Tyneside English
The dialect of Newcastle and the Tyneside region. Retains a number of Old English and Norse-derived features lost elsewhere in England.
Received Pronunciation
Also known as: RP, BBC English, Standard Southern British
The traditional prestige accent of southern England. Long carried by national broadcasting and higher education, but no longer dominant in everyday British speech.
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Frequently asked questions
What language is Received Pronunciation?
Received Pronunciation is a dialect of the English language.
Where is Received Pronunciation spoken?
Received Pronunciation is primarily spoken in United Kingdom.
Which region is Received Pronunciation associated with?
Received Pronunciation is part of the Europe region on DialectAtlas.
Is Received Pronunciation known by other names?
Yes — Received Pronunciation is also referred to as RP, BBC English, Standard Southern British.
What are the other dialects of English?
English also includes Geordie, Scottish English, Hiberno-English, General American, Southern American English, Canadian English, Australian English, Broad Australian, Cultivated Australian, Aboriginal Australian English, Indian English, Singlish, African American Vernacular English, New York English, Eastern New England English, Appalachian English, Cajun English, Chicano English, Hawaiian Pidgin, Newfoundland English. Each variety has its own vocabulary, pronunciation, and cultural context.
Other English dialects
See on the atlas →The variety of English spoken across Scotland. Distinct from Scots (which is sometimes counted as a separate language) but heavily influenced by it.
Irish English
The English of Ireland, shaped by long contact with Irish Gaelic. Distinctive grammar, intonation, and vocabulary set it apart from British and American varieties.
Standard American English
The broad accent associated with national US broadcasting and most of the inland north and west. A reference point rather than a single regional variety.
Southern Drawl
The dialects of the US South, characterised by the Southern Vowel Shift, the pin-pen merger, and a distinct lexical tradition.
The English of English-speaking Canada. Closer to General American than to British English in most features, but with its own vocabulary and the well-known Canadian raising.
General Australian
The mainstream variety of Australian English, used by the majority of speakers nationally. The General Australian sociolect, sitting between Broad and Cultivated extremes.
Strine
The most strongly-marked sociolect of Australian English, traditionally rural and outback in association. Famously caricatured as "Strine"; recognisable by its diphthongal vowels and broad nasalisation.
The historically prestigious Australian English variety, modelled on British Received Pronunciation. Once dominant in broadcasting and law; now rare in everyday speech.
AAE
A distinct Australian English variety used widely across Aboriginal communities. Shows substrate influence from many Aboriginal languages and forms a continuum with Kriol in northern Australia.
The pluricentric variety of English used across India. Shaped by long contact with Hindi and other Indian languages, with its own pronunciation, grammar, and lexical norms.
Singapore Colloquial English
The colloquial English of Singapore, mixing English with grammatical features and lexicon drawn from Hokkien, Malay, Cantonese, and Tamil.
AAVE · Black English · Ebonics
A widespread English variety with a coherent grammatical system, including aspectual habitual "be" and the zero copula. Spoken across the African American community throughout the United States.
NYC English · New Yorkese
The English of New York City and surrounding areas. Marked by the famous tense-lax split of short-a, raised /ɔ/, and (historically) non-rhoticity.
Boston English
The traditional English of Boston and eastern New England. Non-rhotic in conservative speech, with the cot-caught merger and the famously Boston-broad short-a.
The English of the Appalachian mountains across West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and western North Carolina. Preserves several archaic Scotch-Irish features lost in other US varieties.
The English of the Cajun communities of southern Louisiana, descended from generations of French-English bilingualism. Distinguished by intonation, vowel realisations, and lexical borrowings from Cajun French.
Mexican-American English
A native English variety spoken in Mexican-American communities of the US Southwest, particularly Los Angeles. Despite its name, most speakers are monolingual English speakers.
Hawaii Creole English · Pidgin
An English-based creole that emerged on the plantations of Hawaiʻi in the late 19th century. Now native to a substantial share of the Hawaiʻi-born population, with influences from Hawaiian, Portuguese, Cantonese, and Japanese.
Newfie English
The most distinctive variety of Canadian English, descended from 17th- and 18th-century West Country and Hiberno-English settlers. Strongly divergent from mainland Canadian English in vowels and grammar.
Nearby dialects
See on the atlas →162 km away
The Romani variety of the Romanichal Travellers of England and the wider British Isles. The older inflected dialect is no longer spoken; it survives as Angloromani, a para-Romani register in which a substantial Romani-derived lexicon is embedded in an English grammatical frame. Diaspora communities exist in North America and Australia.
211 km away
A Brittonic Celtic language and the most-spoken Celtic language. Co-official in Wales, with around 900,000 speakers and a strong contemporary literary and broadcast presence.
260 km away
The inflected Northern Romani variety historically spoken by the Kååle of Wales. It was extensively documented by John Sampson in the early twentieth century and is now extinct as a first language, the last fluent speakers having died in the mid-twentieth century. It is notable as the last conservatively inflected Romani dialect attested in Britain.
273 km away
The Dutch varieties of Flanders. Distinguished from Netherlands Dutch in pronunciation, lexicon, and a separate broadcasting standard (VRT-Nederlands).
321 km away
The French of Wallonia and Brussels. Maintains a number of vocabulary and number forms (septante, nonante) that the Paris standard has dropped.
343 km away
The Paris-area standard of European French. Carried nationally by education and broadcasting; the reference point for most French taught abroad.