Fun Easy English - English facts

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Read about the different English accents throughout The World

English accents throughout The World

Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into their English speech. Even among native speakers, as seen below, many different accents exist. Some of the regional accents are easily identified with certain characteristics.

Grammar differences (e.g. the lack of tense, number, gender etc.) in different languages often lead to grammatical mistakes that are tell-tale signs of the origin. Sometimes non-verbal body language also gives away the origin of the speaker.

Another factor is how the English language is taught to young school children. The pronunciation students use will be affected by that used by their teachers. So there may be distinctive features of pronunciation in those from a particular country, such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

Australia

Australians have a distinct accent, which varies between social classes and is sometimes claimed to vary from state to state, though this is disputed. Accents tend to be strongest in the more remote areas. (Note that Australian accents are very different to New Zealand ones. See below.) The following are some Australian characteristics:

• Vowels are heavily pronounced
• The /l/ sound in "Australia" is smashed; it becomes "Austray-yah".
• Australians have a unique vocabulary. For example, not many people outside of Australia come into contact with Vegemite on a daily basis. "Good day" becomes "G'day".

Canada

• about becomes a boat
• "Eh?" This interrogative is frequently used in some parts of Canada. Canadian Raising.

Cantonese (Hong Kong Chinese)

• many differences in pronunciation due to the large differences in the sounds used by English and Chinese language, and from the teachers
• 'r', read as 'l' sound. (opposite of Japanese accent)
• 'v', read as 'w' sound.
• 'wh', read as 'w' sound.
• 'th', read as 'd' sound.
• Differences in ending sounds.
• Often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Chinese grammar.
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all have the same pronunciation in Chinese.
• tendency to raise their voice unknowingly probably due to high noise pollution in Hong Kong.
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.

East Asia (including Vietnamese, Chinese)

• Due to the syllabic nature of their native languages, East Asians tend to drop or amplify the ending sound of English words, e.g. "an", "ant", & "and" sound the same.
• When raising the tone at the end of a question "You did what?", often the last syllable is lengthened and sounds almost like it is being sung.

Farsi (Persian, Iranian)

• throat noise in 'k' sound.
• /T/ pronounced as /s/ and /D/ pronounced as /d/ or /z/
• trilled /r/
• /w/ pronounced as [v] (or IPA [υ])

Finnish

• Due to Finnish always stressing the first syllable, English words accented on the second syllable are often misstressed. "VOcaPUlary".
• P and B confused (in Finnish 'p' is pronounced almost the same as 'b').
• Difficulty with 'z', pronounced as 's'.

German

• 'th', pronounced as 's' or 'z'. (German lacks both [T] and [D].)
• 's' sometimes also pronounced as 'z'.
• 'd' , 'g' or 'b' at the end of a word may be pronounced as 't', 'ck' or 'p'.
• German doesn't distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, so Germans often drop '-ly' from adverbs.

Hebrew

• Hebrew uses a palatalized ("soft") /l'/, whereas English uses a non-palatalized ("hard") /l/
• Hebrew has only 5 vowels and generally does not use diphthongs (except for foreign borrowings); Hebrew speakers may therefore mispronounce some of the English vowels.
• Hebrew speakers may sometimes gesture or raise their voice in a way which native English speakers may find excessive, although it is considered perfectly normal in Israel.

The Indian Subcontinent

• Fast speech tempo with choppy syllables.
• Questions worded like statements. Detected by native speakers because of stress on verb in case of questions.
• Using 'ing': Instead of "He has a car", "He is having a car".
• "hollow" pronunciation of English by many Asian Indians.
• they shook their head sideway as they speak as if they are saying no-no-no even when they say yes-yes-yes.

Italian

• tendency to add vowels to English words that end in consonants, because Italian words hardly ever end in consonants.

Japanese

• trouble with 'l', read as 'r' sound. (opposite of Cantonese accent)
• Might use /fu/ and /hu/ interchangeably as both are the same sound in Japanese. (For instance, "who" might be pronounced as "foo".)
• Similar to Spanish in the lacking of the /v/ sound. It now has two accepted pronunciations, /b/ and /wh/ (i.e. Video becomes bideo or whideo).
• tend to insert vowels particularly at the end of a words ending in a consonant, e.g. sound as soundo.
• often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• don't distinguish between singular and plural
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Japanese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Japanese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.
• often nod their head when they speak as if they are bowing repeatedly.
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it'

Korean

• Difficulty distinguishing 'r' and 'l' sounds.
• 'v' is pronounced 'b'. 'Video' becomes 'bideo'.
• Unable to distinguish 'j' and 'z'. The names 'Jack' and 'Zack' sound exactly the same to most Koreans.
• Tendency to add schwa sounds to words ending with consonants.
• Short 'a' and short 'e' vowel sounds are pronounced identically.
• Short 'o' sounds are lengthened.
• Short 'i' sounds are lengthened.

Mandarin Chinese

• Trouble with final 'm' sound, as 'm' does not occur at the end of a syllable in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. "time" read as "tine" or "timo".
• Trouble with two 'th' sounds (θ and ð), as the dental sound does not occur in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. "this" read as "zis".
• Voiced sounds pronounced as their unvoiced counterparts, eg: "duck" for "dog", "root" for "rude". Mandarin does not distinguish /p/ vs. /b/, /t/ vs. /d/, /k/ vs. /g/, etc. (these letters represent aspirated pairs, not voiced pairs, in pinyin)
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all have the same pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese.
• Often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Mandarin grammar.
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand. In the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. (See Chinese numerals) Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head.

New Zealand English

• American English lax [I] (as in "did") and [U] are centralized in NZ pronunciation, so [dId] --> [did] and [wUd] --> [wud] ("would").
• Most other vowels follow British RP style in general form, with minor differences.
• NZ English is a non-rhotic dialect.
• Short e is often pronounced as short i, making "ten" sound like "tin".
• Short i is often pronounced as short e, making "six" sound like "sex".
• Has a large vocabulary of words borrowed from the Maori language, and NZ English permits syllable-initial [N] in these borrowings, e.g. (Mount) Ngaruhoe is Maori [Na.ru.ho.e] --> NZE [Næ.ru.hOU] --> USA [ne.ru.hOU]

Philippines

• tend to pronounce /f/ as /p/
• often use "he" for females.

Polish

• Trouble with 'th', pronounced as 'd', 't' or - less commonly - 'v', 'f'. (Polish lacks both [T] and [D].) Examples: think --> fink, the --> de.
There also existed an "old school" of pronouncing th as 's' or 'z', like brother --> "brozzer", smith --> "smiss".
• Voiced stops ('d' , 'g', 'b' or 'v') at the end of a word or before voiceless stops may become voiceless ('t', 'k', 'p' or 'f'). Examples: Paddington --> "paddinkton".
• Trouble differentiating similar vowels like /i:/ and /I/ or /E/ and /{/. Example: both "man" and "men" are pronounced /mEn/.
• A few commonly used false friends, most prominently "actually" with intended meaning of "at present".
• Generally all sounds are very audible: The Beatles --> /dE bitEls/

Russian

• often a palatalized dental /r'/ is used before vowels, which is absent in English.
• lack of differentiation between /x/ (as in "Jose") and /h/ (as in "hot")
Spanish
• Trouble with /Z/ and /dZ/, which don't exist in Spanish.
• Pronunciation of /v/ as /b/, as the letter "v" is pronounced /b/ in Spanish.
• If a word begins with /s/ + consonant, adding an /E/ to it: Espanish. #/s/+consonant is not permitted in Spanish.

South African

South Africa has 11 official languages, one of which is English. Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch settlers, tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection, which is very similar to a Dutch accent. Native English speakers in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles a middle to upper class British accent modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection, due to the Afrikaner influence. Native South African English speakers also insert a number of Afrikaans loanwords into their speech.
Swedish
• Sing-songy intonation. Swedes often speak English with a melodic intonation, ending sentences on an up-note, much parodized (the Swedish chef from The Muppet Show is a well known example and a Usenet institution.)
• Trouble with the ending -ed, as the following sentence (from the parody sitcom Soap): "Do you think I'm finished?" (pronounced "Finnish"). Answer: "No, Swedish!"
• 'th' is often pronounced as 'd' or 't'
• Frequently uses the wrong person of verbs. (e.g. "They is") Swedish verbs do not inflect for person.

United Kingdom

Accents and dialects vary more widely within the U.K. itself than they do in other parts of the world owing to the longer history of the language within the countries of the U.K. Here are some of the distinctions to be found:

Cockney

• Initial h sounds are dropped; i.e. "house" becomes "ouse"; "help" becomes "elp"
• T sounds in the middle of words are replaced with a glottal stop; i.e. "water" becomes "wa><er"
• Diphthongs shift tongue positioning distinctively

Estuary English

• A broadly spread extension of Cockney, with less emphasis on the dropping of initial 'h's and a more profound presence of the glottal stop. Also compounded by an extremely imprecise understanding of grammar and a propensity to mangle tenses e.g. "Goin' up the mo'-urrway Sat-dee cos it's more be'-ur" (trans. "I'm going to use the motorway on Saturday since it represents an optimally efficient choice of routes").
• Complete loss of the subjunctive tense: "I woou'nt do that if I was you"
• Dropping of ly suffix on adverbs. "You havn't done it propper".

Southern English

• Terminal "r" is smashed; i.e. "doorway" becomes "doe-way", "forever" becomes "forevuh"
• Unstressed vowels are also smashed
London accents
• The tongue is more forward in the mouth
• Words can be overpronounced
• th becomes v. "Fo'i fouzand fevvers on a frush's froat."

Northern English

• Generally use a flat a, so "cast" is pronounced k{st rather than the kAst pronunciation of most south-eastern accents. There are other peculiarities in specific Northern Regions.

Northern English/Liverpool

The tongue is swallowed, cutting off nasal passages and making speech sound as if the speaker has a cold.
• "th" is often pronounced as "d", for example "there" becomes "dere" usage "oarite dere la!"
• distinctive rolling "ck" sound from the Welsh influence, sounds like the speaker is clearing their throat! usage:"gerr off me backk will yer!"
• "arr, ey!" distinctive sound of a disappointed Scouser,

Northern English/Yorkshire

The "u" sound is pronounced like the standard English "oo", so "luck" is pronounced (in SAMPA) lUk. The difference between the Yorkshire Pronunciation of "look" and "luck" is difficult to hear, the "look" vowel being slightly longer in duration and tending towards the SAMPA lyk pronunciation.
• Shortening of "the" to "t", as in "I'm going down 't pub".
• Many dialect words, for example "owt" and "nowt" for "anything" or "nothing", "bevvy" for drink etc.
• Sing-song intonation, as in Swedish, Welsh, and the US accent from the film Fargo.
• Use of the singular second-person pronoun "thou" and "thee".
• In all cases of the past tense of "to be" is "were": "I were wearing t'red coat, but he were wearing t'green one".
• In the South-East of Yorkshire vowel shifts so "i" becomes "ee", and "ee" becomes "i", so "Where have you been last night" becomes "wherst tha bin last neet".
• Someone from the US commented that a broad Yorkshire accent does not even sound like English.

Northern English/Lancashire

• The "u" sound is pronounced like the standard English "oo", so "luck" is pronounced (in SAMPA) lUk. The "oo" in look is pronounced like the "oo" in "boom", so look is look is the SAMPA luk.
• "o" pronounced "oi", so "hole" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "hOIl".
• Many dialect words.
Welsh
• Distinctive pitch differences giving a "sing-song" effect
Scots
• Pronounces "wh" differently from "w" (watt and what, weather and whether, wales and whales do not sound the same).
• Does not pronounce technology as if it were spelled teknology.
• Pronounces "r" whenever it occurs in a word.
Reference: For London accents, listen to old recordings by Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, Rolling Stones, and The Who. For Liverpool accents, recordings by The Beatles (George Harrison’s accent was the thickest of the four of them), Herman’s Hermits, Echo and the Bunnymen.