Americans React to Top 10 Hardest UK Accents To Imitate 

In the UK, Dick Van Dyke is infamous for how bad his cockney accent is in Mary Poppins - proving how difficult it really is!

Not many of the accents in the video were actually very strong representations.

Growing up in the uk during the 90s, you could tell if someone came from the next town over by accent. The difference in accent from just a ten mile difference was huge.

As a British citizen, I didn't think the examples shown were that great or shown off the accents in a particularly obvious way to an outsider. Thinking about it, I wished they had shown clips of the eighties drama, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, as the mixture of different characters clearly demonstrates the diversity and broadness in UK dialects.

Honestly think some of the clips didn't represent the accents enough 😂 but it was hilarious.

A lot of the accents you heard in the video were accents for TV shows, so an element of a variety of different viewers being able to understand it would be taken into account. The everyday accent you hear across different towns and cities in real life are usually a bit stronger and the differences tend to be greater.

I'm from Wakefield, went to school in Leeds, went to university in Hull, worked in Harrogate, now live in Barnsley and my girlfriend is from Sheffield. All Yorkshire towns and cities. Every single one has a completely different accent to the others.

Proud West Country boy here. You would know this accent from Hagrid in Harry Potter, Sam Wise in the Lord of the Rings and Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean

Gerald from Clarkson's farm is probably the hardest person in the uk to understand 🤣

Before they invented the bicycle and the train, most country folk lived, worked and married within a few miles of where they were born. There were also many different local dialect words, as well as different accents.

The old joke is: You drive two hours in the US you're in the same state. You drive 2 hours in the UK the accent has changed seven times and bred rolls are called something new.

Lindsay's got a point: it would be MUCH more interesting to have a SINGLE passage rendered in different regional accents.

That film is RUBBISH, it's all actors, many of whom are not getting the accents right. Everybody in the UK makes fun of Mel Gibbs and Dick van Dyke because they got it excruciatingly wrong.

I'm quite surprised the Broad Yorkshire accent isn't on there. The modern Yorkshire accent for most areas is now fairly watered down, but older generation of people have some truly amazing broad yorkshire accents, they're also the only people that can sing the Yorkshire Anthem with any real hope! The accent local to Sheffield in South Yorkshire, was recently voted as Britain's favourite accent. Received pronunciation does indeed sound 'stuck up' to people here, its generally associated with people who are wealthy, as well as stereotypically the accent of broadcasters, giving it the nickname of BBC English.

Given what a tiny country we are, it’s insane how many different accents we have. 😂

I don’t think the video gave lengthy enough clips or examples of these accents. I LOVE accents!

I think part of the problem with a lot of these accents is they’re using actors so a lot of them aren’t native speakers of the accent. There is a really good accent video where they use celebrities speaking in interviews so they’re talking in their own accent which is better to help you hear them

Scotland, Wales and Ireland don't just have different accents, they have different languages.😱

I live in Glasgow, Scotland :) Limmy’s a legend

Received Pronunciation used to be frivolously called BBC English all newsreaders and presenters were expected to speak that way

As a Geordie myself, I can talk with a strong accent when I'm talking to my family, however I'm also a radio presenter so can talk relatively accent-free! I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and am a true Geordie, however just about 12 miles away, there is a city called Sunderland, and their accent is completely different to Geordie! They are known as "Mackems" because they pronounce the word "make" as "Mak"! I love accents, and the huge variations just a few miles away!

Etymology From Glasgow, modelled after Galwegian (“inhabitant of Galway”), itself modelled after Norwegian (“inhabitant of Norway”). The noun is from the adjective.

The thing is in the UK. There tends to be an accent for each county. Although Norfolk is similar to Suffolk, there will be very small changes and bearing in mind there are 230 something counties. Each county is very different to the other.

I’m from the north west of England and worked for a lot of my life in the south east. When I was at work, people thought I sounded like a northerner, when I went home people thought I was talking like a southerner. We all have our base accent but pick up from all the other places we live and work.

This vid is people with one accent doing somebody else's accent, it's mostly actors playing a part and they are showing bad examples 😄👍

I'm from Dublin and there are many accents in the city alone. You can tell what part of the city someone is from simply by their accent. There are also hundreds of accents all over Ireland and again you can easily tell where someone is from. 😅

there are around 170 dialects in the UK, even more if you start adding the British Isles (Channel Islands, Isle of White, Isle of Man etc)

Us Scots and a few other accents talk much more quickly than other accents in the UK!

My Uncle is a Cornishman though and though. He has spoken the Cornish Language from a child. He speaks at a million miles an hour with a very heavy Cornish accent. The Cornish Language was almost lost but is making a big comeback. People think it's just like Welsh but it really isn't its very similar to Breton spoken in Brittany in northern France. These two languages are the closest to Brittonic the language of the Celts.

Hi Steve, The woman you saw speaking in the west country clip was not from the west country, her accent was all wrong, she was only playing the part in the tv drama Broadchurch which was filmed mainly in west bay Dorset, It was a type of Dorset accent but spoken really badly, in fact i think her home town is up country somewhere.

I'd personally say the Yorkshire accent is difficult to get simply because there's alot of variation of the accent. Barnsley, Sheffield, Doncaster, and Rotherham are all places in the same area and all have different variations of the Yorkshire accent.

Glaswegian (Slang) is a throwback to the vikings who were prominent in the area, Norwegian. The welsh village has the second longest name the Longest is found in New Zealand.

If you're saying accents and dialects, they pretty much do change every village, coz we refer to tings differently, rhyming slang is a good example

Americans will not notice the west country accent so much - as it is one of the main sources of the standard American English accent.

Actors are not going to give you a genuine example of the accents as they have watered it down

The Glasgow accent varies depending on which part of Glasgow you live in . Glasgow is a large City . North, West, South,East.The accent can be very different . I frequently baffle my English colleagues at work with my Glasgow accent 😂

Don’t forget guys, the video was demonstrating accents that are hard to imitate, not necessarily hard to understand. 😊

Trust me, if you heard old school Brummie or Black Country accents, you’d have a hard time understanding it. It’s said to be closest to the old Anglo Saxon and it’s not just an accent, it’s a dialect.

Love how you get your family involved now. I hope things continue to go well for you all

Remember Scots isnt just an accent , its different words altogether .

The perfect example of a west country accent is the song "drink up thy zider" by the wurzels (adge cutler)

The west country isn't one accent, but it's a gradient of a similar sound

The Yorkshire accent is one of the friendliest accents in the world (4th to be exact) and I'm from the South of Yorkshire and the irony is that the worst, most aggressive sounding accent in the world is only 100 miles from Yorkshire. This accent is known as Liverpudlian and sounds like someone with no education trying to speak with a mouth full of spit. It's nice to see some Americans finally embrace and learn about British culture without automatically resorting to insults and criticisms ❤👌

Hi Steve & Lyndsay, Egian comes from the word Region or area. So Glaswegian is an accent from the Glasgow Region. GLASgoWrEGION. The same for Norway Region NORWayrEGION. Accents often change within ten or so miles here but to people from outside the area this can be more difficult to hear. It is generally safe to assume that each county throughout the UK has it's own distinctive accent alough the bigger counties will have notable differences within the North, East, South and West of their areas. The reason that you both find the westcountry accent easier to follow is that the early settlers in the states had an accent very similar to the Gloucestershire and the Somerset accents we heve here today. Cheers from Trev & Jane from across the pond here in Devon.

Liam Neeson is from Ballymena, Co Antrim, N.Ireland. Northern Ireland is made up of six counties and is only a part of Ulster which is made up of nine counties. The remaining three are part of Ireland.

My wife’s family come from Hamilton south of Glasgow and after 40 years I still cannot get half of what they say!!! Michael Caine (good bloke!) isn’t really doing a cockney accent. His is more Essex / Thames Estuary. The Northern Ireland accent is truly one of the my favourites. And the people are really lovely. If you want to do an Ulster accent instead of saying Nothern Ireland say NORN IRON. Then you’ve got it!! All lot of those accents in TV shows were really parodies of the real thing as the actors are themselves putting it on!

Geordie is very specific to Newcastle upon Tyne where I'm living, but down the river in South Shields you have Sandancer, and Sunderland and Durham are Makems.

I am a mancunian and also Scottish. I can do both!!!!!!

The Dundee accent is like someone speaking backwards inside a coal sack which is underwater

They didn't use very good examples in the video to be honest, but it's really true that in some parts of the country, people only twenty miles apart will have a noticeably different accent. Apart from the South-East where accents have got more blended, we know pretty well straight away where someone was brought up. (It's not often mentioned that there's a whole bunch of very different Irish accents too - some of them reeeally hard for foreigners to understand.)

The most challenging accent not mentioned, 'Doric' from Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Want a phrase to copy? See the Disney film 'Brave" and try to say, "It's nae richt tae mak us fecht fae th' haund o th' quine." Phrases include, "Foos yer Doos?" and Aberdeen is known in Scotland as "Furry Boots City" because of the dialect question, "Fur aboots?" = "where about's." I'll bet ye dinnae ken fit 'a loon' is eethur?"

When the British Library's website is fully back up (they had a cyber attack), they have a great resource on regional British accents so you can hear the difference say from South Edinburgh to Stornoway and Aberdeen within Scotland for example. It's called 'Accents and dialects - Sound Archive'. Worth having a listen and looking at a map just to see where things are from.

I was in the city one day an some Americans where asking a guy for directions, and the guy in his best Glaswegian accent was telling them how to get to there destination, and the look on there faces was oh my god lol they had no clue what he was saying. And when he finished and walked off I asked them did you get all that and they all said no. And yes I did explain it to them slowly lol xoxoxox

I am a "Wessie" from Wakefield Yorkshire, Yorkshire folk have their own sayings that are completely understood by most Yorkshire folk, just like Cocknys understand theirs, it just is mostly the Yorkshire accent where folk don't understand a word we say! never mind what we are saying. "Sithie"😁

As a Brit from Manchester UK, I’ve just discovered your channel, you too are so lovely, and I love your enthusiasm for learning all things Brit ❤ love your channel x

I love the two of you doing reactions together ❤.

As a Geordie I agree with the Geordie being number 1 because anyone trying to imitate always does it badly 🤣

You should react to a better UK accent video! this was not a good one, find one that does more and gives better examples.

My husband of 34 years is a Macam. From Sunderland. When he moved to Peterborough in the 1970s, his name was Tom, so everyone said ‘rock on Tommy’ from the comedy show Cannon and Ball. lol x

As someone from the Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, I can confirm that the Barnsley accent is one of the UK's hardest to translate.

There is a change in accent about every 30 miles in England some are a slight change and others are a drastic change it is kinda crazy

Im from Warwickshire and my husband is from Leicestershire, although we grew up only about 8 miles away from each other our accents are quite obviously different and because I spend more of my time with our son than him, his accent is closer to mine even though we now live in a village in Leicestershire. Its wild. How I say beer or deer, as someone from the west midlands it sounds like 'beeya' or 'deeya', and my husband makes jokes about it, but now our lad says it the same and he finds it hilarious. It's mad how towns or cities just over the border can sound so different!

The old man in clip seven says “A hedge is a hedge, I only chopped it down because it spoilt my view what’s people moaning about?”

Ironically, one of the actors they used to demonstrate RP is actually Australian! 😂

I live in torbay in devon and love it here in the summer being the english riveria and a tourist spot we get folk from all over the uk on holiday the shops restraunts bars are just full of wonderful uk dialects. Im a massive fan of a liverpudlian accent especially from a female. 😂

I think the easiest English accent is the perceived “upper class “ accent - and you both got it pretty close!!!

Believe me guys there are far more accents than this. Some parts of the States are considered to have the most authentic 17th century English accents left. Especially in rural New England.

My late mother was welsh, I learned how to pronounce this long place name about 60 years ago and have never forgotten it 😀👍

Yeah the amount of different dialects and accents we have are staggering considering the size of us. The changes between places that are close to each other is indeed a real thing, mainly I think due to slang mainly.

It would be good for them to make a video with the actual people from those areas, rather than actors who are picked or speak more clearly and less strong in a way, so that viewers can understand it better. Some people even we can't understand from a few towns over 😂

When you think of Scotland, you should start with Billy Connolly.

You're near enough correct. You remember I told you that once I was in a local bus and I heard the accent change three times as we went along the route (you wouldn't experience that if you were driving).

The change in village to village is not at all an exaggeration, in fact in some areas it changed every couple of blocks

You need to listen to the western isles of Scotland accent also orcadian(someone from the orkney islands). I myself hail from north east Scotland we have our own accent called the Doric it's a brammer 😘🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Massachusetts, was settled by the Plymouth colony in 1620 i think .so it would make sense for the west country accent to sound a little like the accents in the Appalachian Mountain regions - i actually studied Etymology for my Masters Degree , and found many words in this region could be traced to Old English Norse and French , also particular words that were prominently used in the South West of England were and are used in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maine and others in the NW area. Etymology is the study of word origin ,understanding where a word came from is a good way of understanding the accents of people past and present.

My Father was born in London with a neutral accent, moved to the West Country, for one of his jobs he acted as a translator between an agricultural employment agency and the local farmers. So this is an Englishman translating for Englishmen because the accent is so thick. :)

The Barnsley accent in Yorkshire is the strongest accent in that region I went to secondary school in Barnsley and it took me a good two years to understand it I'm not kidding 😂

Glaswegian is just somebody from Glasgow. Same with Norway as you mentioned. I'm from Fife in Scotland so I'm a Fifer. Love your Channel. I really hope you make it over here. Yes accents change every few miles here xx

Hey, Scotsman here. Per every 15 minutes or so of driving, you’ll find another accent. For example, where I’m from we speak a dialect of Scots called doric. Just in my area if you drive 15 minutes west, you get a slightly different accent, 15 minutes east, different accent, 15 minutes south a different accent, if you drive 15 minutes north then you’ll just be in the moray firth lol. The same principle applies to cities and major towns, so that comment about changing in every village certainly does apply :)

I'm surprised that they didn't mention every pirate movie accent ever when talking about the West Country! The West Country has always been a major sea faring part of the UK and was the home to many famous pirates from history - most notably Blackbeard.

Lindsay's RP accent could be good with some practice, well done! My recommendation for videos on accents would be "Anglophenia - One women 17 accents" It's fun but informative. Other recommendations are "Map Men videos on Jay Foremans channel" Educational and very entertaining Also the channel "our Travel Place" for videos on York, Whitby, The Yorkshire dales. Includes good footage of many sights with handy information. From the hills to the village shops, its a great look into what to add to your visit list :)

I feel your reference video is not really meant for non-British people but more for those who can laugh at what they already know. A lot of the references are not ‘real’ accents but from TV shows. Exceptions are those who were actually born and bred in their regions, but some of t6em are very dated by how old they people are. I am actually from Birmingham my brother says I am very brummie, but I am probably not, and many accents presumed to be brummy are Black Country which is a thing of its own. With very diverse immigration to all of our major cities you also hear hybrid accents, British south Asian accents for instance, or British Caribbean….. but then the very regional are also quite distinct too, West Country are just as diverse as any city accents. Live here long enough and you can place them. I was brought up and schooled in RP, it was drilled into us, but my school friends were from all over the country and from different classes of people too, you only briefly touched on that, how accents define where people are in the pecking order.

Accents DO change from village to village, it isn't an exaggeration

there really are so many accents, i live in a 3000 person city in scotland and we have a completely distinct accent to any other place in scotland, it isn't really exaggeration to say every city has its own accent lol

That isn't a really good choice of how cockney sounds, Dicky Van Dyke isn't English so they should have had a proper cockney speaking. You really need to listen to people who actually come from Liverpool, Birmingham, Wales, Scotland etc, because they are speaking how it really is, it's no good listening to actors who are imitating the accent because they don't always get it right.

In the part of the world I'm in the accent can change valley to valley!

I don't think the video didn't emphasise enough is the difference between an accent, and a dialect. The west country - Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, Wessex, have a dialect a distinct variation of English that is very old, dating back to the Saxon times of King Alfred in the 6th Century, it has a more Germanic grammar, pronunciation, and tenses compared to modern "standard" English.~ There's also the accent - the way west country people speak "standard" English It's often derided as a simple farmers / peasants way of talking

Geordie here. It's not just the accent but the proper use of dialect that trips people up trying to talk like us. It's like being bilingual at times with non-geordies in a group being totally lost with what's being said.

The West Country farmer from the film 'Hot Fuzz' was given a particularly tricky accent for comedic effect. Nobody could bloody understand him.

Scotland has many regional accents, as does Ireland. Wales has fewer I think. But England has many many regional accents.

Where I come from in north Wiltshire near the Gloucestershire border the accent can change within five miles you can tell sometimes by the pronunciation of certain words, also word change I myself have worked the length and breath of the UK, and I find it absolutely fascinating. Best wishes to you both, Mike.

I live in Manchester, and quite literally the accent changes after about 15 miles away. It's not that much, but it is distinct, even to us.

The first west country bit was from the movie Hot Fuzz, and was specifically a joke about varying accents accross a small area. The main characters had to bring another copper to translate him, who himself had to be translated by the local copper, Danny.

in Liverpool I can tell what road some ppl live on by their accent lol

Guys, please don’t use Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins as a guide to do a Cockney accent, unless you’re trying to do it really badly.

As a Lancashire lass, who moved to inner London in her teens, then to the Welsh valleys as a young adult, I can 100% say most of these accents are not as broad as the real deal My accent now in my 50s is a great big mush of the three with a very heavy Welsh valley blanket draped over it 😂😂 only locals can tell I'm not Welsh born. But stick me on the phone to someone from my hometown, Blackpool, and I revert in minutes😂

Accent changing every town, but even in the same town the accents arent the same. Scottish is the same as England. The accents are different. The man on the picture of mancunian is Karl pilkington, related to my family. the Cornwall you showed on here is nothing like the real Cornish accent. Glaswegian is glasgow. One of the hardest accent ever to understand, next is a real strong Liverpool accent. Glaswegan means Glascow region. All of these accents are toned down. You need to see the real accents like the woman you couldnt understand. Heres a nice Welsh accent, and he speaks Welsh . He can say the longest place name too. Hes well known . ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8KeGMedWgE4.html. Ive a sort of geordie accent. Like haway man, (come on) some of them geordie accents were pee takes, not the real one. Americans cant do an English accent. Im English and cant understaant west country. The woman isnt speaking west country. Its too pash lol. None of these are real accent, theyre accent fpr tv. None of them, apart from the woman losing it, are real. Theyre toned town accents done by opeople who have different accents. For gwordie maybes watch biker grove. Its still toned down Geordie, but it is done by geordies

In the old days you didn't get on TV unless you spoke received pronunciation (RP or Queens English). Now you see a few more, but many still don't go on air because many wouldn't understand it without subtitles... I live in Yorkshire and there are some really heavy accents you really have to concentrate to understand... On a telephone you could struggle without visual clues, maybe pick-up 60% and construct sentences from that.. It's a skill requiring the understanding of context and syntax with a healthy amount of guess work.

What gets me is the The amount of different names the UK uses for "bread rolls" it's a good way to start a heated argument. LOL

Hiya! Love your videos! I'm from Devon, England, and they weren't kidding when they said that accents vary from village to village. And there's also the Devon dialect to contend with! When I was first introduced to my fiance's grandmother, who lived about ten miles from my home town, she walloped me across the back (by way of a friendly, Devon greeting) and said, "Ow be nackin' vore, then, maid?" I had absolutely no idea what she'd said, but my fiance helpfully translated - "She asked, 'How are you getting on? - How are you?" Apparently, "'nackin vore' was 'knocking for'. A sort of 'How are you knocking along?' I'd already understood 'Ow be' to be 'How are' (Ow to rhyme with cow) and 'maid' referred to any young female but the rest? Not a clue. The reply I was supposed to have given would have been, “ I be purt viddy my boody” (pronounced 'oy be pert viddy moy boody'. I just smiled my best, winning smile and said how lovely it was to meet her!