Added: 5 years ago
From: jkottke
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  • Too bad he didn't a few more. He was really on a roll.

  • Why is he doing Scottish accents when the video says English?

  • @Snagprophet

    He does English accents, the same way in USA they speak English being Americans. It's like people from, say, Argetina all the way up to Mexico: they speak Spanish but they're not Spaniards.

    Bye!

  • It's Terry Tibbs !!!! - Wooden Ladders Talk To Me !!!!

  • The sweep of accents, the idea of succession by geography of psychology of population demographics, is certainly an important one Mr.Sellers here vocates.

  • Peter truly was the master of accents and impersonations.

  • He forgot the hampshire accent! A mix of posh and farmer!! :P

    But still bloody good stuff, rip to mr sellers :(

  • @BOT101st I know roight! Although to be fair and whatnot he did do the west country, which isn't far off!

  • @jaylias

    Aye true chap! We hampshires do have a west country twang but i think we pronounciate some words a bit more :D

  • i just wish it was a little bit louder :(

  • amazing actor. shame how he passed away

  • @1jamespears It was a heart attack, in part to the congenital heart defect he had. Other factors were his smoking, drugs use and stress from overwork. He had been told by doctors years before to slow down, but that wasn't Peters' style.

  • The God of character actors.

  • He sounded more like Rambling Syd Rumpo aka Kenneth Williams than John Arlott at the end there.

  • How many actors are able, in English language, to change so frequently and easily their accent, I can see the british Anthony Hopkins (Nixon), Sean Connery (without any touch of scottish accent) playing an english spy as James Bond or an american general in the "Presidio"), Hugh Laurie, with an english accent or with an american accent from Seattle aera, or the american actor John Hillerman with a perfect english accent it is fascinating this flexibility of accents in English.

  • @inenglishwithseries Don't forget Meryl Streep :)

  • Why did'nt this make it into Dr strangelove?

  • 1:13, that's me!

  • lol

    I am speaking english with hebrew accent, I wonder if he could do this :)

    regards from Israel

  • This guy has got to be kidding... "London, East, North, South or West English"? I've only recently learned to distinguish between English, Scottish & Irish accents... now this guy is talking about variations of simply the English accent???

    Perhaps, within another 40 years I'll recognize those also

  • @Chuichupachichi Not going to happen, mate. The UK has the most accents per square mile in the World. If you go 15 miles out of any city in any direction, you will hear almost 15 noticably different accents:-)

    Hollywood only really shows one, though, which is the posh, South East butler type, occasionally, you might hear a Cockney type a generic Scots accent or an "Oim from Oirland, me" accent.

    Keep trying though, I'll give you a test in 40 years time ;-)

  • @Triplesod of course the scottish accent is usually the semi-shouting Glaswegian which is just as crass when they try to do a Cockney one and think most of london speaks like that.

  • @Chuichupachichi Well i live in Newcastle, England and to be honest if you heard me you wouldn't believe i was English, there are probably over 100 different English accents alone, then there's different accents in scotland but they don't vary as much as ours.

  • Comment removed

  • @liamwitdre They do, you just don't hear it, I'm Scottish and I can distinguish around about 3 English ones, Queen's (posh), Northern and Cockney.

  • @Chuichupachichi There's a lot of different Irish accents too - usually when people think there is just one "Irish" sound, it turns out that nobody here actually speaks like that. Most of the stage Irish accents you hear in (American) films is funny but completely wrong :)

  • The most important issue is that the listener understands us clearly and that the grammar is correct. Whether British, American, Australian, Irish, South African, New Zealand, Canadian etc etc -it's not what you feel comfortable with.

  • Sellers was a genius. Not sure if Arlott could be mistaken. In the late 40's Sellers and Benny Hill were the two best rated mimics on the radio, they both understood what makes people laugh.

  • @LOCOMOTIONNUMBER1 the difference in my view is that sellers is timeless

  • Interestingly, the reason why the rhotic West Country accents are closer to Ameican accents is because of Bristol's history as a renaissance through Victorian sea-trading city. Many exploratory sailors spoke with the same working-class Bristolian that gives us the modern stereotypical "Pirate" accent.

  • Which English accent was it he said that sounds American?

  • his glasgow and edinburgh accents are unbelievable they spot on scottish accents are the hardest to do rite his are perfect this man was a god

  • Somerset in the South-West, woooo xD

  • He was taking the piss out of Ramblin Syd near the end there

  • He was sooo talented lol I love his pimply London accent.

    He is displaying various english accents *of that era*

    The London accents have changed slightly since then because of many factors, one of the factors is immigration and the huge influx of Jamaicans in the years after WW2

    certain South London accent has been heavilly influenced by Jamaican tonality as well as actual dialect, 'innit tho', 'you get mee dough'

    its ever changing so interesting

  • @Applebaum your right, there was hardly any "Ali G" accent around then when he done this

  • @Blokecameuptome Ah yes there werent any white people trying to make money off taking the piss out of Asian people who try to imitate 2nd generation Jamaican patois and African American Ebonic vernacular then

    ahh those were the days

  • I am a Londoner, and the amount of London accents Sellers identifies and pulls off perfectly is fascinating. If I recall rightly theres 5/6 London accents here, varying between hard cockney and the more posh London accents and lots in-between. Kudos to your powers of observation and impersonation Mr Sellers.

  • shit the bed on Birmingham...lol

  • His first one sounds exactly like Steve Harris

  • Damn....that's brilliant. But so was most everything else Sellers did so naturally he made it look so easy.

  • Yeah, I have Dr. Strangelove and it is a extra add-on.

  • he looks like terry tibbs

  • The crazy thing is he goes back to an American accent in between, when he's not American in the first place!

  • Wish i could melt between each that well

  • @angstmonkey1 Maybe not. Sellers was a brilliant mimic, but he wasn't necessarily screwed together too tightly...

  • sounds like terry tibbs at one point :L

  • Brilliant.

  • he acshually did a film in Swansea, even up Townhill there, and you are talking about englishmen on kebabs there, but he survived, with colours - even the main woman there put a medal on him, and THAT is saying something. Sellars walks on water as Townhill is concerned, in memory, and today.

  • why is he in the war room? is this a deleted/unseen bit of Dr. Strangelove? Peter Sellers was brilliant!

  • Where I live it tends to be the older generations who hold the stronger accents, I dread the day when we all talk like posh cunts.

  • Peter Sellers is honoured in an Iphone app called Pocket Goon.

    You can see his early humour stems from his association with

    Spike Milligan. The app has a soundboard and a video board with clips from Sellers as far back as 1956.

  • he's talented!!

  • Unleashed Genius

  • and a little American

  • dude....wow.

  • This man is amazingly talented, theres no method just gifted

  • I am sorry but he is a very odd bird.......

    VERY ODD.

    In fact his whole life is strange,

    Just as his characters that he played.

  • OF ourse he's odd. That is his Brilliance!

  • @tubelover64 lets hear them then.

  • actually, for those talking about the sound quality

    check out the DVD which includes it, and THERE you will notice the shifts better when going from one to the next

  • I wish he'd done a Yorkshire one that would have really confused our American friends. I grew up in Lincolnshire and when I moved to Canada I constantly got people asking me if I were from the States because it sounds similar apparently. People really don't know accents outside of their own countries.

  • "People really don't know accents outside of their own countries. "

    Very true. I'm in the US, but I've watched a lot of British TV, and my wife lived in Oxfordshire for a few years, so I've learned some of the differences. My favorite is the Geordie accent.

    To your point though, someone on YT was criticizing an American that thought Scouse was Scottish, so I asked the guy if he could tell the difference between an Tennessee accent and and Alabama accent. We're all equally clueless! :-)

  • Hahahahaha, coming from an Irishman! LMAO!

  • Hm, well what does that make you? You see, 'stupider' isn't really a word and 'are a stupider and fatter than everyone else.' is just a complete failure at expressed thought.

  • learn to facetious, fat ass.

    =)

  • That's not really a sentence either.

  • hehe it's not meant to be grammatically correct.

    wow you are super slow. and fat.

  • "learn to facetious" ? makes no sense

  • lol - AND THAT'S IRONIC HuRRrr DUrrH

  • Apparently they don't, since you failed to mention every other language which has accents besides english. Epic fail on your part.

  • As a continental European (Belgian) I can assure you, that I can perfectly distiguish between Los Angeles, NYC, Southern, Canadian, London, Scottish, Liverpool, Irish and Welsh accents just to name a few, and I am not an exception.

  • @bartmillerbelgium southern canadian? the accents change mostly from east and west not so much north and south

  • For what it's worth - I've always found it necessary to boost the audio about 60% above standard for YouTube. Thus, recordings have to be specially made - or adapted. You can't just upload standard stuff. At least - not if you want it to be HEARD!!!

  • It's an old video! If you can't "distiguish" what Peter is saying then listen more carefully because I can and English is my second language. 5 stars well deserved!

  • He didn't do the Brummy accent!

  • No he doesn't. He sounds as much like the guy from Oasis as someone from New York sounds like someone from Memphis.

  • and brixton accent

  • i like Scootish accents .. BLUDDY SCOTTS

  • I am looking for a video on all English speaking accent s, Scottish english, irish english,Australian, New Zealand, American English(Minnesota, West coast, west coast surfer, east coast, and southern), Canadian/Minnesota, sometimes those Aussies and NZs sound like brits. is their a distinct Welsh accent?

    And how the hell did us Yanks ended up talking differently from England English?

  • I'd say there's definitely a distinct Welsh accent though - youtube 'Gavin & Stacey' - although, on saying that, if you're having trouble distinguishing Aussies from us Brits, I don't know whether you'll be able to hear the differences.

    TBH, I usually can't tell Canadian people apart from Americans, and have difficulty telling some European accents apart (apart from the obvious ones - French, German etc) so I think you tend to be more sensitive to accents if they're from your country.

  • There are loads of Welsh accents, I am English and live in Wales. The 2 main accents for Wales are easily distinguishable, they are the North and South Wales accents. Very different from each other. If the person is a speaker of Welsh then the accent is usually much stronger.

  • im guessing a similar way as how the english ended up talking differently to each other.

    long-term seperation and seperate evolution.

  • this chap is just brilliant

  • What a wonderfully talented man peter sellers was. Thankyou so much for this excellent posting.

  • I like his Indian accents the most.

  • Awesome

  • British accents, he does english and scottish. They're British.

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  • Comment removed

  • Funny...real funny.

  • It`s just a joke man. I just wanted to piss off a couple of scots. I know perfectly well that Scotland is a country, but is a part of United Kingdom together with England and Wales etc. They have the same head of state and government. The prime minister of England is also prime minister of Scotland, although Scotland has a first minister or something and their own parliment.

  • @tyzwain They're mainly Lahnden...

    Very few non-London. He's a Londoner anyway.

    One Edinburgh.

  • @tyzwain caaaalm down caaaaalm down

  • ha ha. john arlott! I remember his wonderful cricket commentary

  • Of course, John Arlott had a Hampshire accent ,not Devon or Cornwall (still classed as a West country accent -pronounced "R"s)

    Still the yardstick of cricket commentary.

  • I think the title should say British accents instead of English accents.

  • it's terry tibs LOL

  • Can anyone tell me what exactly accents he´s doing? Thanks

  • @Marcoshary 1) Cockney. 2) General London accent. 3)  Estuary English accent (intellectual lol?). You might here this in parts of Kent and Essex, maybe Surrey, sounded quite Kentish. 4) Pimply guy (?) Frank Spencer! 5) Posh (Cosmo!) sort of London accent 6) Maybe a Greek or Jewish London accent, 7) Edinbro' "Morningside Accent" 8) Glasgow 9) West Country (but as someone pointed out John Arlott was from Hampshire, and has accent has a kind of rural South East feel (with a bit of a burr).

  • @csvtom - BOTH Arlott and Sellers were from Hampshire. That county , although not far from London, has a distinctly West Country-type accent. Winchester WAS the capital of Wessex.

    Portsmouth seems to be the exception - sounds increasingly "Mockney"

  • @adventussaxonum yeah. Well the rhotic has declined the further East in the country you go. I suppose Portsmouth is a big city, like Brighton where there's a definite London influence.

  • i would really love to see a documentary about RP and the various UK accents, I can hardly make out the difference between north and south, although I recognize Karl's Manc accent.

  • Really? I suppose I'm the same with American accents, I can;t tell the difference with those. As someone from the North-East of England, though, I find it pretty easy to tell the difference.

  • There are slight regional pronunciations in the US, but I think in general we all sound the same, after years of MTV and Hollywood. The only distinctly American sounds left are Southern drawls and urban Black dialects.

    I think its great that the UK still has a rich diversity of accents -- makes it all the better when Steve takes the mick out of Karl Pilkington...

  • There's still a recognizable Midwest accent, and there's more than one Southern accent. And the New Yorker accent lives on, too.

  • Not to mention Boston.

  • or Chicago and Minnesota

  • haha, quite good, but i dont know anyone that speaks posh!

  • wow. how many different english accents are there? theres a lot of different american accents.

  • err.. a lot! theres so many that are native to certain area's which allow us to tell straight away where that person is from (or there-abouts).

  • As many as there are people!

    He misses out lots of the best ones, though: Brummie, Geordie, Scouse, Bristolian, Manx, Dorset, Yorkshire, Teeside, Lancastrian, Highland Scots and all the Welsh and Ulster accents...

  • Glasgow, I know is not in England, so he's covering British accents.

  • Malvinas ARGENTINAS!

  • No. It isn't.

  • what type of accent does Mandrake have?

  • He missed out scouse!

    Still, that was very good.

  • ba sa stiti ca fetele sunt niste pizde si noi le violam la pizda.

  • YOU MEAN BRITISH ACCENTS

  • correct!!!

  • Odd, but not surprising, that I have been ''red-carded'' by simply stating what is true. As noted by another user, Glasgow is indeed not in the region called England.

  • there should be more im sure. wheres the rest?

  • this is fucking amazing

  • Yeah i was looking forwar' t' novern accent :P

  • I'm pretty sure he isn't talking to anyone. This had to have been filmed during Dr. Strangelove, and in the phone scenes that are in the movie he didn't have anyone on the other side (the phone probably wasn't even operational).

  • i those days interviews were shot as a split screen where the person being interviewed would answer questions asked through a phone and an interviewer was filmed later and added to the split screen .

    copy and paste 'Dr. Strangelove - Original Split-Screen Interview' to the you tube search bar.

  • but can he do detroit? LOL

  • ignore the north then! im well offended! lol

  • New Zealand accent is the best

  • New Zealand Maori (Native People) Accent is so funny.

  • he was born in portsmouth (woop woop) do people from pompey have an accent anyone? coz im from there and i was wonderin

  • they definately do. its quite similar to an eastern england accent, because its london overspill, but its softer.

  • what a great talent and yet a shy man, like all actors hiding behind a cloak, is that true!

  • Where abouts in London would one encounter the 'pimply individual' accent or way of speaking? I have an idea but I'd rather not say (in fear or being verbally abused for my unintentional ignorance and the such.) Peter Sellers possessed such great talent. 'Tis a shame that he is relatively unknown in my school. And there I was wondering why I have very few friends. (Mild amusement.)

  • The 'pimply individual' accent must have disappeared about 30 years ago.. I've only ever heard it in Monty Python

  • Great stuff! He could just breathe and make me laugh. Wherever you are, Peter, I hope you're having the last laugh. The world you left was probably slightly better than what we have now, and we have nobody like you!

  • very good!

  • Scottish.

  • What a wonderful talent. Sorely missed.

  • AHHGH! don't call Peter Sellers an idiot! that was great.

  • How many accents exist in English language, one hundred?

    Sorry , but , somebody could explain me what the bristolian accent is so specific?

  • A Bristol accent is quite like the ones at the end...a "west country" accent. I don't know how many accents there are but he didn't do any of the Northern English accents.."Geordie" is very hard to imitate

  • To change in a full of accents is a fantastic performance, british (english, scottish , irish), canadian, american , australian , newzed,southafrican, caribbean, rare are the actors who can do that so perfectly; the british Anthony Hopkins playing english and american characters as "Nixon" or on the contrary John Hillerman a texan who plays a pure former british Sergeant Major in the "Magnum" series, flexibility of english is fantastic isn't it?

  • Yes, but Ireland isn't British ;)

  • Ireland is part of the British Isles, it isn't part of Great Britain.

  • Well, if Ireland had its way, it wouldn't be called "The British Isles" either lol. A lot of Irish feel that even though it's a geographical reference, it has political implications too.

  • And a lot of Irish people want to be part of The British Isles too... that's politics.

  • Please be joking.

  • Can't figure out if your being sarcastic or what. I certainly hope so...

  • Hasn't he got a Morningside Edinburgh accent? I am an Englisher so I'm not sure of these things. His London accents were good, one of them sounded more like a Essex/Kent accent. Maybe Bromley or something.

  • Brilliant!

  • Brilliant! :)

  • Peter Sellers was one of the best, and to came from radio to film.... Pity hes gone:(

  • oh i'm sure he is still watching and impersonating somewhere!

  • Just proves that some good things can come from Pompey.Sellers,Dickens,my brother,and the Royal Navy.Oh! and Bobby Stokes of course.That's about it!

  • Peter Sellers Is "The Best"

  • Peter Sellers was the man!

  • Since when has Scotland been part of England? I think we need to ne-name this British Accents. Many thanks.

  • Given that he also does an American accent at the end, the title refers to accents in the English language and not to accents from England.

  • MATSJN

    the title clearly states ''does english accents''

    NOT

    ''does assorted accents in english''

  • At the end he does another english accent that he says sounds american not an actual american accent.

  • since when have you been able to think logically?

  • peter sellers is a genius

  • aha whoaa that's so good!