Birmingham Accent Quotes

Redditch: Christ, I hadn't even expected to be here. I was only standing in Redditch 'cause I was told it was a no-hoper. They bloody-well lied. Needles everywhere, you know that? Half the world's needles, made in sodding.. I was holding out for Cheam, or Chester. A 'ch' place, a nice little English 'ch' place. Not 'Redditch', listen to that. It's not a name, it's a fucking noise. What is it, 'Redditch'? Sounds like a frog vomiting. And they told me it was Worcestershire, another lie! Atkins: It is Worcestershire. Redditch: Oh Humphrey, it's Birmingham. Everyone knows it is, listen to the sodding accent. I imagined meadows and steeples and farmyards and haystacks. Well, do you know what, shall I tell you something? You can't find a haystack in Redditch cause of all the fucking needles!

She looked Agatha up and down and sighed. “You Jehovahs,” she said in an upper-class accent. “Dragging your poor children from door to door.” “I am not a Jehovah,” snapped Agatha. “My name is Agatha Raisin and this is one of my detectives, Miss Toni Gilmour.” “Oh, so you’re the female responsible for the deaths yesterday.” “Look,” said Agatha, “I would like to speak to Mr. Bassett.” “I am Mrs. Bassett.” Her eyes raked Agatha from head to foot. You could leave the Birmingham slum, thought Agatha, but it was always there, deep inside, waiting to make you feel inferior.

The abusive teenage boyfriend. The bullying at school. The sudden ascent to pop fame aged fourteen. All those jokes on Never Mind the Buzzcocks about her Birmingham accent. The paparazzi harassment. The tabloid stings. That divorce. When you think how long ago she had her first hit, how solid a presence she has been in the public consciousness since, it is hard to believe the singer is still only in her mid-thirties.

One is not startled on the Main Line to hear a businessman conclude a deal with a cheerful “All righty-roo!” Or to depart from a party with a bright “Nightie-noodles!” to his host and hostess. As for the accent, Barbara Best calls it “Philadelphia paralysis,” or “Main Line lockjaw,” pointing out that it is not unlike “Massachusetts malocclusion.” Mrs. Best recalls that when she first moved to the area a native said to her, “My dear, you have the most beautiful speaking voice. I can understand every word you say!

It is a social accent that is virtually the same in all American cities, and it is actually a blend of several accents. There is much more to it than the well-known broad A. Its components are a certain New England flatness, a trace of a Southern drawl, and a surprising touch of the New York City accent that many people consider Brooklynese

A careful distinction was drawn between Jews of the “Nathan type,” and those of the “Seligman type,” between “the better class of Jews” and “vulgar Jews,” between “Sephardic” and “German,” and, finally, between “refined Hebrew ladies and gentlemen” and “Jews.” The more the Germans insisted that they were “Hebrews,” not “Jews,” the more the Sephardim tried to disassociate themselves from the accented newcomers by stressing their ancient Spanish heritage.

on the other side of Howrah Bridge which, if one could ignore the stalls and rickshaws and white-clad hurrying crowds, was at first like another Birmingham; and then, in the centre, at dusk, was like London, with the misty, tree-blobbed Maidan as Hyde Park, Chowringhee as a mixture of Oxford Street, Park Lane and Bayswater Road, with neon invitations, fuzzy in the mist, to bars, coffee-houses and air travel, and the Hooghly a muddier, grander Thames, not far away. On a high floodlit platform in the Maidan, General Cariappa, the former commander-in-chief, erect, dark-suited, was addressing a small, relaxed crowd in Sandhurst-accented Hindustani on the Chinese attack. Around and about the prowed, battleship-grey Calcutta trams, bulging at exits and entrances with men in white, tanked away at less than ten miles an hour. Here, unexpectedly and for the first time in India, one was in a big city, the recognizable metropolis, with street names – Elgin, Lindsay, Allenby – oddly unrelated to the people who thronged them: incongruity that deepened as the mist thickened to smog and as, driving out to the suburbs, one saw the chimneys smoking among the palm trees.