Norwich Accent

England has a number of different accents such as the accents of London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle. Cockney is a famous London accent which was made prominent in the movie "My Fair Lady." An accent which is a southern accent but is nevertheless distinct is the Norwich accent.

In the book "English Accents and Dialects," the Norwich accent is discussed. Two speakers are featured on the CD. The older speaker has a stronger accent that the younger one.

In the Norwich accent, the palatal glide /j/ is lost after all consonants. The word "humorous" has the pronunciation of "who" in the first syllable.

The words "soul" and "sole" as well as "knows" and "nose" are distinguished. "Soul" and "knows" have the vowel of "no" and "sole" and "nose" have the vowel of "two."

The words "beer" and "bear" are not distinguished. Both words rhyme with "where."

The glottal fricative /h/ is often dropped. It tends to be preserved in stressed syllables such as "humorous" but dropped in unstressed ones such as "hello."

Certain words have the vowel of "foot" such as "home" and "suppose."

The glottal stop is often used instead of the voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ between vowels. Examples include "bottom" and "city."

The Norwich accent is distinct from other English accents. The pronunciation of words such as "sole" and "nose with the vowel of "two," the pronunciation of "home" and "suppose" with the vowel of "foot" and the loss of the palatal glide after consonants are typical of the Norwich accent.