The UK is a relatively small country, yet its accents are anything but uniform. Each has its own distinctive characteristics, and, even within the same region, voices can sound wildly different. The accents from neighbouring cities such as Manchester and Liverpool, for example, vary dramatically.
For an actor, having a range of accents in your repertoire is a huge strength. It can open up more roles and make you a more versatile choice for casting directors. But learning an accent also requires careful study and hard work. “People in the UK are very proud of their accent,” says accent coach Rachel Coffey. “If you don’t respect them, you’ll find you might offend an audience or they simply won’t find your portrayal believable.”
Here’s what actors need to know about the UK’s regional accents and the best way to approach learning them.
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It’s a difficult question! Accents have developed and changed over hundreds of years. And, according to Coffey, much of the UK’s regional variation comes down to migration patterns and history. “Accents developed before people travelled widely,” she says, with communities developing their own way of speaking on a more local scale.
The arrival of mass media didn’t immediately erase those differences. Coffey points out that when radio and early television became widespread, relatively few regional voices were represented. Instead, it was mainly Received Pronunciation (often shortened to RP).
That history helps explain why Received Pronunciation became so strongly associated with being British, while other regional accents were less often heard on TV.
When starting to learn a new accent, Coffey advises beginning by thinking about how nasal it sounds. “You will generally find that accents that developed in cities – like Manchester, Liverpool, and London – tend to be more nasal than accents that were established in more rural communities such as Yorkshire, Norfolk, and the West Country,” she says.
Coffey connects that to the Industrial Revolution. In environments filled with machinery and heavy industry, people found it harder to hear one another. Nasal voices carried sound more effectively.
Coffey also advises thinking about how different accents say their vowels. She highlights “strut” (as in “strut,” “cup,” and “cut”) and “foot” (as in “foot,” “put,” and “book”) vowels, as well as the “trap” (as in “cat,” “trap,” “hat,” and “hand”) and “bath” vowels (as in “bath,” “dance,” and “grass”), as important examples of the north-south divide in English pronunciation. “In each word in the pair [the north] has the same vowel as each other, and a different vowel from each other down south,” she says. Those distinctions can help explain why northern and southern English voices can sound so different, even when speakers use exactly the same words.
There are far more UK dialects and accents than can fit into one guide, and you should approach every accent on a case-by-case basis. Still, here are some of the main UK accents you may be asked to learn.
Scouse accent
The Scouse accent is associated with Liverpool and Merseyside, and it has a distinctive rhythm and sound. But Liverpool is also a useful example of why actors need to be precise. Coffey says Liverpool and Birmingham accents are often “mashed up together” by performers, despite having “distinct differences.” Some key characteristics of the Scouse accent include its fast, nasal sound and rising intonation. Words ending in “k” or “ck” (like “back” or “book”) are also said with a raspy sound.
Brummie accent
The Brummie accent comes from Birmingham and the surrounding West Midlands. And, like the Scouse accent, it is one that is easy to caricature. “The Birmingham accent is actually placed in the centre of the mouth, under the nose. The back of the tongue is slightly lifted, and the front of the mouth is soft but contained,” Coffey says. Try adding some key Brummie words to the accent, too, such as “bab,” which is often used in place of the word “love.”
Manchester accent
“Manchester these days is very different from traditional Lancashire,” Coffey says, noting that the distinction can be confusing because, technically, Manchester is in Lancashire. A good place to start with the Manchester accent is lowering your vocal pitch, adding a nasal twang, and flattening your vowels. “H” sounds at the start of words should be dropped, and “y” at the end of words should be pronounced with an “eh” sound, as in “happy” or “funny.”
Yorkshire accent
Coffey places Yorkshire among the more rural accents, which means it doesn’t have the nasal quality of some of the others. She instead advises learning to flatten your vowels – like using a short “ah” in the word bath. You should also turn double-vowel sounds, like in the word “make,” into single, shorter sounds. So “make” would be said like “mek” and “take” would be said “tek.”
Cockney accent
The Cockney accent is associated with London’s East End and is one of the UK’s most recognisable thanks to its dominance in TV shows such as Eastenders. Dropping the “h” is key to this accent, Coffey says. So the word “hello” changes to “ello.” And “th” sounds are often changed to an “f,” so “think” becomes “fink.” Hard “t” sounds in the middle or end of words are also softened, so “water,” for example, becomes “wa’er.”
Geordie accent
You’ll find the Geordie accent in Newcastle and the wider Tyneside area, and “The Toon” certainly has a very unique sound (fans of the reality TV series Geordie Shore will know this well!). This is another accent in which vowel sounds are important. Words with long “a” sounds, such as “lane,” become an “e” sound, like “lean.” And “al” combination sounds turn into an “or,” so “walk” becomes “work.” Geordies have a lot of slang you can learn too: “howay” means “come on,” “canny” means “nice,” and “wey aye” means “yes.”
Coffey advises taking things slow. “Start with one accent and learn it really well,” she says. “Mastering one accent helps train your ear and teaches you that what you see on the page is not necessarily what will be coming out of your mouth.”
Coffey says all accent learning should begin by “figuring out the rhythm, placement, and key vowels…then refine it.” Once you’ve established the foundations of an accent, you can start thinking about how individual characters may differ. Two people from the same region won’t necessarily have identical voices, so consider their background and age when applying accents to roles. “Be brave to begin with,” Coffey says. “Then become more specific and understand how different characters from the same region might vary in accent.”
