Received Pronunciation? Posh accent? British accents!

Many people think that all British people talk like the Queen –that is, they talk using “Received Pronunciation” (R.P) also known as “Standard English”–, in a very “posh” way. Well, let me tell you that you’re very wrong!

There are a lot of different accents in England and the United Kingdom and each of them is very different from each other, letting you know where the person who’s talking is from the moment you hear them speak.

Most foreigners either like R.P a lot or strongly dislike it, but the thing is that when you’re studying British English you tend to try to learn Received Pronunciation thinking that’s how all Brits talk when in fact only very few people use it nowadays (mostly old people) and it’s not all that very well seen – it can even annoy people sometimes.

In the video above you have some cultural reasons as to why R.P is not the ideal accent you should learn mostly because you will hardly hear it if you ever talk to a British person.

Well now, I bet all of you are curious about how do people in the United Kingdom really sound! In the video below there are examples of 17 different kinds of British accents. Yes, seventeen!

Impressive, right? Some of the most known British accents are the “Queen’s English” (R.P), Liverpool, North England, Birmingham, Newcastle, Scotland and London’s East End dialect called Cockney Rhyming Slang.

If you start to wonder how is it possible for Brits to talk so differently from each other, have in mind that, only in London, 250 languages are spoken, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. Imagine how it is all over the UK and how it influences people’s accents.