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Birmingham Accent
Native to United Kingdom
Region Birmingham, England
Native speakers
3.7 million people in metro Birmingham (2014)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog None
Location of the Birmingham area within England.

Brummie (sometimes Brummy) is the accent and dialect of Birmingham, England. The term derives from Brummagem or Bromwichham, historical variants of the name Birmingham.

It is not the only accent of the West Midlands, although the term Brummie is often erroneously used in referring to all accents of the region. It is markedly distinct from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, although modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. For instance, Dudley-born comedian Lenny Henry, Walsall-born rock musician Noddy Holder, Smethwick-born actress Julie Walters, Wollaston-born soap actress Jan Pearson, West Bromwich-born comedian Frank Skinner, are sometimes mistaken for Brummie-speakers by people outside the West Midlands county.

Additionally, population mobility has meant that to a degree, the Brummie accent extends into some parts of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, although much of the accent within the borough might be considered to be closer to contemporary RP. For example, Solihull-born presenter Richard Hammond (despite often being referred to as a Brummie) does not speak with a strong Brummie accent.

The Brummie accent and the Coventry accent are also quite distinct in their differences, despite only 17 miles ( 27 km) separating the cities. To the untrained ear, however, all of these accents may sound very similar, just as British English speakers can find it hard to distinguish between different North American accents, or Australian and New Zealand accents.

As with all English regional accents, the Brummie accent also grades into RP English. The accent of presenter Cat Deeley is listed by her voiceover agency, Curtis Brown, as "RP/Birmingham".

Examples of celebrity speakers include TV presenter Adrian Chiles, comedian Jasper Carrott, Goodies actor and TV presenter Bill Oddie, hip-hop and garage musician Mike Skinner, rock musicians Ozzy Osbourne (and all other members of the original Black Sabbath), Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne (ELO founders), Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), Dave Pegg (of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull), broadcaster Les Ross, politician Clare Short, SAS soldier and author John "Brummie" Stokes and many actresses and actors; Martha Howe-Douglas, Donnaleigh Bailey, Nicolas Woodman, Sarah Smart, John Oliver and Ryan Cartwright.


  • Pronunciation 1
  • Stereotypes 2
  • Dialect 3
  • See also 4
  • References 5
  • External links 6


Phoneme Brummie example
/æ/ [a] trap
/aʊ/ [æʊ~æə] mouth
/eɪ/ [ʌɪ] face
/əʊ/ [ɑʊ] goat
/ʌ/ [ʊ] strut
/ʊ/ [ʊ] foot
/ɔr/ [ʌʊə] force

The strength of a person's accent varies greatly all across Birmingham. Like most cities, the accent changes relative to the area of the city. A common misconception is that everyone in Birmingham speaks the same accent. It could be argued Brummie is an accent rather than a dialect as in Black Country which is a dialect with unique words and phrases, as in owamya? For How are you? Which many comment is not used in Brummie speech. Similarly Brummies pronounce 'I' as 'oy' whereas Black Country uses the dialect 'Ah' as in 'Ah bin' meaning I have been.

There are also differences between Brummie and Black Country accents not readily apparent to people from outside the West Midlands. A Black Country accent and a Birmingham accent can be hard to distinguish if neither accent is that broad. The phonetician John Wells has admitted that he cannot tell any difference between the accents.[2] Urszula Clark has proposed the FACE vowel as a difference, with Birmingham speakers' using /ʌɪ/ and Black Country speakers' using /æɪ/.[3] She also mentions that Black Country speakers are more likely to use /ɪʊ/ where most other accents use /juː/ (in words such as new, Hugh, stew, etc.).[4] This /ɪʊ/ is also present in some North American dialects for words like "eww", "grew", "new" "due", etc., contrasting with /u/ (words like "boo", "zoo", "to", "too", "moon", "dune" etc.). Other North American dialects may use /ju/ for this purpose, or even make no distinction at all.

Below are some common features of a recognisable Brummie accent (a given speaker may not necessarily use all, or use a feature consistently). The letters enclosed in square brackets – [] – use the . The corresponding example texts enclosed in double quotes (") are spelt so that a reader using received pronunciation (RP) can approximate the sounds.

  • Final unstressed /i/, as in happy, may be realized as [əi], though this varies considerably between speakers
  • The majority of Brummies use the Northern [a] in words like bath, cast and chance, although the Southern [ɑː] is more common amongst older speakers.[5]
  • The vowels in "price" and "choice" may be almost merged as [ɒɪ] so that the two words would almost rhyme. However, the two are still distinct, unlike the Black Country dialect.
  • Some tapping of prevocalic /r/ (some speakers; e.g. in "crime" or there is)


Rhymes and vocabulary in the works of William Shakespeare suggest that he used a local dialect (Birmingham and his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, are both in the English West Midland dialect area and only about 35 miles apart).


A study was conducted in 2008 where people were asked to grade the intelligence of a person based on their accent and the Brummie accent was ranked as the least intelligent accent. It even scored lower than being silent, an example of the stereotype attached to the Brummie accent.[8]

According to Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study (Steve Thorne, 2003), among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike". He alleges that, overseas visitors in contrast find it "lilting and melodious", and from this claims that such dislike is driven by various linguistic myths and social factors peculiar to the UK ("social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the poor public image of the City of Birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide"). However, the Brummie accent is the only 'northern' accent to receive such attention (except of course for the Geordie accent, the Scottish accents, the Leeds accent, and the Mersey accent, and all other accents from the north which are mocked heavily by those from Southern England).

For instance, despite the city's cultural and innovative history, its industrial background (as depicted by the arm-and-hammer in Birmingham's coat of arms) has led to a muscular and unintelligent stereotype: a "Brummagem screwdriver" or "Brummie screwdriver" is UK slang for a hammer.


Advertisements are another medium where many perceive stereotypes. Journalist Lydia Stockdale, writing in the Birmingham Post,[9] commented on advertisers' association of Birmingham accents with pigs: the pig in the ad for Colman's Potato Bakes, Nick Park's Hells Angel Pigs for British Gas and ITV's "Dave the window-cleaner pig" all had Brummie accents. In 2003, a Halifax bank advertisement featuring Howard Brown, a Birmingham- born and based employee, was replaced by an animated version with an exaggerated comical accent overdubbed by a Cockney actor.[10]


According to the PhD thesis of Steve Thorne at the University of Birmingham Department of English, Birmingham English is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech", also with elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Traditional expressions include:[11]

0121 do one
an expression meaning "go away" incorporating the telephone area code for Birmingham
variation of "baby"
Bawlin, bawl
to weep, as in "She started to bawl'" (Not unique to Birmingham)
a popular and enjoyable song
a bread roll (comes from the fact that bread rolls look like street cobbles)
a milder and more nuanced version of the swear word
a West Midlands term for a forward roll
Go and play up your own end
Our wench
The outdoor
exclusive West Midlands term for off license
Throw a wobbly
to become sulky or have a tantrum
to leave suddenly, or flee
Up the cut
up the canal (not unique to Birmingham)
(often "dead yampy") mad, daft, barmy (also used is the word "saft", as in "yow big saft babbie"). Many Black Country folk believe "yampy" is a Black Country word, originating from the Dudley-Tipton area, which has been appropriated and claimed as their own by both Birmingham and Coventry dialects, although yampy is found in areas of the black country both outside Birmingham and Tipton/Dudley so might have been a general south Staffordshire and north Worcestershire areas.

See also


  1. ^ "UK Population Estimates". ONS. Retrieved 28 June 2014
  2. ^ Wells, John (2011-06-13). "John Wells’s phonetic blog: the Black Country". Retrieved 2014-05-18. 
  3. ^ Handbook of Varieties of English, Mouton de Gruyter, 2004, page 148
  4. ^ Handbook of Varieties of English, Mouton de Gruyter, 2004, page 151
  7. ^ Collect Britain, Samples of Birmingham speech. (WMA format, with annotations on phonology, lexis and grammar.)
  8. ^ Brummie accent is perceived as 'worse than silence', The Times, 4 April 2008.
  9. ^ "Pig ignorant about the Brummie accent" Birmingham Post, 2 December 2004 (From The Free Library)
  10. ^ Face of the Halifax given a makeover ... and a cockney's voiceover, The Guardian, 20 January 2003.
  11. ^ Birmingham Mail Survey

External links

  • How to Speak Brummie
  • Ask Oxford Brum
  • Talk Like A Brummie Day On 17 July 2009
  • Talk Like A Brummie A wiki-based Birmingham dialect dictionary
  • Brummies Talking Discussions and games
  • Dr Steve Thorne's website devoted to the study of Brummie, including a dictionary, MP3 speech samples, discussion of his research on stereotypes, etc.
  • Birmingham English sample using a test paragraph including most English sounds: George Mason University Speech Accent Archive. Compare a Dudley (Black Country) sample
  • Sounds Familiar? Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
  • Why Brummies Why not Birmies? Etymological article by Dr Carl Chinn
  • Brummie and Black Country sayings
  • Brummie is beautiful BBC News, 28 August 2003
  • Brummie is Beautiful! University of Birmingham press release about Dr Steve Thorne's PhD thesis, Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study
  • Paul Henry on Benny's accent Noele Gordon and Crossroads Appreciation Society interview
  • English Accents and Dialects, British Library : Sue Long, Aubrey Walton, Harry Phillips and Billy Lucas.
  • English Accents and Dialects, Warwickshire speakers - William Sewell of Hockley Heath, Mr Calcutt of Aston Cantlow, Mr Duckett of Lighthorne, and Harry Cook of Shipston-on-Stour - show progressive accent change moving south-east from Birmingham across isogloss
  • Whoohoo Brummie translator
