British Accents: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''I think somewhere around junction 25 of the M1, the word "the" stops at services and goes, "I can go no further! I'm going to stay here with my friends nothing and something"''|'''Michael Mcintyre''', describing the Yorkshire accent}}

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 the 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 and 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 (band)|The Beatles]].

* Just mentioning [[The Beatles (band)|"The Beatles"]] would've sufficed for 99.9% percent of people reading this... except they weren't deeply Scouse from any point they were well known. Ringo Starr was maybe the strongest (and the one with the most voice work on the record, handily) Liverpool-area accent. But choose Lister as a closer example of Merseysider scouse. (Or if the quiet invasion continues, anywhere along the northNorth Wales A55 corridor... eh? EH?)

** The Beatles are also a big exception to your average Scousers in that you can understand them. Even ''Red Dwarf''{{'}}s Lister is much more eloquent.

* [[Chap -Hop]] artists [[Professor Elemental]] and [[Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer]] have made this accent popular of late.

== {{examples|Notable uses of British accents: ==}}

=== [[Anime]] &and [[Manga]] ===

* In the English dub of ''Pokemon[[Pokémon]]'', all princesses, their butlers and maids speak in British accents. And terrible ones.

* In the English dub of ''[[Black Butler]]'' all of the characters have some form of British accent, mainly beausebecause, well it's set in Britain of course.

=== [[ComedyFilm]] ===

** [[Big Bad|Tai Lung]] was voiced by Ian McShane, using his normal voice. He is perhaps best known for playing ''[[Lovejoy]]''.

** Well, he WAS''was'' played by real Brits Sir Alec Guinness (Eps. 4-6) and Ewan McGregor(1-3)

**** And since Scotland is a part of Great Britain, that puts it squarely in this trope.

*** Also, while James Earl Jones' own accent is a mish-mash due to his moving from Mississippi to Michigan as Vader he adopts a very proper, enunciated if undefined accent.

*** Carrie Fisher affects a vague attempt at RP when talking to Tarkin on the Death Star, but really only manages to pull off [[Mid-Atlantic Accent|a stiff American accent with a British lilt]]. (Broken Coruscanti, perhaps?)

** and Queen Amidala (when speaking formally, as to the Trade League) attempts (and, sadly, fails) to use the Queen's English: 'Ai cannot condown ai corse ev ection that will led us intew wah.' It's possibly one of the most disastrous attempts at an English accent on film - only [[Mary Poppins|Dick Van Dyke]] is worse.

** 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. <ref> 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.</ref>

** 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" and the Rebel Alliance characters usually speak with American accents (granted, Obi-wan was a good guy and had a British accent, but his actor ''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 (or Italian, depending on who you ask) for a scrap dealer (Watto), and a nails-on-chalkboard ''high-pitched'' Caribbean accent (Jar Jar Binks). Then again, bad guy Count Dooko still had a Received Pronunciation accent... because he was played by [[Christopher Lee]]!

* [[Angelina Jolie]] adopts a rather convincing RP accent for her rolesrole as Lara Croft in the ''[[Lara Croft: Tomb Raider|Lara Croft Tomb Raider]]'' films and again as Franky in ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]''.

* Don Cheadle attempts a British accent in ''[[Ocean's Eleven]]'' and its sequels; itsit's 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!). HoeverHowever a notiblenotable mention is Collin, who is convinced he can pick up any girl in America because of his accent. ItsIt's funny because it works (to a ridiculous degree)!

* [[Lampshade Hanging|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".

* ''Francis[[Bram Ford CoppolaStoker's Dracula]]'' mostly has British characters played by U.S. actors while the Brit thesps get to play "continentals". Especially notable for [[Keanu Reeves]]' bizzarebizarre rendition of R.P.RP outdoing both Dick van Dyke and Natalie Portman by some distance.

=== [[Literature]] ===

* Similarly Bram Stoker's original ''[[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 obsoleteextinct nowadays.

=== [[Live -Action TV]] ===

* 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 [[Boarding School|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).

* The new series of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is an interesting case. [[Christopher Eccleston|Chris Eccleston]]'s Ninth Doctor has a Salford/Manchester accent and keeps it for his role, but [[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. Earlier in the series' history, Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor retained the actor's Scottish accent, while most other Doctors, including the latest, [[Matt Smith]], use a variation of RP. There are various [[Fan Wank]] ideas over why the Doctor's accent changes.

* In ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined(2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'', 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.

** Oddly enough for a show that usually uses actors' real accents, Atherton Wing (villain of the week in the episode "Shindig") has a slight American accent, despite being played by an actor born and raised in Birmingham...

*** Not true -- Juliet Landau's accent as Drusilla is admittedly a bit "Cor blimey guv!" theatrical cockney, but she gets the actual pronounciationspronunciations correct on the whole, unlike James Marsters who is far more hit and miss/jarring to a UK native with his accent.

* The British comedy ''[['Allo 'Allo!|Allo Allo]]'' is set in France, and it's presumed everyone speaks French there. When Michelle speaks English to the British airmen, it's presented as her accent changing from comedy-French to British RP. 'Now listen, chaps...'

* 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 rehersalrehearsal 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.

* ''[[Pobol y Cwm]]'', a Welsh-language [[Soap Opera|opera sebon]] full of accents from all over Wales, and even the occassional ''Sais'' wandering in from England and looking around in terror.

* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20150801101431/http://donyougorouninrountorero.com/ Don' You Go Rounin' Roun to Re Ro'] is a can't-miss British film, if you like movies you cannot understand.

=== [[Music]] ===

British rock singers frequently change their accents while singing to make themselves sound a bit more American or at least [[Mid-Atlantic Accent|"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 that enthusiastically embrace their regional accents are at least somewhat noteworthy.

* [[The Beatles (band)|The Beatles]], especially John Lennon, were fond of using exaggerated joke accents in recording sessions. From ''Revolver'' onwardsonward, 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" and "Polythene Pam", to name a few. An equally jokey London accent is used at the start of "Two Of Us".

* 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 "song" (if that is what you call it...) 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....

** Which is kind of awkward if youryou're from Sheffield because, being a very urban and modern area, ''very few of us are like that any more.''

* [[Kate Nash]] doesn't attempt to disguise her accent, which has an interesting effect on her cover of the aformentionedaforementioned [[Arctic Monkeys]]' "Fluorescent Adolescent."

** andAnd The Twang do this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwmbkb_ZYgE incredibly well] as well. thethey're brummies.

=== [[TabletopRecorded Gamesand Stand Up Comedy]] ===

=== [[Theatre]] ===

* ''[[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.

=== [[Video Games]] ===

* 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 [[MI 6]] 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 [[Darkstalkers|Morrigan Aensland]] is now (finally) voiced with a (General) Scottish accent in the English dub (despite her voice actress being Welsh), while [[Guardians of the Galaxy|Rocket Raccoon]] in ''[[Updated Rerelease|Ultimate]]'' speaks with a Cockney accent despite his voice actor, Greg Ellis, being from Lancashire.

* ''[[Fable (video game series)|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.

* Male Voice 1 for the Boss in ''[[Saints Row]] 2'' has a Mockney accent that wavers between autheticauthentic (the VA is British) and perplexingly loose. Many of the Britishisms are correctly used, but oddly takes the American '"ass'" over the British '"arse'".

* ''[[Professor Layton]]'' has...well, Layton. 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.

* 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 accents to the Dalish.

* 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 [[Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds|rock opera]], while the human units have a mixture of English- and Scottish-sounding voice sets.

=== [[Web Original]] ===

* At the [[Super-Hero School|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.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120518151947/http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1189 "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). House, born on Gerunsey and taken to Canada at age 9, was a professor of Folklore in New York when the record was made (1952), and I remember when it was first issued as being the first examples I had heard of most of these dialects. Being a born and bred USian I can't swear to the accuracy. It's certainly the first time I ever heard "On Ilkley Moor Bar t'At"!

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbvZeOnHI_w This] hilarious [[Let's Play]] of ''[[Super Mario 64]]''. "I can't believe someone this English exists."

=== [[Web Comics]] ===

=== [[Western Animation]] ===

* [[Evil Twin|Anti-Cosmo]] on ''[[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]]'' talks with a British accent, simply to make him sound more intellegentintelligent 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 englishEnglish David Warner.

* ConseideringConsidering the fact the [[Thomas the Tank Engine|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, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the Scottish twins,]] Murdoch, and Duncan were given Scottish accents) as well.

=== All The Tropes ===

[[Category:British Accents{{PAGENAME}}]]