The “friendliest” and “most relaxing” accents in the UK have been named — and there’s a clear winner (and loser).
A new survey has revealed what people think are the “friendliest” and “most relaxing” accents in the UK — and “Welsh” comes out top in both. Viewers of the new series of The Traitors on the BBC will have seen one conestant, Charlotte, competing while putting on a fake “Welsh” accent, claiming it is more trustworthy than others. And according to this poll, she might have a point.
More than 1,500 people were asked their views on accents and rated each on factors such as being relaxing or unrelaxing, easy or to difficult to follow and friendly or unfriendly. While Wales came top (with 38% of people saying they found it relaxing) Yorkshire came second and Cornish in third. The Cockney and Essex accents came lowest on the scale. Globally, the Italian accent was found to be the most soothing.
The survey was conducted by SpaSeekers.com and Dr Chris Montgomery, an expert in dialectology from the University of Sheffield.
The UK’s 10 Most Relaxing Accents
- Welsh
- Yorkshire
- Cornish
- Northern Irish
- King’s English
- Scottish
- West Country
- Geordie
- Lancashire
- Norfolk
The Welsh, Yorkshire and Cornish accents also all ranked as the top three “most friendly” accents in the UK, with researchers saying that “often our perception of ‘friendly’ and ‘relaxing’ can be one in the same”. The lowest five on the list were Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cockney and Essex.
The Welsh and Essex accents both appear in the list of ‘friendliest’ and ‘most relaxing’ accents, but at opposite ends
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Image:
Tom Jackson/BBC/PA)
Sharing their results, the researchers said: “It is the warm and friendly Welsh accent which takes first place as the most relaxing accent in the UK, with over 38% of respondents reportedly finding this accent soothing. The Welsh accent is instantly recognisable to most people from the UK and is often described as being a ‘singsong’ accent, because Welsh speakers often stretch their vowels, and their intonation typically travels from a high to low pitch. For this reason, this melodic accent may help listeners to tune in and really relax when listening to Welsh accents.”
Of course, people in Wales would not hesitate to tell you there is no single “Welsh” accent, with the accents of people in, say, Caernarfon, almost entirely different from those in Carmarthen or Cardiff. But thanks to the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, nearly 20 million people will have listened to at least one version of a Welsh accent since Christmas day. The show has become the most-viewed scripted show since records began.
Dr Montgomery said: “There are a number of different factors that can affect how relaxing we perceive an accent to be – using this research as one example, we can begin to see that there are patterns in how ‘relaxing’ an accent is, compared to how ‘friendly’ it is, or how ‘difficult’ it is to understand.
“We associate people from different places with different characteristics, so the accent associated with each place will also be linked with these characteristics as a result. For example, the ‘received pronunciation’ dialect is often seen as ‘posh’ or associated with those who are highly educated, which can trigger certain emotions and feelings.
“We know that people find some accents more pleasant to listen to than others, so it’s been great to quantify this. Anecdotally, it does seem that a lot of people enjoy Italian accents, so seeing this accent emerge as the most relaxing in this survey is quite interesting. The fact that it ranks above any regional UK accents is also surprising, as we could easily assume that accents that are more familiar to us may have a more soothing effect.”