Local accents in UK (and abroad)

[colchestersid]

We live in Colchester and had to go to Sudbury today (about 15 miles / 20 minutes away)

Is it unique to the UK that two towns so close together can have such completely different accents? The guy I was talking to had such a strong Suffolk accent I could barely understand what he was saying. Does this happen in other countries/languages as well?

[Aitch]

Certainly happens in Holland,. It amazes me that such a small country can have so many distinctive accents in such close proximity(often just a couple of kilometres apart).

[San Bernardhinault]

The difference between the city of Oxford and Oxfordshire was always very, erm, pronounced.

Ursus can say more, but I have a feeling that there are big differences around New York, when you cross the Hudson and East Rivers.

[ursus arctos]

Very much so.

What outsiders consider the "classic" New York accent is very much a creature of Brooklyn and Long Island (the suburban development of which was largely driven by white flight from Brooklyn). The "Jersey Shore/Sopranos" variant is derivative therefrom, but distinguishable to locals.

Manhattan south of 125th Street has always been a sort of RP enclave, largely due to the very high numbers of transplants and the expectations of business. Queens and the Bronx are very much influenced by their relatively high numbers of non-native English speakers, the ethnic composition of which can change quite significantly over relatively short periods of time.

[Snake Plissken]

I can pick out a Burnley, Accrington and Blackburn accent despite there being a total of 12 miles between them.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I can pick out a Burnley, Accrington and Blackburn accent despite there being a total of 12 miles between them.

Blackburn's definitely different to Bolton, which is different to Manchester. Oldham's also quite distinctive.

[Duncan Gardner]

As an alternative...I've lived in England since 1985 and can't always tell people from Nottingham, Leeds and Manchester apart

[nmrfox]

Northampton is definitely southern, with pronunciation like car-stle, gra-arse and barth. Leicester just 25 miles north takes the correct northern version of such words by removing the superfluous 'r' and putting the emphasis on a hard 'a' (no sniggering at the back).

[Lang Spoon]

Flat vowels and Proper Consonants are fucking boss.

Used to mildly perplex me that films like Dead Man's Shoes were apparently set in the Midlands but sounded Oop North to me, I expected all Midlands accents to sound Brummie.

[ursus arctos]

Returning to the OP, barely intelligible local accents here tend to be markers of geographic and cultural isolation.

The Gullah-influenced dialect of some islands off of South Carolina, for instance, or the High Tider dialect of North Carolina and Chesapeake Bay islands that preserves elements of Elizabethan English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Tider

[EIM]

Different parts of Manchester have different accents. It's fucking ridiculous.

[Toby Gymshorts]

It's the same with villages and towns in Cumbria. 3 miles apart, markedly different accents (to the trained ear, at least).

[DCI Harry Batt]

Different parts of Manchester have different accents. It's fucking ridiculous.

Is there a "Northern Quarter" accent?

[Sporting]

We live in Colchester and had to go to Sudbury today (about 15 miles / 20 minutes away)

Is it unique to the UK that two towns so close together can have such completely different accents? The guy I was talking to had such a strong Suffolk accent I could barely understand what he was saying. Does this happen in other countries/languages as well?

My sister lives in Sudbury; has done for 25 years or so. She hasn't picked up the accent, though.

[EIM]

Is there a "Northern Quarter" accent?

Yeah. Home counties.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Different parts of Manchester have different accents. It's fucking ridiculous.

Yes, varying patterns within the same conurbation (as Henry Higgins knew way back): I can easily tell a Walker (Wahkah) accent from one across the river in Hebburn or Jarrow (Jarruh), even tho it’s only a few hundred yards and there used to be ferries between them, for the shipyards

[andrew7610]

I have quite a strong regional accent, the region in question being 'Sussex/Surrey borders'.

Wherever else in the UK you live, you'll identify this immediately as 'posh twat'.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

can't always tell people from Nottingham, Leeds and Manchester apart

Really, DG? I'm not too familiar with the Nottingham accent, but I believe that in Manchester, like in most of industrial/post-industrial Lancashire, words like "book" and "look" are pronounced so as to rhyme with "spook". That's just the most blatant difference I'm aware of between Manc and Leeds.

[Sporting]

We live in Colchester and had to go to Sudbury today (about 15 miles / 20 minutes away)

Is it unique to the UK that two towns so close together can have such completely different accents? The guy I was talking to had such a strong Suffolk accent I could barely understand what he was saying. Does this happen in other countries/languages as well?

My sister lives in Sudbury; has done for 25 years or so. She hasn't picked up the accent, though.

[EIM]

Really, DG? I'm not too familiar with the Nottingham accent, but I believe that in Manchester, like in most of industrial/post-industrial Lancashire, words like "book" and "look" are pronounced so as to rhyme with "spook". That's just the most blatant difference I'm aware of between Manc and Leeds.

Wheras in Leeds they don't know what the fook a book is.

Manchester isn't a spook/book place. That's very Bolton/Burnley. It's a flatter oo sound than spook.

[Sporting]

The best "book" pronunciation can be found in Liverpool.

[DCI Harry Batt]

No-one actually says "fook" though, do they?

[Balderdasha]

China has a huge range of different accents, dialects and even languages. In theory everyone is taught standard Mandarin Chinese in school, but depending on how much education any individual received affects how much of it they may remember in later life. Chongqing had a very specific accent. So, for example, if you want to say "I don't know", in Mandarin Chinese it sounds like "woah boo joo dow", but in Chongqing dialect (known as Chongqinghua) it sounds like "woah boo shao day" and it also has different tones and emphasis. Chongqinghua in general sounds more rhythmical and more sarcastic. People from the countryside tend to have the strongest accents and a farmer from the outskirts of Shanghai, say, probably wouldn't find it easy to understand a farmer from the outskirts of Chongqing. Cantonese goes a whole step further and uses a different version of the written characters (Cantonese uses traditional characters whereas Mandarin uses Mao's "simplified" characters). Veering into the different languages of the minorities you get Hakka and Malay and Arabic which are completely different.

I don't know if you get differences over as short distances as you do in the UK, but there are definite differences across provinces and cities.

[EIM]

No-one actually says "fook" though, do they?

Fuck and book rhyme. Spook and fuck don't.

[ursus arctos]

I didn't know that Cantonese was written with Traditional characters. The simplified characters also cause issues in Japan, because the adaptation was of the traditional set.

There was a fascinating recent Radiolab on how the party used romanisation programmes for phones and computers to promote standard Mandarin.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts...es/wubi-effect