in his real life accent, with the occasional parody of Americanisms (he has lived in the US for a long time).
• PJ Harvey is from Dorset and has an "accent". It shows up to very varying degrees in her music.
• As a Swindonian, Andy Partridge of XTC has a noticeable West Country accent in his speaking voice.
• Kate Bush is a notable example for singing not just in her normal southern English accent, but also singing in different varieties of UK accents, including Irish and Cockney depending on the song, which proved alienating to American listeners for most of her career.

• The Orks of Warhammer 40,000 use a very mangled version of Cockney. Then again, they're pretty much warmongering suicidal pub-crawling football hooligan looters IN SPACE.
  • When attacking the Ork base in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, one of the massed Orkish voices is quite clearly shouting "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!" in RP.
  • Oddly enough, the Eldar seem to have extremely mangled accents from Barrow.
  • The Eldar troops seem mostly to speak with received pronunciation, except for the Warlock in the Soulstorm Eldar stronghold cutscenes who for some reason has a distinctly northern accent.
  • Blood Ravens seem to speak in a geographically neutral form of RP, sometimes with hints of various British regional dialects. Space Wolves are usually (and oddly, given that they are based on Vikings) rendered as "Och aye the noo" Scotsmen, and the Ultramarines movie seems to suggest that Ultramar is actually located in a service station in the Watford Gap.
• Many of the non-human races in Warhammer were deliberately styled with different English accents to evoke their attitude and outlook on life to British players. Dwarfs, as rugged, pragmatic, no-nonsense mining folk, are naturally voiced as Northerners (mostly Yorkshiremen, who are stereotypically just like that), while the elegant, refined, effete and cultured High Elves tend towards the snobby end of Home Counties RP. Dark Elves get the same accents, but delivered with much more vaudevillian villain flair. Orcs and Goblins tend to speak in a grunting, exaggerated form of Cockney or Estuarine dialect — one of their major inspirations being the infamous supporters of Milwall Football Club in the 1970s! Wood Elves, meanwhile, sound similar to High Elves, but with much more of a Welsh or Irish lilt to their voices to get across the ancient Celtic elements of their culture. The humans in Warhammer get stereotypical European accents based on their place of origin — the Empire, being a fantasy counterpart to the Holy Roman Empire, is filled with people speaking with German accents, while Bretonnians are comedy Frenchmen, Kislevites are Russians, the Vampire Counts of Sylvania get the classic Dracula voice, and the Viking-inspired marauders of Norsca speak like Scandinavians.
• In Crimestrikers, Working-Class Hero Jeff "Top" Ranking speaks with a Cockney accent, while Arcana has the accent of a Violent Glaswegian/Brave Scot.

• George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion centres around a bet that a guy can pass a Cockney flower girl off as a duchess by poshing up her accent, among other things. It (and the revamp My Fair Lady) also lampshade that technically, a "standard British" accent does not exist; main character Henry Higgins, a language professor, can and does figure out where people are from due to which accent they have.
• A Very Potter Musical has Draco as a Fake Brit (obviously fake), and its sequel adds his father Lucius (less obviously fake, but it's not great) and Seamus Finnegan, who, despite being Irish in the books and films, gets a (very very poor) Cockney accent.
• The INLA members from The Lieutenant of Inishmore are supposed to have Northern Irish accents (the script doesn't specify sub-variety), to contrast with the rest of the cast's distinctly too-ra-loo West Coast Irish accents. Of course, it depends on the casting director and director how clearly this comes across.
• In The Pirates of Penzance, there is an extended joke where the characters confuse "often" and "orphan" because the two words sound similar when using the non-rhotic pronunciation.

• In World of Warcraft, the Gilneans who turn into Worgen invariably sound as if they're either choking on a Cockney, or gobbling down a triple-bred snob or two. Later on you're going to run into Yorkshire Gilneans. Even their Capital City resembles Victorian London. It's no surprise that they're sometimes known as Cockney Werewolves.
• Recent iterations of popular fighting games such as Street Fighter, Tekken and the Soul Series have taken the trouble to voice the British characters with their appropriate accents. Wealthy boxer Dudley from Street Fighter speaks with an RP accent, as does MI6 femme fatale, Cammy White. As an aristocrat, Ivy Valentine from the Soul Series speaks with a heightened RP accent, as befits her status. She is also the only character in the English dub to be voiced with their native accent — Spaniard Cervantes and Frenchman Raphael both have American accents. Steve Fox from Tekken is a curious example — he's had both an Estuary, almost RP accent in one of his appearances and more of a Cockney accent in another, the latter probably being more appropriate, given his character. In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Scottish succubus Morrigan Aensland is now (finally) voiced with a (General) Scottish accent in the English dub (despite her voice actress being Welsh), while Rocket Raccoon in Ultimate speaks with a Cockney accent despite his voice actor, Greg Ellis, being from Lancashire.
• Fable: Lionhead Studios is British, so that's not surprising. Black & White also uses mostly British accent (although your evil side and most of the leaders of other tribes in the sequel use others). Bullfrog, the developer that preceded Lionhead, was also British, hence the accents in Dungeon Keeper and their other games.
• Saints Row:
  • Male Voice 1 in Saints Row 2 has a Mockney accent that wavers between authentic (the VA is British) and strangely loose. Many of the Britishisms are correctly used, but oddly takes the American 'ass' over the British 'arse'. This voice (albeit voiced by Robin Atkin Downes) returns in the following games as Male Voice 3.
  • Matt Miller and his gang, The Deckers, from Saints Row: The Third, all have British accents.
• Star Fox Adventures features a wide variety of different British accents. Makes sense, because the developers of this specific game were British, but notable because it contrasts with the other games in the series, which were developed in Japan and dubbed into English in the US.
  • Pretty much every other game made by Rare was this. Even for those that were ostensibly set in America (looking at you, Perfect Dark), characters always use British accents.
• Patricia Summersett does a mix of an RP and a Northern accent as Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Amelia Gotham, Jamie Mortellaro and Sean Chiplock also do British accents for Mipha, Sidon, Revali and Teba respectively (Revali and Teba less so).
  • Being Zelda's ancestor, Cherami Leigh uses a British accent for Sonia in Tears of the Kingdom, although, like Revali's, hers is barely noticeable.
• Professor Layton series:
  • Layton speaks RP English and his sidekick, Luke, speaks with a Cockney accent. Interestingly, Luke has a different voice actor in the US version of the game to the UK version. This is because the original American voice actor voiced Luke with a butchered approximation of what 'an English accent' sounds like. As such, you can pick out a smattering of Cockney, estuary, RP, and... what can only be described as... Australian? Whatever it is, it went down so badly with English test audiences, the character was re-dubbed, this time with using an English voice actor, who played Luke as a straight-up Cockney. Interestingly enough, if you visit a forum in which this is discussed, the majority of American fans say they prefer the original, butchered accent.
  • Although the Spin-Off game Layton Brothers: Mystery Room does not have voice acting, the main character, Lucy Baker, is heavily implied to be speaking in a Yorkshire accent. For example, she says "were" instead of "was", and uses slang such as "nowt" and "summat".
• DOSH! Just take a look at the Killing Floor article.
• A few are dotted inexplicably around Fallout: New Vegas. Especially notable is one, and only one, of the Great Khans, whose father is an NCR citizen and has no accent.
  • Played a little more realistically in Fallout 4 as all Mister Handy robots seem to have these: Codsworth's is a more upper-class accent, while Whitechapel Charlie of Goodneighbour settles for a course Cockney — the exception is Professor Goodfeels, a Mister Handy who was "taken" by the Robot Liberation Front and programmed to speak with a stoned slurring. Cait's thick Irish accent is far more of a headscratcher.
• Seeing as Ferelden is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to pre-Norman England, a lot of characters in Dragon Age have some sort of British accent (notable exceptions include dwarves and Dalish in the first game). The second game continues this trend, despite the fact that the primary setting is no longer Ferelden, and actually increases the Britishness with the addition of Welsh and Irish accents to the Dalish.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • The standard Received Pronunciation and London accents are used for most of the characters seen in Assassin's Creed Syndicate including the main protagonists Jacob and Evie Frye although they are from Crawley which is located in the South East region of England.
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla naturally has variations of English accents from the Saxons (including King Alfred the Great) given that the game is set in The Viking Age.
• Yangus from Dragon Quest VIII talks exactly like the introductory sentence of this page, with "guv" being used whenever he calls The Hero.
• In Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds (which is, after all, set in Britain) the Officer and a Gentleman who acts as your adjutant in the human campaign has a standard RP accent, and Richard Burton is of course the same as he was in the rock opera, while the human units have a mixture of English- and Scottish-sounding voice sets.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 was dubbed in Britain rather than America, and all the characters display English accents as a result. Notably, most of the humans speak with working-class accents (especially Reyn), whereas the standard 'received pronunciation' is reserved for people like the High Entia. The first speaking Mechon you meet speaks in very distinct Cockney, which may make it somewhat difficult to be menaced by him.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 continues the trend and ups the ante, now utilizing accents from all across the British Isles and in a more purposeful fashion. The peoples of every one of the game's nations are distinguished with a different British sound (barring two nations and a nationless Servant Race who have Australian or American accents) from the northern Leftherians, to the Welsh Gormotti, to the Scottish Ardainians, and so on.
• Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are notable in that they are voiced by British actors, even in their native Japan.
  • Same goes with Bloodborne.
• Bayonetta has the titular witch and her rival, Jeanne, who are both European, and so are voiced with British RP accents by Hellena Taylor and Grey DeLisle.
• Tomb Raider (2013):
  • Conrad Roth from has a Northern accent, and hails from Sheffield/South Yorkshire. Lara once calls him a "Northern bastard" when trying to wake him up from a Disney Death.
  • Lara herself has an Estuary accent, the native one of her actress, who comes from Berkshire.
  • Grim comes from Glasgow, and has the customary accent.
• In Overwatch, Tracer, the game's resident British character, has a noticeable Cockney accent. It helps that her voice actress, Cara Theobold from Downton Abbey, is British herself.
• The Helghast from Killzone might mirror Germany's 20th century history to the letter (from WWI, to being A Nazi by Any Other Name to East Germany in space), but this post-human race all have English accents. The soldiers tend towards cockney while the higher Heglahn brass have more lavish accents.
• Dawn of War:
  • Every faction has different accents, with Eldar and Space Marines using high-class accents, the Imperial Guard having lower class ones, and the Tau having East Asian-speaking English ones.
  • While orks have always had Cockney accents, Kaptin Bluddflagg of Retribution adds Talk Like a Pirate and the occasional descent into Irish... and is all the more beloved for it.
  • The Baneblade from the campaign's second mission sports a magnificent Scottish accent.
• As with other Star Wars works, Star Wars: The Old Republic has the usual British accent for the Empire (there are actually a few different accents due to the larger diversity of the setting). Of particular note is the Imperial Agent storyline: the Agent uses a British accent normally but switches to an American one when operating undercover among people who are not so friendly toward the Empire.
• In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the residents of Galar speak with a British accent as the region is explicitly based on the UK. Some noticeable examples include the protagonist's internal dialogue referring to their mom as "mum" and Hop's use of "mate". The Galar Trainers' appearances in Pokémon Masters feature them fully voice-acted, and indeed, with the accents implied in the main games.
  • Before that, Game Freak seemed to have a slight thing for giving NPCs Scottish accents, such as a Herdier in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (understandable, as Herdier is based on a Scottish Terrier). Less understandable, though, is the old lady on the roof of Mauville City in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire whose sole purpose is to provide some flavor text about a Taillow.

• In Sluggy Freelance's "Lara Kroft-Macaroni-And-Cheese" Arc, the title character speaks in a Cockney accent. The Tomb Raider character who is being spoofed speaks in RP.
• Turn Signals on a Land Raider has Corporal Cavendish, an on-and-off character who appears when models have to be proxied due to breakage...
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, Surma has a strong Yorkshire accent (specifically Barnsley) in flashbacks. Most other characters don't have noticeable accents, but it's known that Kat's dad is Scottish and Zimmy is Brummie. Minor character Jenny seems to be West Country, with a Verbal Tic of "my love".

• TV Tropes: This trope falls victim to itself, as many non-Brits confuse "British" with "English". Mention of the other three nationalities (Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish) prevents it from being a complete facepalm. Not to mention actually mistaking a Scotsman, Welshman or Irishman for "English" can lead to... unpleasantness.
• At the Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, there are a number of students from the U.K. Several are busy faking a Received Pronunciation or Home Counties accent, with occasional slippage when they're surprised. Some, like Stunner (from Liverpool) don't fake their accents. Few of the Americans know the diff.
• "Wallace House Sings English Folksongs" claims to use 16 different dialects (Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Kent, Lancashire, Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, London, Westmoreland, Norfolk, Northumberland, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire).

• ElectricalBeast, as seen here. "I can't believe someone this English exists."
• Discussed in the Rooster Teeth Shorts episode Secret Door. Burnie, Gus and Geoff can't tell the difference between Gavin and Ben because they both have "the same" accent. Both of them protest this.
  Burnie: Yeah, we can't really tell you guys apart 'cause you both have the same pompous-ass British accent. I can't even tell what you're saying half the time.
  Gavin: What are you talking about? We don't sound anything alike; I'm from Oxford and he's from Nottingham.
  Ben: They're totally distinct accents!
  Gavin: Exactly.
  Burnie: Yeah, not a word...
• For the chicken tikka masala episode, the host of You Suck at Cooking pretends to be from "United Britain" and sports a confusing accent that's vaguely British but sounds more Australian than anything else (or Cockney if we're being charitable), despite claiming to have grown up in Cardiff.

• As noted, Wakko Warner in Animaniacs speaks with a Liverpool-ish accent, despite the fact that his siblings don't. He was intended to sound like Ringo Starr.
• In Pinky and the Brain, Pinky's voices seems to be an Estuary/Cockney effort. His VA Rob Paulsen has cited Peter Sellers as the main inspiration,
• Anti-Cosmo on The Fairly Oddparents talks with a British accent, simply to make him sound more intelligent than his fairy counterpart.
• The Lobe from Freakazoid!, amazingly with a non-standard accent for a US show. That's because he's voiced by the very English David Warner.
• Pip from South Park speaks with a deliberately muddled cross between Cockney and RP. British guest characters usually use one or the other as well. When the show devoted a two-part episode to lampooning Richard Dawkins, his primary criticism was that they didn't do his British accent right.
• Several Autobots from The Transformers have "British" accents: Hoist, Grapple, Red Alert, and Perceptor. The minor villain character Lord Chumleigh in the episode "Prime Target" spoke with what seemed to be a PS accent.
• Thomas & Friends: Considering the fact the Island of Sodor is located between the Isle of Man and England, in the more recent episodes, all of the humans were given British accents, but also half of the mechanical characters (Gordon, James, Spencer, and Diesel 10 were given English accents, and Emily, the Scottish twins, Harvey, Murdoch, and Duncan were given Scottish accents) as well. Upon their return to the series in CGI, the core narrow gauge engines (except for Duncan and Rusty; the latter was given a West Country accent) were given Welsh accents to reflect the origins of their prototypes. Some of the engines are given specific regional accents to represent where their engine types originated. Since the switch to voice acting, Duck and Oliver speak with West Country accents, because their beloved Great Western Railway primarily served the West Country. Rex, Mike, and Bert have West Country accents as well, although this probably has more to do with their proximity to the Little Western as the railway they're based on is in Cumbria. Donald and Douglas hail from Caledonia in Scotland, while Emily comes from Stirling and Duncan was built in Kilmarnock, hence their Scottish accents. And Skarloey, Rheneas, Sir Handel, and Peter Sam all speak with Welsh accents in reference to their Real Life counterparts on the Talyllyn Railway at Towyn.
• The Victorian Era flashback in Barbie in A Christmas Carol of course gives everyone British accents. The Ghost of Christmas Past even gets a Cockney accent.
• Jetta from Jem has a Cockney accent. Word of God is she wanted an actual British woman to do her voice, not an American faking one. Jetta's accent goes against her stories of being rich and royal but her bandmates are too ignorant of British accents to notice.
• All the speaking characters use standard Received Pronunciation in World of Tomorrow.
• In Spider-Man Unlimited, Bromley, one of the Human Revolutionaries, speaks with a Cockney accent.
• Garnet from Steven Universe has a noticable English accent, courtesy of her British voice actress. Strangely enough, her component gems, Ruby and Sapphire, sound American. Aquamarine uses Received Pronunciation to emphasize her snobby and condescending nature, while Bluebird Azurite (being a fusion of Aquamarine and "Eyeball" Ruby) uses an over-the-top Cockney accent. Meanwhile, Blue Diamond has an Irish accent due to being voiced by Irish singer Lisa Hannigan.