According to Lingoda, the English language has about 400 million native speakers worldwide. About 1.5 billion people speak it if you count second language speakers.
It’s recognized as an official language in 67 different countries and is the official language of the United Nations, NATO and the European Union.
Given how widely spoken and important English is, there’s going to be some differences in how people speak it.
This article will be all about the main different native English accents and what they sound like.
If you want to skip to the videos, click here.
Main Types of English Accents
United Kingdom
Depending on whether you’re from Wales, Scotland, England or Northern Ireland – you might sound a bit different. Overall the UK is characterized by one similar (to the untrained ear) accent. British English retains most of their borrowed words spellings, unlike their American counterpart. When learning English as a second language, you might choose to learn British English over American. These are the two main types that are taught in countries where English is not an official language.
Ireland
The Irish accent is quite different as well, where the “r’ after vowels are pronounced. Usually in British English, these are dropped. The Irish pronounce vowels quite differently and have different common phrases.
Australia
There are different areas in Australia where the accent will vary, but overall they use pronounce r differently and have more nasal sounding vowels. They use diphthongs more, which is when two vowels create one sound. Other English accents might not mash these together and instead pronounce them separately.
New Zealand
To me this accent is quite similar to the Australian but with a twist. New Zealanders tend to place more emphasis on “u” sounds versus the emphasis on “ee” sounds in the Aussie accent.
Singapore
English is one of the four official languages of Singapore and has developed it’s own accent due to the influence of the other ones. It sounds most similar to a Mandarin accent in English. Their English grammatically is most similar to British English but is still different enough to be considered it’s own dialect. The other official languages of Singapore are Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
United States
There is a lot of variance between regions when it comes to US pronunciation. The east coast, west, midwest and south all have distinctive accents. The most different one being the southern accent. They tend to draw their vowels out very long. In contrast, the New England accent shortens vowels and sometimes will drop the r.
Canada
For the most part, it can be difficult to tell the different between a US and Canadian accent. Depending on where in Canada, the accent can either be a French one (French is the official language of Quebec) or can include rounded “o” sounds.
West Indies
English is the official language of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas and Guyana. This doesn’t stop English from being a main language on the other islands though. Their accent includes differences due to mixing with their own creole languages. The accents will vary by island as well.
South Africa
This accent appears similar to the British one at first but they do pronounce “r” unlike their British counterparts. Their slang is of course different and mixes with the 12 other official languages of the country. Most people there are bilingual in English and Afrikaans.
Listen to different English accents
Descriptions of accents aren’t great, it’s always better to hear them to really see how they’re different. Here are some videos from Youtube (not ours) that showcase some of these different accents.
British vs New Zealand vs Australian Accents
67 Different English Accents and Voices