Accent is the part of dialect concerning local pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations. Primary English speakers show great variability in terms of regional accents. English accents can differ enough to create room for misunderstandings.
Accents and dialects vary widely across Great Britain, Ireland and nearby smaller islands. The UK has the most local accents of any English-speaking country. As such, a single "British accent" does not exist. Someone could be said to have an English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish accent, although these all have many different subtypes.
There are considerable variations within the accents of English across England, one of the most obvious being the trap–bath split of the southern half of the country. Two main sets of accents are spoken in the West Country, namely Cornish and West Country. There is great variation within Greater London, with various accents such as Cockney, Estuary English, Multicultural London English, and Received Pronunciation being found all throughout the region and the Home Counties. Other accents are those of the East Midlands and East Anglia.
The accents of Northern England have a range of regional variations. Cumbria has regional variants in Western Cumbria, Southern Cumbria, and Carlisle. Modern Northumbrian has local variants in Northern Northumberland, Eastern Northumberland, Newcastle, Sunderland, and mid- and southern County Durham. Yorkshire is distinctive, having regional variants around Leeds, Bradford, Hull, Middlesbrough, Sheffield, and York. Historic Lancashire, with regional variants in Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn, Manchester, Preston, Blackpool, Liverpool, and Wigan, also shows significant diversity.
The regional accents of Scottish English generally draw on the phoneme inventory of the dialects of Modern Scots. Highland English accents are more strongly influenced by Scottish Gaelic than other forms of Scottish English.
The Welsh language heavily influences the use of English in Wales, which is characterised by unique grammatical conventions and a distinctive lexicon. The Cardiff dialect and accent is quite distinctive from that of the South Wales Valleys. In many bilingual areas, Welsh words are often used in English conversations, leading to the term "Wenglish".
Manx English has its own distinctive accent, influenced to some extent by the Lancashire dialect and to a lesser extent by some variant of Irish English.
Ireland has several main groups of accents, including the accents of Ulster, with a strong influence from Scotland, and those of Dublin and surrounding areas on the east coast. The Ulster accent has two main sub-accents, namely Mid Ulster English and Ulster Scots. The accent of Connacht, Leinster, and Munster fluctuates greatly, from the flat tone of the midlands counties to the perceived sing-song of Cork and Kerry.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.