Favourite/Least Favourite UK accents??

SharpshooterTom

I saw a Yougov poll carried out 4 years ago asking people from the UK which was their favourite and least favourite "regional" UK accents.

Now the bizarre thing is they decided to include southern Ireland in this poll (WTF?), turning into a British (and Irish) isles thing, so of course which regional accent of course topped this poll?

Southern Irish +42
Received pronunciation/BBC English +31
Welsh +20
Yorkshire +15
West Country + 13
Geordie +10
Northern Irish +5 (surprised about this one)
Glaswegian -29
Cockney - 30
Manchester - 31
Scouse - 33
Brummie - 55 (ouch)

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2014/12/09/accent-map2

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/iwkrmxbxyl/InternalResults_141128_accents_Website.pdf (poll in full)

I'm born and raised in England but I have regular (boring) southern English accent, not pronounced BBC English crap but not cockney either.

Surprised Norn Iron doesn't do better, that people rate a Yorkshire accent MUCH better than a Manchester accent (I can't tell the difference between them so easily), and I thought people liked Scottish accents?

Also is the Scouse accent as unpopular in Ireland as it is in UK? Just curious because Irish people have often been seen as partly to blame for why it exists in the first place. Liverpool spoke like regular Lancashire folk in the 1800s and then it was first considered its own distinct accent in the 1890s thanks to huge waves of Irish immigration.

orourkeda1977

I should say the Birmingham accent but I lived there and have gotten used to it.

However, the Liverpool accent screams "skanger" to me.

Strong manchester accents are horrible as well as yorkshire accents.

Oddly, I have a huge horn for girls with well spoken English accents

Jamie Carragher is as mellifluous as a dentist's drill.

prinzeugen

There are tons of local variations in Scottish accents.

Glaswegian is horrible but half cast weegie is worst. Not quite Glasgow, not quite Edinburgh. Posh Glaswegian is just as crap.

People from Aberdeen sound like Geordies, Highlander is nice, miners scots is gobbledygook (my brother speaks like that) but the most popular (according to QI) is a posh Edinburgh accent (like mine!).

Queens Scottish its sometimes called. I find valleys Welsh the most annoying after Glaswegian.

Ipso

Michael the Geordie, whatsitallabootleek

SEPT 23 1989

We changed all the accents in the north west of England

The innit bruvs of the 19th century

Agricola

No surprise there. Worked in a call centre for a couple of years and spoke to many a frustrated UK housewife. Can confirm the auld Irish brogue gets them wetter than an otter's pocket.

riffmongous

You mug, you muppet, you slag

Beasty

I've a "northern" English accent. People quickly work out in from the North, but very rarely work out I'm from Yorkshire. I spent my childhood in the very North of Yorkshire with a few years in Leeds, 25 years or so in Manchester and 12 years over here.

My sister has more of a Geordie accent but she has spent most of her adult life in and around Newcastle. My brother has a North Yorkshire accent with a bit of Teesside thrown in

In terms of my own favourite it's definitely the Geordie accent. The one I like least is the Brummie accent.

Tom Mann Centuria

Favourite accent Northampton, least favourite accent Northampton.

Edit: bonus feature. The glamorous Northampton in some of its glory, it's got worse since this video! The first couple of voices you hear have a Northampton accent. Ignore the one after that (the bloke in the still, is from Yorkshire or some desolate part of the North)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGBnzsCFz-w

Edit 2: Two fine Northampton exports (though Matt Smith has lost his accent)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkg-X0sx_Ic

storker

Agricola wrote: »

No surprise there. Worked in a call centre for a couple of years and spoke to many a frustrated UK housewife. Can confirm the auld Irish brogue gets them wetter than an otter's pocket.

I worked in a Dublin call centre and got a call from an Englishwoman living in NI, we was practically purring down the phone at me because of my accent. Pleasantly disconcerting. Damn that practise of recording calls for training purposes...

storker

I like a soft west-country accent - like Dr Alice Roberts, for example. Posh accents are nice too - if the speaker is female.

I can't stand the scouse accent or their slang, which sounds to me like baby talk. I don't like the mancunian accent either.

The Birmingham accent is more funny than unpleasant.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Favourite is the welsh accent. Also love the Geordie accent and have a liking for the south west Devon/Cornwall Oooh Aaar Oooh Aaar accent too. The Edinburgh accent is nice also as well as northern Scottish accents. Hebrides accent is also really nice.

I detest the Yorkshire accent, Brummie Scouse and Manx accent too.

KevRossi

Cockney or 'Sarf Landan' is the worst.

Love a soft Scottish or Welsh accent on a lady, very sexy.

Purple Mountain

Hate hate hate that Cumbria 'ooh are' accent.
I can only think of stuffed moose heads on a grand country house wall hearing it.

selwyn froggitt

Behind my own slow Norfolk drawl lurks a brain which is struggling to keep up.

prinzeugen

KevRossi wrote: »

Cockney or 'Sarf Landan' is the worst.

Love a soft Scottish or Welsh accent on a lady, very sexy.

You should watch The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie then.. " Girls, 6 inches is more than sufficient. Anything more is just Vulgar ". (Referring to how much a window should be open and not what you were all thinking :-).

The Pheasant2

I like a Scottish accent the most I think and find a southern English accent on a lady to be quite sexy (probably some internalised colonial inferiority thing )

Dislike the Welsh and Liverpool accent, while I find the West Country accent pretty amusing I reckon it'd begin to annoy me after a while.

OldMrBrennan83

The 'innit bruv' one. Though since Brexit I think of them all as speaking like this.

A posh Scottish one is like nails down a blackboard too, but that's mainly because the owner of the accent is 99.99% nailed on to be a humongous twat.

Tom Mann Centuria

selwyn froggitt wrote: »

Behind my own slow Norfolk drawl lurks a brain which is struggling to keep up.

It's a great accent. Looking forward to visiting there again this year after a couple of years of missing it.

questionmark?

Welsh accent and a West country accent.

Anything north of Birmingham sounds like a inbreeding accident.

Capt'n Midnight

questionmark? wrote: »

West country accent.

Always weird to hear the late Colin Pillinger talking space science in that accent.

SharpshooterTom

KevRossi wrote: »

Cockney or 'Sarf Landan' is the worst.

Love a soft Scottish or Welsh accent on a lady, very sexy.

Not a fan of TOWIE then?

RMAOK

questionmark? wrote: »

Welsh accent.

Some of them Welsh accents are very hard to make out.

Can't stand a Scottish accent tbh.

Panthro

Live in Cornwall, love a proper cornish accent.
Not too keen on Birmingham

SharpshooterTom

Panthro wrote: »

Live in Cornwall, love a proper cornish accent.
Not too keen on Birmingham

You're in good company it appears.

Your Face

I like the theatrical Received Pronunciation.

Franz Von Peppercorn

prinzeugen wrote: »

There are tons of local variations in Scottish accents.

Glaswegian is horrible but half cast weegie is worst. Not quite Glasgow, not quite Edinburgh. Posh Glaswegian is just as crap.

People from Aberdeen sound like Geordies, Highlander is nice, miners scots is gobbledygook (my brother speaks like that) but the most popular (according to QI) is a posh Edinburgh accent (like mine!).

Queens Scottish its sometimes called. I find valleys Welsh the most annoying after Glaswegian.

Inverness is a the nicest Scottish accent.

Gwynplaine

Any Northern Ireland accent. Painful. And no matter what they're saying, they have to say "communiddy and sitchyation"

Any accent that pronounces Graph “Graff”.

****ing Philistines.

Gimme A Pound

Most really - cannot understand the N.I. accent hate. Yum!

The only one I really dislike is the strong south-west England accent: "Oi've got a brand new comboine 'arvester", Vicky Pollard etc.

Jaylah Dirty Poacher

Jaylah Dirty Poacher wrote: »

Most really - cannot understand the N.I. accent hate. Yum!

The only one I really dislike is the strong south-west England accent: "Oi've got a brand new comboine 'arvester", Vicky Pollard etc.

It’s very difficult to take any one seriously when they sound like Worzel Gummidge

Gimme A Pound

Aegir wrote: »

It’s very difficult to take any one seriously when they sound like Worzel Gummidge

I should have sympathy, being from Cork, but I reserve that sympathy for people from Liverpool.

AllForIt

Scottish accents of course like Irish accents vary wildly. Worked with a Scottish man once where his employment was short lived but couldn't understand a single word. On the other hand I was talking to a guy from Edinburgh just the other day and he sounded like The Bodyguard star. He looked like him as well coincidently. Quite strong but in no way difficult to decipher. Quite liked it actually.

In fact thats my answer to favorite, Edinburgh . Least favorite, well it would be hard to pick the worst. Brummie (Birmingham) /Scouser (Liverpool) really grates I feel. Joint Worst. No actually, I'll give it to Scouser. Steven Gerrard's, the footy player, is so whiney. It's like the accent is a by-product of living for years in a deprived area when generations before do noting but complain about their lot.

Prominent_Dawg

When them girls from Geordie Shore talk I want to get sick, it has to be the worst

Gimme A Pound

Prominent_Dawg wrote: »

When them girls from Geordie Shore talk I want to get sick, it has to be the worst

I actually like that accent when it's milder. But yeah, as with any accent (whether posh or not) when it's TOO strong, it's grating.

Arghus

I like the sound of the Birmingham accent.

Gimme A Pound

Arghus wrote: »

I like the sound of the Birmingham accent.

The heavy metal accent!

Spleerbun

Have some friends from Burnley and quite like their accent, guess that might be close to a Manchester accent? And Im also a fan of the Scouse accent too tbh, so I seem to be the polar opposite of the people polled!

madmaggie

I like the soft NI accent, not the Belfast, which sounds harsh. I'm originally from the south of England, Thames Valley, which isn't too bad. My cousins call this country "Eye-lind", which really irritates me.

Very interesting poll results. I wonder how different the results might have been back in the 1970s or 80s when relations were weak between these two countries and the IRA were setting off bombs in England.

My Dad worked over there during a lot of that time, and deliberately altered his accent for the avoidance of grief. Not just because of the IRA, but because of a wider suspicion of Irish people in his field of work (construction - a lot of people wouldn't have taken 'Paddy' seriously, even knowing he was an engineer, or whatever)

jimgoose

My favourite would be a gentle Bristolian/West Country chunter, as in James May. Eastenders-style "shut it you slaaaag!!" accents make me want to kick things. :pac:

Franz Von Peppercorn

Aegir wrote: »

Any accent that pronounces Graph “Graff”.

****ing Philistines.

It’s grap-eh, right?

OldMrBrennan83

That one's news to me. I may be an idiot but in all my working life I've never heard it pronounced like anything other than graf.

OldMrBrennan83

OldMrBrennan83 wrote: »

That one's news to me. I may be an idiot but in all my working life I've never heard it pronounced like anything other than graf.

Graph, rhymes with laugh.

About 12 miles north west of Birmingham is the town of Dudley, where the accent is like a Brummie accent on steroids. It's ghastly.

It should be classed as a disability.

brainfreeze

prinzeugen wrote: »

There are tons of local variations in Scottish accents.

Glaswegian is horrible but half cast weegie is worst. Not quite Glasgow, not quite Edinburgh. Posh Glaswegian is just as crap.

People from Aberdeen sound like Geordies, Highlander is nice, miners scots is gobbledygook (my brother speaks like that) but the most popular (according to QI) is a posh Edinburgh accent (like mine!).

Queens Scottish its sometimes called. I find valleys Welsh the most annoying after Glaswegian.

What a half cast weegie accent? Example?

Mad_maxx

Like Yorkshire and the West Country

Hate scouser and Birmingham

Franz Von Peppercorn

Aegir wrote: »

Graph, rhymes with laugh.

That’s right. What with the u in there.

Do you have your own language going on there?

orourkeda1977

jimgoose wrote: »

My favourite would be a gentle Bristolian/West Country chunter, as in James May. Eastenders-style "shut it you slaaaag!!" accents make me want to kick things. :pac:

Faacking shaaaat it you cockney caaaant

fryup

I like: cockney, scouser, west country, soft scottish, soft welsh, posh southern english (sexy on women)

Don't like: glaswegian, manchester, brummie, geordie, yorkshire and hard nordy irish