Master Dialect Coach Gives a Verbal Tour of the British Isles by Regional Accent

During a 2014 interview with BBC Radio, master dialect coach Andrew Jack, who has worked on such blockbuster films as Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Captain America: The First Avenger, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, offered up a wonderful verbal tour of the British Isles, explaining the sound of each regional accent in the most poetic way possible.

Here is Northern Irish with the rising inflections, but you don’t get the rising inflections down in Dublin where it has that poetic quality which is sometimes thought of as being not different from Highland speech which is also quite poetic and almost Scandinavian. and then you come down to Glasgow and into the Lowlands of Scotland where you get glottal stops and things like that. Then you come down the west coast and you’re in Wales, North Wales where it’s breathy like that and down into South Wales where you get much heavier and Welsh people who sometimes even sound a bit drunk.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.