I understand that there are regional dialects. I easily understand English as spoken by members of the royal family, the aristocracy and the journalists of the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC).
I have watched movies (with English-language subtitles) that are set in different regions of Britain, in which the actors who portray the characters purportedly speak regional dialects. I struggled to understand some of the regional dialects (Yorkshire, Cockney, etc. ) as spoken in the movies but it was difficult without the aid of subtitles.
I have read comments in this site (and elsewhere), where some Britons state that some of the regional dialects "almost sounds like a foreign language."
Okay, maybe it is difficult to explain in words (and perhaps a stupid question on my part) but how different in pronunciation are the regional dialects from the English spoken by the royal family, BBC, etc?
Thanks for your help!
You already know, as you've heard some of the regional accents and dialects in movies. They really ARE like that! So I don't need to explain in words as you've heard it :)
There's nothing purported about it at all. My Dad was from the east Midlands of England and moved to London for work, then got married and produced me and my sister, so I had a different accent from him. He had the northern "flat a", I don't. When we went up to Derbyshire to visit relatives, a cousin said to us "Don't you talk funny?" Well, yes, we do compared with him. He now works in Devon and I expect they think HE sounds funny too.
It comes from having a very long history, when for most of the time that our nations have existed, anyone who wasn't rich couldn't get very far. If you couldn't afford a horse, all you could do was walk. So every little area evolved its own way of speaking. Better communication and travel is levelling it out a bit but that only really started on a mass scale for ordinary people with the first trains in the 1820s. That's less than two centuries ago and not much compared with the length of British history. (When there's a thousand years of the stuff we can't possibly do all of it in school!)
These days of course we hear all sorts of different British accents on TV and radio, so we've got used to them. Though even I could do with subtitles for some, particularly Glasgow and Northern Ireland. In the 1980s the BBC appointed a political editor called John Cole, who had a very thick Belfast accent. I know of at least one other BBC journalist who objected on the grounds that nobody would understand him, but they appointed him anyway because he knew what he was talking about. At least he spoke fairly slowly but I still had to listen carefully!
Talking of BBC journalists, have you come across Huw Edwards? He certainly doesn't speak "BBC English" - he has a "sing-songy" accent which to me is obviously Welsh. Wales has its own Welsh language which is nothing like English so if you go there, you might just hear that spoken. You will certainly see it on signposts as all public signs there have to be bilingual by law. Don't worry about that though as only 20% of the Welsh speak it fluently and they will speak English as well. But if you turn on the TV there and hear what sounds like total gibberish, it's only Welsh :) Try another channel!
BBC/royal family/aristocratic English is just the "educated" accent of the south east, known as Received Pronunciation. The further away from London you go, the less you will hear of it, and it would be true to say that definitely less than half the population speaks it. Even in London, Cockney or something close to it is widespread (traditionally a Cockney is someone "born within the sound of Bow Bells", the bells of St Mary le Bow church, just along the road from St Paul's Cathedral). And you're likely to find many non-white immigrants with their own accents deriving from what happens when they have their native language and then try to speak English. If you can't understand anyone, just ask them to repeat it more slowly. It's more a matter of accent than dialect - there ARE actual different words for things in different regions, but not that many.
totally different...for most people the hard ones to understand are Geordie ..Liverpool and black country ...ie a few years back a Birmingham firm relocated to Dudley ..in the black country ..say 20 miles away ...they had to employ an interpreter ..they could not understand the locals ...im a cockney ..we cannot pronounce our th`s ...so instead of things ...we say fings ...but don't worry about it ..you will be fine ..after all I have travelled the states ...even I can tell the difference between ..a new York ./texas./tennesee ./calfornia accent
There are many different local accents, mostly very easy to understand once you get used to them although people from Lancashire and the Glasgow area of Scotland can be a little incomprehensible
Watch out for the regional dialects too. Some Brits speak with strong accents, but also use different words for many things at the same time.
The differences aren't usually too bad, and people will usually speak slower if they realise you're foreign. I find the accent of many people from Northern Ireland particularly difficult to understand, and if you're spelling things, it's worth knowing that the name of the letter J is "jay" in most of the country, but a lot of people in Scotland call it "jie" (rhymes with "die").
It is not as bad as you seem to think, you will be fine with the accents, might struggle with the Scottish one as even us Brits struggle with that one.
