AMIGAGOD

It`s us up in glesga that really talk the best english. Yejistcannaebeatit.yeknowwhitameanpal.

Earl_of_Rochester

City of Culture

srb7677

I can understand the confusion.

Basically, Britain is an island made up of three seperate nations - England, Scotland, and Wales - which are united in a political union. The United Kingdom includes, as well as these three, Northern Ireland which is not part of the island of Britain.

Thus, the UK is England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Britain is just England, Scotland, and Wales without Northern Ireland.
England is just one of the nations of Britain, likewise Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is NOT part of Britain, but IS part of the UK.

Has that cleared things up at all?

tjadams

This is an English accent to me, who just surprising sounds a lot like David Beckham

Clodius

And this (from about 10 seconds in) is the American accent to my ears

History Chick

The audio quality isn't great on this but it will give you some idea of a few of the main English accents:


Her accents aren't always perfect either - obviously she can't do a Manc or Geordie accent, she didn't even attempt them. She seemed to be lumping the Manc accent into a Yorkshire accent by claiming Coronation Street has Yorkshire accents but Manchester isn't even in the county of Yorkshire and never was.

Anyway, if you want to hear the Manc accent, just listen to any interview with Liam or Noel Gallagher (this is my favorite but obviously I'm bias, my husband being a Manc - though to be honest, he doesn't have a very thick Manc accent...):

redcoat

In some cases its possible to tell the difference in accents of people living around 20 miles from each other in Britain, its that varied.

Earl_of_Rochester

That doesn't include my own county (Kent) as we seem to have been lumbered in with London. Tho a lot of Londoners have moved down here recently so Estuary English (Cockney as shown in TJ's post) has taken over a lot of the North Kent towns. Canterbury and other places in the Weald still have a more traditional Southern English though (BBC News English).



Counties and county towns shown here, just to add to the confusion, they all have their own flags and county towns. A bit like Texas has the State Flag and Austin as capital. Kent has a white horse and Maidstone, Essex has 3 daggers and Chelmsford etc.


Kent


Essex

Belgarion

I've always wondered how so many different accents managed to develop in such a small area, and how strong they remain even after decades of exposure to mass media. Even after 30 years I still somtimes have trouble understanding my wifes relllies when visitng Scotland, and she still comes out with the occsaional word or phrase i've never heard before.

Davidius

I get the same thing from my Somerset born wife, she will occasionally come out with words I have never heard before. The other day I lifted the front door mat to find a massive nest of woodlice. Wendia said "look at all them chickypigs"! I thought she was messing me about but the next door neighbour called them that as well. They sometimes call them 'grandfathers' too. Bloody weird these west country types.

My in-laws all thought I was really posh when I first moved here as they could not tell the difference between my working class 'estuary English' accent and a posh RP accent. As far as they were concerned there was only one south eastern accent and it was a posh one.