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This region’s accent is made up of the accents of the various counties that make up it. Modern Estuary dialect features were also reported in traditional varieties, including L-vocalization e.g. old as owd, as well as yod-coalescence in Kent. The pronunciation of /iː/ as [ɪ] in words like been or seen was also once a feature of both counties.
It seems we’re not alone – Kent has become one of the most desirable places to live in the whole of the UK. Paul Arnold is an education expert with over 25 years of experience in the field. He has worked in both public and private schools, as well as colleges and universities. Paul is passionate about helping students learn and grow, and he has written extensively on the topic of education.
What is a South English accent?
Similarly Cornwall was a British kingdom before it became an English county. The term “shire” is not used in the names of the six traditional counties of Northern Ireland. As a ceremonial county, Greater London has a Lord-Lieutenant and a High Sheriff, both appointed by the British monarch, but Greater London is not one of England’s historic counties. Greater London is split between parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire.
The counties generally included in the list are Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex . Yorkshire has been crowned as the most trustworthy accent in the UK, with a new study finding it to be ‘intelligent’ and ‘calming’. The research, which was commissioned by OnBuy.com, asked 2,221 people to listen to 15 British accents and say which they would be more likely to trust in job interviews.
Here are 4 tips that should help you perfect your pronunciation of 'home counties':
Hampshire is also the closest county and gateway to the Isle of Wight. Crowned as the ‘poshest’ home county, Surrey topped the leader board followed by Oxfordshire. With the average property costing over £600,000, it’s no surprise this county is home to over 128 golf clubs and 120 Independent schools.
In the survey, 36% to 40% of respondents did not know whether all of the most common candidates for Home County were members of the same group. Using net scores improves the visibility of the Home Counties’ borders. There are healthy leads for Buckinghamshire, Surrey, and Hertfordshire in the area. As a result of their larger geographic areas, the counties of Hampshire , Oxfordshire , and Cambridgeshire are less likely to be included in the Homecounties.
Home Counties Coast
Hertfordshire is known for its historic estates, countryside and of course, that glorious cathedral… but the county is also awash with smaller, weirder and wilder wonders that are waiting to be uncovered. Hertfordshire is among the top 20 safest counties in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The overall crime rate in Hertfordshire in 2020 was 60 crimes per 1,000 people, and the most common crimes were violence and sexual offences, which happened to roughly every 23 out of 1,000 residents.
Mr McCreevy, I was once lost in the rural roads of your home county. Knightsbridge, the City of Westminster, and Chelsea are traditionally posh areas of London. Like the Essex accent, Cockney swaps the th sound for f, drops the h in front of words like head, and elongates vowels like A and E. The rest of the accent is rhotic , so it actually sounds a bit like American English, although West Country residents won’t admit to that. Possibly the cutest name on our list, this accent is actually one of the most ridiculed in the UK – which is quite mean, because clearly people from Essex have never heard themselves speak. It was heavily influenced by the Gaelic language, which was spoken in certain areas of Scotland, as well as Norse languages from Viking invaders.
Right at the heart of the UK, Northamptonshire is well-known for bordering with eight other counties. Only Gloucestershire can match that amount of borders – despite one of those is with a Welsh county – so we can say we have the most English county neighbours at least. EF's GO blog offers the latest on travel, languages, culture, international careers and student life. We live and breathe this stuff here at EF and hope GO inspires, excites and helps you plot your next steps in life. This county’s dialect is so distinct, you can immediately tell if someone comes from Essex. They’ll pronounce words like no as NA-hw and drop the th sound from words like think, so they’d say fink instead.
South London Accent is a lower middle class accent, with some distinctive word borrowing from Cockney English. Sounds a little like liverpool to me but with a clearer more distinct pronunciation. (Lillipudian?) There is also a Black South African Accent which is even easier to understand. Basingstoke is located in the county of Hampshire, South East England, seven miles south-east of the town of Tadley, and 45 miles south-west of London.
Scots would say Scotland as ‘SKORT-lond’ instead of the Standard English ‘SKOTT-lund’. Let’s start in the North, with the accent that universally symbolises glassy lochs , snowy mountains, tartan, and… shortbread? The Scottish accent as we know it now developed as late as the 1700s, but existed in different forms before that. Past participle takes more complex forms after common consonants "-ded," "-ted," e.g., attackted, drownded, "Such a country as this, where everything is either scorched up with the sun or drownded with the rain."
Marcus Crouch has identified one of the principal characteristics of the home counties as being a shared chalk geology that is broadly mirrored north and south of the Thames. The Pompey accent is typically cockney in sound and is characterized by the use of more slang words from London. The home counties accent is a sub-variety of British English, typically spoken in the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Sussex. The home counties coast is a stretch of coastline in England that includes the counties of Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire. The coastline includes a number of popular tourist destinations, such as Brighton, Dover, and Portsmouth.