British Accents

October 8, 2005 7:28 PM

Can anyone identify this British accent?

This link will take you to a page with 4 videos, I'm interested in the one marked 'Responsible Tourism.' (It's only 1m30sec, and loads quickly) A tour guide named Vanessa Adnitt starts talking about 25 seconds in. Her accent has such a drawling sound to it, and I wondered what part of Britain that accent comes from. I tried researching it myself, but I discovered that there's over 200 regional accents, so I thought I'd defer to the experts here.

Two side questions:

1. Aren't Americans usually thought of as speaking in a sort of drawl?
2. Which accents are considered more upper class, and which are less so - outside of any stereotypes like Cambridge and Cockney? I hope this type of question doesn't offend anyone, this 'accent rating' was actually introduced to me by a few Brits - they would say things like, "Her accent is all 'jolly good' and and hockey sticks." I asked them to clarify, and they said it was a really posh accent.

Note : I'm not asking these questions so I can make judgements about people - I just like accents and the stories and people associated with them. Someone from Northumberland once recited some kind of crazy poem to me with lines like "Nowt from aught" -that translated to "Something from nothing." I love that sort of thing.

posted by Liosliath to society & culture (34 comments total)

Your Vanessa Adnitt, I reckon, might be from Hull (Northern England, Yorkshire), mainly from the way she pronounces 'but' and 'tour'. I could be wrong, it's 3:41am over here, and I've just got the nightbus home. I know a girl from Stoke that says 'but' like that too, so, yeah. Otherwise, she sounds quite Southern.

"Nowt from aught" is certainly Northern. Most likely either North-Eastern (Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland), or Yorkshire. Generally, in my experience (I was born in Sunderland, grew up in Durham, and studied in Leeds and Wakefield [Yorkshire]), it's spelled, "owt", not "aught" :)

Personally, I find that some US Americans speak with a definite drawl. William Gibson is a perfect example; he's a Virginia boy, I think, who fled to Canada to avoid the draft, but has a languid, glottal sounding that really puts the draw in drawl.

Accent-wise, in the UK, your Southern accents are generally treated as the posh ones. Your Queen's English ('Received Pronounciation', if you'd like to get technical) is probably considered the most upper class, but various monied towns around the capital have developed a reputation for being 'better', when compared to others, like cockney. Northern accents in general are considered working class, including Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle), Mancunian (Manchester) and the Yorkshire accent (especially in Barnsley, where you might as well hire a translator [no offense, Barnslians, I love you guys, but it's true]).

That said, there are further exceptions like Brummie (Birmingham, in the Midlands) and Cornish (Devon, Somerset, Cornwall) that are definite drawls that attract much mockery, without being particularly Northern at all.
posted by armoured-ant at 7:50 PM on October 8, 2005

I'm guessing she's from South Africa, by the pace of her speech and her sharp "ee" sounds.
posted by Brian James at 7:53 PM on October 8, 2005

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, the Speech Accent Archive is perfect for this sort of thing. It has samples of both native and non-native English speakers reading a standard phrase.

I think one of the South Africa samples sounds close to the one you provided, but I didn't compare it with any others.
posted by Brian James at 8:03 PM on October 8, 2005

Pretty much what armoured-ant said. She uses a lot of northern-style pronunciation ("riiight", "aasked", "set oop"), but doesn't actually sound like she's from up north. She's a bit of a mystery.

I wouldn't call her posh. She sounds a bit like a spoilt brat, but mainly from the vaguely babyish way she speaks (what you're calling her drawl I guess), and what she's speaking about, rather than any regional accent.
posted by cillit bang at 8:07 PM on October 8, 2005

I met Ms. Adnitt, and she claimed to be from Britain, but who knows? :)

Armoured-Ant, thank you for the reference to Received Pronounciation, the wiki on it is really interesting.

In general, do most British citizens recognize regional accents easily? I can tell the difference between people from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but the various Southern accents - except the easy ones like Cajun - escape me. (Like Holly Hunter - I would never have guessed she's from Georgia.)
posted by Liosliath at 8:08 PM on October 8, 2005

Also, since she's a tour guide, I wonder if it's possible that she was picking up accents from her groups? I know there's must be some kind of technical term for that.

Mr. James, thank you for the reference to the Speech Accent Archive, but how accurate can it be if the speaker from Glasgow was as clear as day to me? Ha ha.
posted by Liosliath at 8:19 PM on October 8, 2005

Googling her turns up nowt but this page which seems to be where she got the international bug -- an outfit called Raleigh International. It has her e-mail, so you can try asking. The username is a tad cute.

In addition to Received Pronunciation, you should look at U vs. Non-U (U=Upper-class), a somewhat faddish term relating to the same trend.

In general, do most British citizens recognize regional accents easily?

I've understood that to be the case, but I think it's more at a general level -- I'm American and I can just barely distinguish Brummie and Liverpudlian and so forth, but surely a Brit has a slightly finer tuning to this sort of thing. There are a few linguist-types who are renowned for being able to identify where a person was born to within a few miles by their accent; I'm pretty sure I saw, or read about and reconstructed in my mind, a TV interview where Ian McKellen's Lancastrian accent was pinned down to a couple of towns. This may be a skill lumped in with trainspotting, though.

A good movie for this is Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. Questions of class and accent figured importantly in the subtext of the real-life incident and the Dunedin culture of the 1950s, and were painstakingly represented in the film.
posted by dhartung at 9:28 PM on October 8, 2005

In general, do most British citizens recognize regional accents easily?
it's more a matter of class accent discrimination/perception I think. The social heirarchy in the UK is very pyramidical still, despite the noticable ridiculousness of the royal family; less so than fifty years ago, but there's still a lot more classism than regionalism. (I'm an expat Brit in California)
posted by anadem at 10:23 PM on October 8, 2005

My guess would be North East, but not as far North East as Newcastle. Somewhere in the York, Hull, Sheffield triangle, perhaps.
posted by normy at 11:39 PM on October 8, 2005

She sounds just like a friend of mine who is originally from the Hull area.
posted by nomis at 12:19 AM on October 9, 2005

She sounds just like a friend of mine who is originally form the Hull area.
posted by nomis at 12:20 AM on October 9, 2005

Correction on Side Question 2 : I accidentally implied that my British friends were commenting on Vanessa's accent - they weren't, it was someone else entirely.

Sheffield, I think that's it! I have a vague memory of her mentioning that town.

BTW, Cillit Bang, you're dead on with the guess on her personality - so I wasn't really interested in contacting her to say, "Hey, your accent is interesting, where did you say you were from?"

This whole thing was brought on by another tour guide who recently visited, her accent was quite similar to Vanessa's, but she was from New Zealand. Didn't sound like any Kiwi I've ever heard before, so it got me to wondering.
posted by Liosliath at 12:48 AM on October 9, 2005

That's an East Midlands accent - Derby, Leicester, Nottingham. I grew up in Derby and recognised it at once. I even sound a bit like that myself!
posted by essexjan at 1:28 AM on October 9, 2005

I saw that the East Midlands encompasses quite a large area, and is just south of Yorkshire - could she still be from Sheffield, and just share some characteristics of Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire?
posted by Liosliath at 1:33 AM on October 9, 2005

That does indeed sound like a "northern" Midlands accent - probably Derby or Nottingham.
posted by influx at 2:45 AM on October 9, 2005

My guess - Yorkshire area and has gone to University elsewhere in the country (hence the slightly posher accent than most of those from the area). I live and work in Sheffield and speak to about 100 people a day from the Yorkshire area and it certainly seems to be the locale. Nobody says "but" like a denizen Yorkshire.

p.s. Don't tell people from Derbyshire they sound like people from Yorkshire, the battle of the Dee-Daa vs. Woolyback rages even to this day.
posted by longbaugh at 2:47 AM on October 9, 2005

My girlfriend and I are both from Yorkshire and that isn't an accent we'd consider Yorkshire. She's obviously well educated and therefore that might confuse things a little but our best bet is South Derbyshire / North Midlands.

Rich & Amanda (in York)
posted by hardcode at 2:56 AM on October 9, 2005

A little bit further north than Derby, I think. ('Adnitt' isn't a common British surname, and Googling brings up a few Adnitts from just to the east of Sheffield, near the border with Derbyshire, which very much fits her accent. Is that cheating?)

It's smoothed out, though, perhaps because (as a guide) it makes it easier for her to be understood by the people on tours: you'll often find the same dilution or homogenisation of accents with flight attendants. I subconsciously developed a 'tutorial' accent at university, which meant that I wouldn't have to explain what I'd just said in certain cases where it might be embarrassing. And it's that smoothing which makes it harder to place.

As for recognising accents: yes, we're pretty well tuned, though it's a bit like that New Yorker cover showing the world as seen from Manhattan. I can distinguish between my own accent and that of someone brought up ten miles in either direction, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish Devon from Somerset. Hence longbaugh's caution: being slightly wrong when trying to place someone from their accent is often likely to cause minor offence. It's basically the product of having lots of people brought up in a small space, with historically less mobility: the differences manifest themselves over smaller areas.

Status plays a part, though: there are some 'posh' accents that aren't really regional, such as the 'jolly hockey sticks' accent that seems to be a product of going to a 'gels' boarding school...
posted by holgate at 3:03 AM on October 9, 2005

Now I think about it, I hada manager at Apple from Nottingham, and he said 'oop'/'up'. So there's a potential connection there. But Sheffield/Derby sounds right, too.
posted by armoured-ant at 3:14 AM on October 9, 2005

Also the thing to remember about a lot of accents is that they're not necessarily inherent to a place. I grew up in Somerset and I can't remember meeting anyone with a proper Somerset accent.
posted by cillit bang at 3:19 AM on October 9, 2005

I'm from Sheffield, but left six years ago to go to a notoriously posh university and get a job and do other grown-up things. As a result, my accent is weaker than is was. I wouldn't be surprised if Vanessa was from Sheffield or North Derbyshire, and all that travelling has had a similar effect, because she sounds just like me.

"Jolly hockey sticks" (which is what your friends probably said, rather than "jolly good" and "hockey sticks") is a derogatory description of the behaviour of wealthy, sporty girls who go to public school (the oldest, "best" private schools). The male equivalent is the Hooray Henry. I guess "valley girl" is roughly an American equivalent, but doesn't imply the same extreme enthusiasm.

On the subject of nowt and owt (+1 for that spelling), here's a poem about the Yorskhire character that I've learnt (since it's on the side of a mug I often use):

A Yorkshireman's Advice To His Son

Hear all, see all, say nowt
And if ever tha does owt for nowt
Allus do it for thesen.
posted by caek at 5:59 AM on October 9, 2005

Also consider there's a line of isoglosses across the UK where vowel sounds above tend to pronounced in a way more usual to the American ear. The way vowel sounds are pronounced below are considered by Americans to be distinctly more English.

That is, a Northern English accent pronounces 'grass' in a way more common in the US, whereas the Southern way to prounce 'grass' in the UK is quite distinct and unique in English.

Besides, why doesn't anyone just e-mail her? I found her e-mail address quite easily.. there are only three results on Google for her name after all.

My hunch is that it's actually not an East Midlands accent at all, but I detect a little of Warrington there. I'd suspect that she moved around a lot as a child, but that she spent at least a couple of her early years in the North-West, contrary to what most of you suspect here (just a hunch!).
posted by wackybrit at 6:20 AM on October 9, 2005

I think I can be of assistance here because she sounds like she could well be from my point of origin - Grimsby, or the north Lincolnshire/ Humberside area. Armoured_ant may be right with Hull too, although to my ear she doesn't sound Yorkie enough for that.

There are a few giveaways - the 'airk' sound used in words like "word" or "work". That's very typical. Grimsby, Scunthorpe, rural N. Lincs... pretty sure about this.

Definitely not S. Africa, by the way. She's as Brit as Yorkshire pud, just not quite from the same area.
posted by Decani at 11:51 AM on October 9, 2005

caek: You forgot the other part of the Yorkshireman's motto... Eat all, drink all, pay nowt.
posted by methylsalicylate at 12:44 PM on October 9, 2005

methylsalicylate: you're quite right. I smashed the mug the motto appeared on a couple of years ago, and my memory is not what it once was.
posted by caek at 1:02 PM on October 9, 2005

Caek, you're right that they initially said "Jolly hockey sticks," then I asked them to elaborate even further - hence the "jolly good" and "hockey sticks." Good one!
posted by Liosliath at 7:10 PM on October 9, 2005

This page has her mail address, in case you want to ask her yourself where she's from.
posted by Panfilo at 10:53 PM on October 9, 2005

I think the 'she's South African' comments come from those who didn't read the question, or at least not the part where it said that this voice starts speaking about 25 seconds in.
posted by altolinguistic at 2:24 AM on October 10, 2005

Just another little thought on this, I was born in London, lived in the south of England for about 18 years and have moved between Derbyshire and Yorkshire for the past 8 or 9 years so not only do I get to be a southern shandy drinking puff but also an honorary northern monkey too. My accent has never changed at all in this time, but that's because I speak proper English (like wot 'er Majesty does).
posted by longbaugh at 3:47 AM on October 10, 2005

If you're interested in the variety of British accents, you might want to check out the BBC's look at British accents and voices.

I can't spot anything particularly distinctive about her accent, to be honest.
posted by badlydubbedboy at 4:52 AM on October 10, 2005

Heh heh, BadlyDubbedBoy, but she certainly doesn't sound like she's from Cardiff. I wonder what you would make of my accent, then, if you think hers isn't that distinctive? ;)
posted by Liosliath at 9:13 AM on October 10, 2005

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions. Still not entirely sure where she's from, but all the guesses were the best part.

About emailing her - I thought of that, but frankly, I didn't care for her all that much. Just curious about her accent, since I heard someone who sounded similar.
posted by Liosliath at 9:16 AM on October 10, 2005

Well, I listened to the voices on BDB's link, and I think I'm mistaking Vanessa's affected drawl as being part of her accent, when it's actually just a personal quirk. I found all the accents in the suggested areas (Yorkshire, East Midlands) rather pleasant to the ear, while hers is not. (Just personal opinion, folks!)
posted by Liosliath at 9:28 AM on October 10, 2005

Liosliath: that's 'cos she's from where I said, not Yorkshire or the Midlands. And that accent is not pleasant to the ear. Which is why I'm glad mine got mutated via twenty years of London.
posted by Decani at 5:25 PM on October 10, 2005