Are accents different throughout England?

There are many different accents and dialects throughout England and people are often very proud of their local accent or dialect. However, accents and dialects also highlight social class differences, rivalries or other associated prejudices—as illustrated by George Bernard Shaw's comment:

English language in England

The English language spoken and written in England encompasses a diverse range of accents and dialects. The dialect forms part of the broader British English, along with other varieties in the United Kingdom. Terms used to refer to the English language spoken and written in England include: English English, Anglo-English and British English in England.

The related term 'British English' (which in American English is often used to mean English English and Anglo-English) has many ambiguities and tensions in the word "British" and as a result can be used and interpreted multiple ways, but is usually reserved to describe the features common to English English, Welsh English and Scottish English (England, Wales and Scotland are the three traditional countries on the island of Great Britain; the main dialect of the fourth country of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, is Ulster English, which is generally considered a sub-dialect of Hiberno-English).

As well as pride in one's accent, there is also stigma placed on many traditional working class dialects. In his work on the dialect of Bolton, Graham Shorrocks wrote

The three largest recognisable dialect groups in England are Southern English dialects, Midlands English dialects and Northern English dialects. The most prominent isogloss is the foot–strut split, which runs roughly from mid-Shropshire (on the Welsh border) to south of Birmingham and then to the Wash. South of the Isogloss(A people), in the Midlands and Southern dialects, the Middle English phoneme split into (as in "cut", "strut") and ("put", "foot"); this change did not occur north of the Isogloss.

The accent of English English best known to people outside the United Kingdom is that of Received Pronunciation (RP), though it is used by only a small minority of speakers in England. Until recently, RP was widely considered to be more typical of educated speakers than other accents. It was referred to by some as the Queen's (or King's) English, or even "BBC English" (because for many years of broadcasting it was rare to hear any other accent on the BBC). These terms, however, do not refer only to accent features but also to grammar and vocabulary, as explained in Received Pronunciation. Since the 1960s regional accents have become increasingly accepted in mainstream media, and are frequently heard on radio and television. RP is also sometimes called an "Oxford accent"; the Oxford English Dictionary gives RP pronunciations for each word, as do most other English dictionaries published in Britain.

Most native English speakers can tell the general region in England that a speaker comes from, and experts or locals may be able to narrow this down to within a few miles. Historically, such differences could be a major impediment to understanding between people from different areas. There are also many cases where a large city has a very different accent from the rural area around it (e.g. Bristol and Avon, Hull and the East Riding, Liverpool and Lancashire). But modern communications and mass media have reduced these differences in some parts of the country. Speakers may also change their pronunciation and vocabulary, particularly towards Received Pronunciation and Standard English when in public.

British Isles varieties of English, including English English, are discussed in John C. Wells (1982). Some of the features of English English are that:There has been academic interest in dialects since the late 19th century. The main works are "On Early English Pronunciation" by A.J. Ellis, "English Dialect Grammar" by Joseph Wright, and the "English Dialect Dictionary" also by Joseph Wright. The Dialect Test was developed by Joseph Wright so he could hear the differences of the vowel sounds of a dialect by listening to different people reading the same short passage of text.

In the 1950s and 1960s the Survey of English Dialects was undertaken to preserve a record of the traditional spectrum of rural dialects that merged into each other. The traditional picture was that there would be a few changes in lexicon and pronunciation every couple of miles, but that there would be no sharp borders between completely different ways of speaking. Within a county, the accents of the different towns and villages would drift gradually so that residents of bordering areas sounded more similar to those in neighbouring counties.

Because of greater social mobility and the teaching of "Standard English" in secondary schools, this model is no longer very accurate. There are some English counties in which there is little change in accent/dialect, and people are more likely to categorise their accent by a region or county than by their town or village. As agriculture became less prominent, many rural dialects were lost. Some urban dialects have also declined; for example, traditional Bradford dialect is now quite rare in the city, and call centres have seen Bradford as a useful location for the very fact there is a lack of dialect in potential employees. Some call centres state that they were attracted to Bradford because it has a regional accent which is relatively easy to understand.
But working in the opposite direction concentrations of migration may cause a town or area to develop its own accent. The two most famous examples are Liverpool and Corby. Liverpool's dialect is influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh, and it sounds completely different from surrounding areas of Lancashire. Corby's dialect is influenced heavily by Scots, and it sounds completely different from the rest of Northamptonshire. The Voices 2006 survey found that the various ethnic minorities that have settled in large populations in parts of Britain develop their own specific dialects. For example, Asian may have an Oriental influence on their accent so sometimes urban dialects are now just as easily identifiable as rural dialects, even if they are not from South Asia. In the traditional view, urban speech was just seen as a watered-down version of that of the surrounding rural area. Historically, rural areas had much more stable demographics than urban areas, but there is now only a small difference. It has probably never been true since the Industrial Revolution caused an enormous influx to cities from rural areas.

According to dialectologist Peter Trudgill, the major regional English accents of modern England can be divided on the basis on the following basic features; the word columns each represent the pronunciation of one italicised word in the sentence ""Very few cars made" it "up" the "long hill"". An additional feature—the absence or presence of a trap-bath split—is also represented under the "path" column (so that the sentence could be rendered ""Very few cars made" it "up" the "path" of the "long hill"").
In general, Southern English accents are distinguished from Northern English accents primarily by not using the short a in words such as "bath". In the south-east, the broad A is normally used before a, or : words such as "cast" and "bath" are pronounced rather than. This sometimes occurs before : it is used in "command" and "demand" but not in "brand" or "grand".

In the south-west, an sound in used in these words but also in words that take in RP; there is no trap–bath split but both are pronounced with an extended fronted vowel. Bristol is an exception to the bath-broadening rule: it uses in the trap and bath sets, just as is the case in the North and the Midlands.

Accents originally from the upper class speech of the London–Oxford–Cambridge triangle are particularly notable as the basis for Received Pronunciation.

Southern English accents have three main historical influences:

Relatively recently, the first two have increasingly influenced southern accents outside London via social class mobility and the expansion of London. From some time during the 19th century, middle and upper middle classes began to adopt affectations, including the RP accent, associated with the upper class. In the late 20th and 21st century other social changes, such as middle class RP-speakers forming an increasing component of rural communities, have accentuated the spread of RP. The South East coast accents traditionally have several features in common with the West country; for example, rhoticity and the a: sound in words such as "bath", "cast", etc. However, the younger generation in the area is more likely to be non-rhotic and use the London/East Anglian A: sound in "bath".

After the Second World War, about one million Londoners were relocated to new and expanded towns throughout the south east, bringing with them their distinctive London accent.

During the 19th century distinct dialects of English were recorded in Sussex, Surrey and Kent. These dialects are now extinct or nearly extinct due to improved communications and population movements.

The West Country dialects accents are the English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country.

This region encompasses Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, while Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Wiltshire are usually also included, although the northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define and sometimes even wider areas are encompassed. The West Country accent is said to reflect the pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxons far better than other modern English Dialects.

In the nearby counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it was possible to encounter comparable accents and, indeed, distinct local dialects until perhaps the 1960s. There is now limited use of such dialects amongst older people in local areas. Although natives of such locations, especially in western parts, can still have West Country influences in their speech, the increased mobility and urbanisation of the population have meant that local Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight dialects (as opposed to "accents") are today essentially extinct.

Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. The "Survey of English Dialects" captured manners of speech across the West Country that were just as different from Standard English as anything from the far North. Close proximity has completely different languages such as Cornish, which is a Celtic language related to Welsh, and more closely to Breton.

The Norfolk dialect is spoken in the traditional county of Norfolk and areas of north Suffolk. Famous speakers include Keith Skipper.
The group FOND (Friends of Norfolk Dialect) was formed to record the county's dialect and to provide advice for TV companies using the dialect in productions.

East Anglian dialect is also spoken in areas of Cambridgeshire. It is characterised by the use of for in FLEECE words.

There are several accent features which are common to most of the accents of northern England (Wells 1982, section 4.4).Some dialect words used across the North are listed in extended editions of the Oxford Dictionary with a marker "North England": for example, the words "ginnell" and "snicket" for specific types of alleyway, the word "fettle" for to organise, or the use of "while" to mean "until". The best-known Northern words are "nowt", "owt" and "summat", which are included in most dictionaries. For more localised features, see the following sections.

The "present historical" is named after the speech of the region, but it is often used in many working class dialects in the south of England too. Instead of saying "I "said" to him", users of the rule would say, "I "says" to him". Instead of saying, "I "went" up there", they would say, "I "goes" up there."

In the far north of England, the local speech is indistinguishable from Scots. Wells said that northernmost Northumberland "though politically English is linguistically Scottish".

The Liverpool accent, known as Scouse colloquially, is quite different from the accent of surrounding Lancashire. This is because Liverpool has had many immigrants in recent centuries, particularly of Irish people. Irish influences on Scouse speech include the pronunciation of unstressed'my' as'me', and the pronunciation of 'th' sounds like 't' or 'd' (although they remain distinct as dental ). Other features include the pronunciation of non-initial as, and the pronunciation of 'r' as a tap.

"Wuthering Heights" is one of the few classic works of English literature to contain a substantial amount of dialect. Set in Haworth, the servant Joseph speaks in the traditional dialect of the area, which many modern readers struggle to understand. This dialect was still spoken around Haworth until the late 1970s, but there is now only a minority of it still in everyday use.
To hear this old dialect spoken it is necessary to attend a cattle market at Skipton, Otley, Settle or similar places where older farmers from deep in the dales can be heard speaking in what can be baffling dialect to many southerners.

The accents for Teesside are sometimes grouped with Yorkshire and sometimes grouped with the North-East of England, for they share characteristics with both. As this urban area grew in the early 20th century, there are fewer dialect words that date back to older forms of English; Teesside speak is the sort of modern dialect that Peter Trudgill identified in his "The Dialects of England". There is a Lower Tees Dialect group. A recent study found that most people from Middlesbrough do not consider their accent to be "Yorkshire", but that they are less hostile to being grouped with Yorkshire than to being grouped with the Geordie accent.
Intriguingly, speakers from Middlesbrough are occasionally mistaken for speakers from Liverpool as they share many of the same characteristics. It is thought the occasional similarities between the Middlesbrough and Liverpool accent may be due to the high number of Irish migration to both areas during the late 1900s in fact the 1871 census showed Middlesbrough had the second highest proportion of people from Ireland after Liverpool.
Some examples of traits that are shared with [most parts of] Yorkshire include:

Examples of traits shared with the North-East include:

The vowel in "goat" is an sound, as is found in both Durham and rural North Yorkshire. In common with this area of the country, Middlesbrough is a non-rhotic accent.

The vowel in "face" is pronounced as, as is commonplace in the North-East of England.

"The Archers" has had characters with a variety of different West Country accents (see Mummerset).

The shows of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement have often included a variety of regional accents, the most notable being "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" about Geordie men in Germany. "Porridge" featured London and Cumberland accents, and "The Likely Lads" featured north east England.

The programmes of Carla Lane such as "The Liver Birds" and "Bread" featured Scouse accents.

In the 2005 version of the science fiction programme "Doctor Who", various Londoners wonder why the Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston), an alien, sounds as if he comes from the North. Eccleston used his own Salford accent in the role; the Doctor's usual response is "Lots of planets have a North!" Other accents in the same series include Cockney (used by actress Billie Piper) and Estuary (used by actress Catherine Tate).

A television reality programme "Rock School" was set in Suffolk in its second series, providing lots of examples of the Suffolk dialect.

There are a considerable number of different accents within the regions of both the United States and Canada, originally deriving from the accents prevalent in different English, Scottish and Irish regions of the British Isles and corresponding to settlement patterns of these peoples in the colonies. These were developed and built upon as new waves of immigration, and migration across the North American continent, brought new accents and dialects to new areas, and as these ways of speaking merged and assimilated with the population. It is claimed that despite the centuries of linguistic changes there is still a resemblance between the English East Anglia accents which would have been used by early English settlers in New England (including the Pilgrims), and modern Northeastern United States accents. Similarly, the accents of Newfoundland have some similarities to the accents of Scotland and Ireland.

North American English

North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary, and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken dialects are often grouped together under a single category. Due to historical and cultural factors, Canadian English and American English retain numerous distinctions from each other, with the differences being most noticeable in the two languages' written forms. Canadian spellings are primarily based on British usage as a result of Canada's longer-standing connections with the United Kingdom. Canadians are generally tolerant of both British and American spellings, with British spellings being favored in more formal settings and in Canadian print media. Spellings in American English have been highly influenced by lexicographers like Noah Webster, who sought to create a standardized form of English that was independent of British English. Despite these differences, the dialects of both Canada and the United States are similar. The United Empire Loyalists who fled the American Revolution have had a large influence on Canadian English from its early roots.

Some terms in North American English are used almost exclusively in Canada and the United States (for example, the terms "diaper" and "gasoline" are widely used instead of "nappy" and "petrol"). Although many English speakers from outside North America regard such terms as distinct Americanisms, they are often just as common in Canada, mainly due to the effects of heavy cross-border trade and cultural penetration by the American mass media. The list of divergent words becomes longer if considering regional Canadian dialects, especially as spoken in the Atlantic provinces and parts of Vancouver Island where significant pockets of British culture still remain.

The following numerical list, corresponding to the map, accounts only for major dialect areas of modern North America that can be identified by geographic location; therefore, it does not represent speakers of non-geographically based (ethnic, social, etc.) varieties, such as General American, African-American English, Chicano English, etc.

Below, twelve major North American dialects are defined by particular accent characteristics. (Unmentioned below, Standard Canadian English is differentiated from Western U.S. English primarily by the Canadian Vowel Shift):

Eastern New England English encompasses Boston and Maine accents, and, according to some sources, the distinct Rhode Island accent. All Eastern New England English is famous for non-rhoticity, meaning it drops the "r" sound everywhere except before a vowel: thus, in words like "car", "card", "fear", and "chowder" (). The phrase "Park the car in Harvard Yard"—dialectally transcribed —is commonly used as a shibboleth, or speech indicator, for the non-rhotic Eastern New England dialect running from Boston north to Maine, and as far west as Worcester, which contrasts with the generally rhotic dialects elsewhere in North America. In all of Eastern New England, except Rhode Island, words like "caught" and "cot" are pronounced identically (both are often rounded, thus: ), because those two vowel sounds have fully merged. A phenomenon called Canadian raising occurs throughout Eastern New England, causing "writer" to have a different stressed vowel sound than "rider", and for the verb "house" to have a different vowel sound than the noun "house". and have relatively back starting positions. The "horse"–"hoarse" distinction is still present to some extent in some areas, as well as the "Mary"–"marry"–"merry" distinction in many speakers.

New England English

New England English collectively refers to the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area. Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", and many of those accent features still remain in eastern New England, such as "R-dropping" (though this feature is receding among younger speakers today). The 2006 "Atlas of North American English" (ANAE) argues that there is a division between Northern New England English and Southern New England English, especially on the basis of the cot–caught merger and fronting. The ANAE also categorizes the strongest differentiated New England accents into four combinations of the above dichotomies, simply defined as follows:New England English is not a single American dialect, but a collective term for a number of dialects and varieties that are close geographic neighbors within New England, but which differ on a spectrum that broadly divides New England English into a unique north versus south (specifically, a northern merger of the vowels and, versus a southern distinction between these vowels), as well as a unique east versus west (specifically, an eastern pronunciation of the "r" sound only before vowels, versus a western pronunciation of all "r" sounds). Regarding the former feature, all of northern New England (most famously including Boston, but going as far southeast as Cape Cod and as far north as central Maine) historically merges the open and open-mid back rounded vowels (so that, for instance, "pond" and "pawned" are pronounced the same, which is commonly called the cot–caught merger), while southern coastal New England (including Rhode Island) historically maintains a noticeable distinction between these two vowels. Regarding the second feature, all of eastern New England is historically non-rhotic (famously pronouncing "car" like "kah"), while all of western New England is historically rhotic (or ""r"-ful"). Therefore, four combinations of these two features are possible, and coincidentally all four exist among New England English speakers, largely correlated with the exact geographic quadrant in New England in which a speaker was raised.

All of New England raises the tongue in the first element of the diphthong before voiceless consonants; eastern New England, specifically, also raises the first element of before voiceless consonants (commonly known as Canadian raising).

All the local dialects of New England are also known for commonly pronouncing the unstressed sequences and (for example, found in "sitting" or "Britain" ) as (). This form of "t"-glottalization (especially the form) is found commonly in other parts of the country as well, like in the word "Britain" (sometimes represented along the lines of "Brih'in").

The extent that speakers raise the tongue in the English "short "a" vowel varies widely in New England; however, across the board, New England speakers demonstrate a definite "nasal" short-"a" system, in which the vowel is always raised the absolute strongest whenever occurring before the nasal consonants and (so that, "pan", for example, nearly approaches the sound of the word "paean"). In all of New England except Rhode Island and southern Connecticut, the short "a" may also be noticeably raised in many other environments.

The following terms originate from and are used commonly and nearly exclusively throughout New England:
As in the rest of the Northeast, "sneakers" is the primary term for "athletic shoes", and common typically before adjectives or adverbs, "wicked" is used as an intensifier word (predominant in Northern and Eastern New England English, from Boston). Many Boston-originating local terms have dispersed throughout Eastern New England and, prominently, all the rest of Massachusetts.

Western New England English encompasses the accents of Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Connecticut. These accents are fully rhotic, meaning all "r" sounds are pronounced, as in most of North America. Here, and have slightly fronted starting positions, and the Mary–marry–merry merger and horse–hoarse merger are fully complete. Western New England English exhibits the entire continuum for the cot–caught merger: a full merger is heard in its northern reaches (namely, Vermont) and a full distinction at its southern reaches (namely, coastal Connecticut), including a transitional area in the middle. Western New England English is closely related to and influential on, but more conservative (i.e. preserving more historical features) than, the Inland North dialect which prevails farther west, and which has altered away from Western New England English due to an entirely new chain shift of the vowels since the 1900s. Some Western New England English speakers do have these shift's features, though it is disputed whether New England influenced the Inland North dialect region.

On the other hand, the Boston accent merges the "short "o"" with the "aw" phoneme: the two classes exemplified by "caught" and "cot" thus both become an often long and rounded, so that "caught", "cot", "law", "wand", "rock", "talk", "doll", and "wall" all are pronounced with the same vowel. By contrast, New York accents and southern New England accents have for "caught" and for "cot" and the London accents have and, respectively. In Boston and some other parts of New England, a few words ending in, e.g., "hot" and "got", can be pronounced with an entirely different phoneme, however, sounding instead like "hut" and "gut", respectively.

Boston accent

A Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs. Eastern New England English also traditionally includes New Hampshire, Maine, all of eastern Massachusetts, and arguably Rhode Island, though some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston. Some of the characteristics of traditional Boston accents may be retreating, particularly among younger residents. However, linguist William Labov claims that, in the twenty-first century, there remains a relatively stable Boston accent.

Boston and surrounding northeastern New England form the only major region in North America where the distinction between the vowel phonemes "broad "a"" (as in "father") and "short "o"" (as in "bother") is often maintained (with some New York accents also following this pattern). Examples include words like "father" and "spa" which contain (, ) and "bother" and "dock" which contain (, ) being different. This means that even though "dark" has no in many Boston accents, it remains distinct from "dock" because its vowel quality is different: vs.. In this way, Bostonians align with most Britons, but unlike most other Americans, who use the same vowel in both of these classes:.

Eastern New England English has a so-called "nasal short-"a" system". This means that the "short "a"" vowel as in "cat" and "rat" becomes raised to a mid-high front diphthong when it precedes a nasal consonant (but also, on a continuous scale in some other environments); thus, "man" is and "planet" is. Boston shares this system with some of the Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more noticeable and extreme than elsewhere. This system is not shared with London or New York City accents. In addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians (unlike nearby New Hampshirites, for example) also tend to somewhat "raise" or "break" the "short "a"" sound the most before voiceless fricatives (followed by voiced stops, laterals, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives), so that words like "half", "bath", and "glass" become, and, respectively. This trend began around the early-mid to mid-twentieth century, replacing the older Boston accent's London-like "broad "a"" system to an opener sound in those same example words (see "Declining characteristics" below).

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial than many other modern American accents do: "hurry" and "furry" ; and "mirror" and "nearer", though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40 in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and Received Pronunciation, but the Midwest, for instance, has lost them entirely.

The nuclei of the diphthongs and may be raised to something like before voiceless consonants: thus "write" has a higher vowel than "ride" and "lout" has a higher vowel than "loud". This effect is known usually as (one of the two phenomena of) Canadian raising, though it is less extreme in New England than in most of Canada. Furthermore, some Boston accents have a tendency to raise the diphthong in both voiced and voiceless environments and some Boston accents may raise the diphthong in certain voiced environments.

The nuclei of and are significantly less fronted than in many American accents. Both have may be diphthongized to approximately or.

The more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may use the dental stops to replace the normal English dental fricatives.

The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic, particularly in the early 1900s. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic accent than older speakers from the Boston region. The phoneme does not appear in coda position (where in English phonotactics it must precede other consonants, see English phonology#Coda), as in most dialects of English in England and Australia; "card" therefore becomes "cahd". After high and mid-high vowels, the is replaced by or another neutral central vowel like : "weird", "square". Similarly, unstressed is replaced by,, or, as in "color". A famous example is "Park the car in Harvard Yard", pronounced, or as if spelled "pahk the cah(r) in Hahvud Yahd". Note that the "r" in "car" would usually be pronounced in this case, because the following word begins with a vowel. The Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: That is to say, an will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and indeed an will be inserted after a word ending with a central or low vowel if the next word begins with a vowel: "the tuner is" and "the tuna is" are both.

Many characteristics of the Boston accent may be retreating, particularly among some younger residents. In the most "old-fashioned" of Boston accents, there may be a lingering resistance to the horse–hoarse merger, so that what in other dialects becomes a low back vowel : "horse" is, pronounced the same or almost the same as "hoss", while the word "hoarse" is somewhat different. Other words fall into these distinct classes too, like "for" vs. "four": vs.. This distinction is rapidly fading out of currency, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. Regardless, for some Boston speakers, the words "tot", "tort", and "taught" may all be homophones.

A feature that Boston speakers once shared with greater London, though now uncommon, is the "broad "a"" of the lexical set of words, making a distinction from the set. In particular words that in other American accents have the "short "a"" pronounced as, that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century (if not earlier and often sporadically by speakers as far back as the late eighteenth century) with : thus, "half" as and "bath" as. Fewer words have the broad "a" in Boston English than in the London accents, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broad "a" system as time goes on, with its transition into a decline occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 (and first documented as a decline in 1977). Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad "a" in the words "after", "ask", "aunt", "bath", "calf", "can't", "glass", "half", "laugh", "pasture", "path", and perhaps other words, and born from about 1930 to 1950 use it only in "aunt", "calf", "half", "laugh", and "pass". Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad "a" whatsoever and, instead, slight /æ/ raising (i.e. ), for example, in "craft", "bad", "math", etc.) with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of short "a" too. Only "aunt" maintains the broad "a" sound in even the youngest speakers, though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U.S.

Although not all Boston-area speakers are non-rhotic, non-rhoticity remains the feature most widely associated with the region. As a result, it is frequently the subject of humor about Boston, as in comedian Jon Stewart joking in his book "America" that, although John Adams drafted the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, "delegates from his state refused to ratify the letter 'R'."

Being conspicuous and easily identifiable as regional, Boston accents are routinely featured by actors in films set in Boston, particularly for working-class white characters, such as in "Good Will Hunting", "Mystic River", "The Departed", "Manchester by the Sea", "The Town", "Ted", "The Fighter", and "Black Mass". Television series based within a Boston setting such as "Boston Public" and "Cheers" have featured the accent. "Simpsons" character Mayor Quimby talks with an exaggerated Boston accent as reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy. Television comedy sketches have featured the accent, including "The Boston Teens" and "Dunkin Donuts" on "Saturday Night Live", as well as "Boston Accent Trailer" on "Late Night with Seth Meyers". The popular American TV series M*A*S*H had, from its sixth season onwards, the Boston-born upper-class surgeon character Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, portrayed by David Ogden Stiers, always spoken with his characterization'a noticeable Boston accent.

In "The Heat", the family of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent and confusion arrises from the pronunciation of the word "narc" as "nahk". "30 Rock" character Nancy Donovan speaks with a pronounced Boston accent. In the video game "Team Fortress 2", the character Scout, who is himself a Boston native, talks with a distinct Boston accent, although it sometimes lapses into a Brooklyn accent. Many elements of the Boston accent can be heard on the animated TV series "Family Guy", which is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island.

Some words most famously associated with the Boston area are:
Many words common to Boston are also common throughout the New England dialects: "blinkers" for "automobile turn signals" (the Massachusetts Department of Transportation even has signs reminding motorists, with Boston phonetic spelling, to "Use Yah Blinkah"), "packie" (or "package store") for "liquor store", and "rotary" for "traffic circle" (these full-speed circular intersections being common in Greater Boston).

The English of Western New England in fact shows many sharp differences throughout rather than one uniform accent. In 2001, Charles Boberg, discussing that Western New England English was a likely direct influence on the Inland Northern English of the Great Lakes region, still identified as many as four or five English sub-regional accents within Western New England itself, based on data from the late 1990s:

Western New England English

Western New England English refers to the varieties of New England English native to Vermont, Connecticut, and the western half of Massachusetts; New York State's Hudson Valley (from Albany to Poughkeepsie) also aligns to this classification. Sound patterns historically associated with Western New England English include the features of rhoticity (full pronunciation of all "r" sounds), the horse–hoarse merger, and the father–bother merger, none of which are features traditionally shared in neighboring Eastern New England English. The status of the cot–caught merger in Western New England is inconsistent, being complete in the north of this dialect region (Vermont), but incomplete or absent in the south (southern Connecticut), with a "cot–caught approximation" in the middle area (primarily, western Massachusetts).

Western New England English is relatively difficult for most American laypersons and even dialectologists to identify by any "distinct" accent when compared to its popularly recognized neighbors (Eastern New England English, New York City English, and Inland Northern U.S. English), meaning that its accents are widely perceived as unmarked "General American" varieties. Linguistic research, however, reveals that Western New England English is not simply one single or uniform dialect. Linguist Charles Boberg proposes that it be most generally divided into a Northwestern New England English (a standalone "Vermont" accent) and a Southwestern New England English (a less advanced subdialect of Inland Northern English); however, even Boberg lists the possibilities of several distinct accent divisions of Western New England.

Vocabulary features that predominate in Western New England English include "grinder" for "sub" ("submarine sandwich"), and "tag sale" for "garage sale" (predominant in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts).

Some Western New England speakers show the "generating conditions" for the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (or NCVS: the defining feature of the Great Lakes region's modern dialect) in backing of (to ), fronting (to ), and tensing all instances of to something like. Though actually variable, these features occur among Western New England speakers just enough to suggest that they may be the "pivot conditions" that influenced the NCVS in the Inland North, likely beginning in the early twentieth century.

Charles Boberg argues that Northwestern New England (Vermont) English, due to its cot–caught merger but failure to demonstrate other features of the Eastern New England dialect, must be considered as its own separate dialect. On the other hand, in discussing Southwestern New England English as its own unique dialect, he instead proposed that it be regarded as a "subtype" of the Inland North dialect, based on the aforementioned commonalities, even if variable, such as the universal raising of the short "a" and no cot–caught merger. However, some younger Southwestern New England speakers have diverged away from both of these features, which Boberg at least partly foresaw; such variables are discussed in greater detail below.

Northwestern New England English, popularly recognized as a Vermont accent, is the most complete or advanced Western New England English variety in terms of the cot–caught merger, occurring largely everywhere in that area north of Northampton, Massachusetts, towards. Today, speakers documented in Burlington (northwestern Vermont) and Rutland (southwestern Vermont) show consistent fronting of before, therefore towards, in words like "car" or "barn". The phoneme (e.g. in "goat") remains low and lax, similar to, and sometimes with no glide as monophthongal. Especially rural speakers pronounce "milk" as.

Northwestern Vermont (centered on Burlington) shows no raising of (except before nasal consonants), and therefore stays back in the mouth, leading to a cot–caught merger to [ɑ]; this whole process follows the logic of the Canadian Shift of Standard Canadian English.

Since the mid-twentieth century, Vermont speakers have largely avoided stigmatized local features, and now follow the rhotic "r" of the rest of Western New England. However, before this time, the eastern edge of Vermont spoke Eastern New England English, even dropping the "r" sound everywhere except before vowels, just like in Boston or Maine. A dwindling, generally both rural, older, male segment of the Vermont population, especially in northwestern Vermont, pronounces with a higher starting point as (e.g. in "cows"; ), and an older segment of this same population pronounces (e.g. in "lie") with a lower or more rounded starting point as. These speakers may retain vestigial elements of the trap-bath split, backing and lowering in certain environments, particularly in function words like "that" and "have". A deep retroflex approximant for "r" is a common characteristic among many rural northwestern speakers. All these characteristics appear to be inherited from West Country and Scots-Irish ancestors. On the whole, Western New England had more West Country settlers than did eastern New England. One notable lifelong native speaker of the rural Vermont accent was Fred Tuttle.

Southwestern Vermont (centered on Rutland) shows a universal raising to and fronting to, but then oversteps and defies the logical direction of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift by producing a cot–caught merger to [ä]. The universal raising is most consistently recorded in speakers born before 1950; those born since 1960 show somewhat less raising.

Southwestern New England English is centered primarily around Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA. Its older speakers show more instances of universal tensing of the short "a", while younger speakers show the more General American feature of tensing this vowel only before nasal consonants. "The Atlas of North American English" confirms that this raising phenomenon is highly variable in the region, though studies agree that raising always occurs strongest before nasal consonants.

Regarding the cot–caught merger, Southwestern New England speech has historically lacked the merger, before entering a transitional state of the merger in the mid-1900s. A "cot–caught approximation" now prevails especially in Springfield and western Massachusetts, but is variable from one speaker to the next with no apparent age-based correlation, except that the youngest speakers now are tending to demonstrate a full merger. Local, especially working-class speakers of southwestern Connecticut (especially Greater Bridgeport and New Haven) and the Albany area of New York State, strongly influenced by nearby New York City dialect, continue to resist the cot–caught merger.

Though not belonging geographically to Southwestern New England, the English of the Hudson Valley in New York State (best recorded in Albany, New York) is a sub-type of Southwestern New England English, demonstrating additional influence from New York City English. Albany English shows Southwestern New England English's slight backing of (to ) and fronting of (to ), but New York City's "caught" vowel and, though having a continuous short-"a" system, still shows influence from New York City's short-"a" split system. Also, Albany starts fairly back and somewhat forward in the mouth.

There are many accents traditionally associated with London. The most well known of the London accents long ago acquired the Cockney label from London's East End, which is heard both in London itself, and across the wider South East England region more generally. The accent of a 21st-century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under-30s however is some fusion of Cockney with a whole array of ethnic accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE). The other widely heard and spoken accent is RP (Received Pronunciation) in various forms, which can often be heard in the media and many of other traditional professions and beyond, although this accent is not limited to London and South East England, and can also be heard selectively throughout the whole UK amongst certain social groupings. Since the turn of the century the Cockney dialect is less common in the East End and has'migrated' east to Havering and the county of Essex.

London

London ( ) is the capital and largest city of the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in southeastern England, at the head of its estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. "Londinium" was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, innovative, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, and the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transportation. London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP. It is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games.

London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2016 municipal population (corresponding to Greater London) was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from 1831 to 1925.

London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; Kew Gardens; the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey, and St Margaret's Church; and the historic settlement in Greenwich where the Royal Observatory, Greenwich defines the Prime Meridian, 0° longitude, and Greenwich Mean Time. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries, libraries and sporting events. These include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world.

It is an ancient name, attested already in the first century AD, usually in the Latinised form "Londinium"; for example, handwritten Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word "Londinio" ("in London").

Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations. The earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae", written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it "Kaerlud".

Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin (usually "Londinium"), Old English (usually "Lunden"), and Welsh (usually "Llundein"), with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed that the name came into these languages from Common Brythonic; recent work tends to reconstruct the lost Celtic form of the name as *[Londonjon] or something similar. This was adapted into Latin as "Londinium" and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English.

The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European "*(p)lowonida", meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London; from this, the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, "*Lowonidonjon". However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, and recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of an proto-Indo-European root *"lend-" ('sink, cause to sink'), combined with the Celtic suffix *-"injo"- or *-"onjo"- (used to form place-names). Peter Schrijver has specifically suggested, on these grounds, that the name originally meant 'place that floods (periodically, tidally)'.

Until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to the County of London and Greater London. "London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN".

In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge. This bridge either crossed the Thames or reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC.

In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge. The function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank where the River Effra flows into the Thames.

Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion of AD 43. This lasted only until around AD 61, when the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed it, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned, incarnation of Londinium prospered, and it superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.

With the collapse of Roman rule in the early 5th century, London ceased to be a capital, and the walled city of Londinium was effectively abandoned, although Roman civilisation continued in the area of St Martin-in-the-Fields until around 450. From around 500, an Anglo-Saxon settlement known as Lundenwic developed slightly west of the old Roman city. By about 680, the city had regrown into a major port, although there is little evidence of large-scale production. From the 820s repeated Viking assaults brought decline. Three are recorded; those in 851 and 886 succeeded, while the last, in 994, was rebuffed.
The Vikings established Danelaw over much of eastern and northern England; its boundary stretched roughly from London to Chester. It was an area of political and geographical control imposed by the Viking incursions which was formally agreed by the Danish warlord, Guthrum and the West Saxon king Alfred the Great in 886. The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" recorded that Alfred "refounded" London in 886. Archaeological research shows that this involved abandonment of Lundenwic and a revival of life and trade within the old Roman walls. London then grew slowly until about 950, after which activity increased dramatically.

By the 11th century, London was beyond all comparison the largest town in England. Westminster Abbey, rebuilt in the Romanesque style by King Edward the Confessor, was one of the grandest churches in Europe. Winchester had previously been the capital of Anglo-Saxon England, but from this time on, London became the main forum for foreign traders and the base for defence in time of war. In the view of Frank Stenton: "It had the resources, and it was rapidly developing the dignity and the political self-consciousness appropriate to a national capital."

After winning the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy was crowned King of England in the newly completed Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William constructed the Tower of London, the first of the many Norman castles in England to be rebuilt in stone, in the southeastern corner of the city, to intimidate the native inhabitants. In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster.

In the 12th century, the institutions of central government, which had hitherto accompanied the royal English court as it moved around the country, grew in size and sophistication and became increasingly fixed in one place. For most purposes this was Westminster, although the royal treasury, having been moved from Winchester, came to rest in the Tower. While the City of Westminster developed into a true capital in governmental terms, its distinct neighbour, the City of London, remained England's largest city and principal commercial centre, and it flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. In 1100, its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. Disaster struck in the form of the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. London was the focus of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.

London was also a centre of England's Jewish population before their expulsion by Edward I in 1290. Violence against Jews took place in 1190, after it was rumoured that the new King had ordered their massacre after they had presented themselves at his coronation. In 1264 during the Second Barons' War, Simon de Montfort's rebels killed 500 Jews while attempting to seize records of debts.

During the Tudor period the Reformation produced a gradual shift to Protestantism, and much of London property passed from church to private ownership, which accelerated trade and business in the city. In 1475, the Hanseatic League set up its main trading base ("kontor") of England in London, called the "Stalhof" or "Steelyard". It existed until 1853, when the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg sold the property to South Eastern Railway. Woollen cloth was shipped undyed and undressed from 14th/15th century London to the nearby shores of the Low Countries, where it was considered indispensable.

But the reach of English maritime enterprise hardly extended beyond the seas of north-west Europe. The commercial route to Italy and the Mediterranean Sea normally lay through Antwerp and over the Alps; any ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to or from England were likely to be Italian or Ragusan. Upon the re-opening of the Netherlands to English shipping in January 1565, there ensued a strong outburst of commercial activity. The Royal Exchange was founded. Mercantilism grew, and monopoly trading companies such as the East India Company were established, with trade expanding to the New World. London became the principal North Sea port, with migrants arriving from England and abroad. The population rose from an estimated 50,000 in 1530 to about 225,000 in 1605.

In the 16th century William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived in London at a time of hostility to the development of the theatre. By the end of the Tudor period in 1603, London was still very compact. There was an assassination attempt on James I in Westminster, in the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November 1605.

In 1637, the government of Charles I attempted to reform administration in the area of London. The plan called for the Corporation of the City to extend its jurisdiction and administration over expanding areas around the City. Fearing an attempt by the Crown to diminish the Liberties of London, a lack of interest in administering these additional areas, or concern by city guilds of having to share power, the Corporation refused. Later called "The Great Refusal", this decision largely continues to account for the unique governmental status of the City.
In the English Civil War the majority of Londoners supported the Parliamentary cause. After an initial advance by the Royalists in 1642, culminating in the battles of Brentford and Turnham Green, London was surrounded by a defensive perimeter wall known as the Lines of Communication. The lines were built by up to 20,000 people, and were completed in under two months.
The fortifications failed their only test when the New Model Army entered London in 1647, and they were levelled by Parliament the same year.

London was plagued by disease in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague of 1665–1666, which killed up to 100,000 people, or a fifth of the population.
The Great Fire of London broke out in 1666 in Pudding Lane in the city and quickly swept through the wooden buildings. Rebuilding took over ten years and was supervised by Robert Hooke as Surveyor of London. In 1708 Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral was completed. During the Georgian era, new districts such as Mayfair were formed in the west; new bridges over the Thames encouraged development in South London. In the east, the Port of London expanded downstream. London's development as an international financial centre matured for much of the 1700s.

In 1762, George III acquired Buckingham House and it was enlarged over the next 75 years. During the 18th century, London was dogged by crime, and the Bow Street Runners were established in 1750 as a professional police force. In total, more than 200 offences were punishable by death, including petty theft. Most children born in the city died before reaching their third birthday.
The coffeehouse became a popular place to debate ideas, with growing literacy and the development of the printing press making news widely available; and Fleet Street became the centre of the British press. Following the invasion of Amsterdam by Napoleonic armies, many financiers relocated to London, especially a large Jewish community, and the first London international issue was arranged in 1817. Around the same time, the Royal Navy became the world leading war fleet, acting as a serious deterrent to potential economic adversaries of the United Kingdom. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was specifically aimed at weakening Dutch economic power. London then overtook Amsterdam as the leading international financial centre. In 1888, London became home to a series of murders by a man known only as Jack the Ripper and It has since become one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries.

According to Samuel Johnson:

London was the world's largest city from 1831 to 1925. London's overcrowded conditions led to cholera epidemics, claiming 14,000 lives in 1848, and 6,000 in 1866. Rising traffic congestion led to the creation of the world's first local urban rail network. The Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion in the capital and some of the surrounding counties; it was abolished in 1889 when the London County Council was created out of those areas of the counties surrounding the capital. London was bombed by the Germans during the First World War, and during the Second World War, the Blitz and other bombings by the German "Luftwaffe" killed over 30,000 Londoners, destroying large tracts of housing and other buildings across the city. Immediately after the war, the 1948 Summer Olympics were held at the original Wembley Stadium, at a time when London was still recovering from the war.
From the 1940s onwards, London became home to a large number of immigrants, primarily from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, making London one of the most diverse cities worldwide. In 1951, the Festival of Britain was held on the South Bank. The Great Smog of 1952 led to the Clean Air Act 1956, which ended the "pea soup fogs" for which London had been notorious.

Primarily starting in the mid-1960s, London became a centre for the worldwide youth culture, exemplified by the Swinging London subculture associated with the King's Road, Chelsea and Carnaby Street. The role of trendsetter was revived during the punk era. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area and a new Greater London Council was created. During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, London was subjected to bombing attacks by the Provisional IRA for two decades, starting with the Old Bailey bombing in 1973. Racial inequality was highlighted by the 1981 Brixton riot.

Greater London's population declined steadily in the decades after the Second World War, from an estimated peak of 8.6 million in 1939 to around 6.8 million in the 1980s. The principal ports for London moved downstream to Felixstowe and Tilbury, with the London Docklands area becoming a focus for regeneration, including the Canary Wharf development. This was borne out of London's ever-increasing role as a major international financial centre during the 1980s. The Thames Barrier was completed in the 1980s to protect London against tidal surges from the North Sea.

The Greater London Council was abolished in 1986, which left London without a central administration until 2000 when London-wide government was restored, with the creation of the Greater London Authority. To celebrate the start of the 21st century, the Millennium Dome, London Eye and Millennium Bridge were constructed. On 6 July 2005 London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics, making London the first city to stage the Olympic Games three times. On 7 July 2005, three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus were bombed in a series of terrorist attacks.

In 2008, London named alongside New York City and Hong Kong as Nylonkong, being hailed as the world's three most influential global cities. In January 2015, Greater London's population was estimated to be 8.63 million, the highest level since 1939. During the Brexit referendum in 2016, the UK as a whole decided to leave the European Union, but a majority of London constituencies voted to remain in the EU.

The administration of London is formed of two tiers: a citywide, strategic tier and a local tier. Citywide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected components: the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, which scrutinises the mayor's decisions and can accept or reject the mayor's budget proposals each year.
The headquarters of the GLA is City Hall, Southwark; the mayor is Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital. The mayor's statutory planning strategy is published as the London Plan, which was most recently revised in 2011. The local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for most local services, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection. Certain functions, such as waste management, are provided through joint arrangements. In 2009–2010 the combined revenue expenditure by London councils and the GLA amounted to just over £22 billion (£14.7 billion for the boroughs and £7.4 billion for the GLA).

The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for Greater London. It is run by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and is the third largest fire service in the world. National Health Service ambulance services are provided by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) NHS Trust, the largest free-at-the-point-of-use emergency ambulance service in the world. The London Air Ambulance charity operates in conjunction with the LAS where required. Her Majesty's Coastguard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate on the River Thames, which is under the jurisdiction of the Port of London Authority from Teddington Lock to the sea.

London is the seat of the Government of the United Kingdom. Many government departments, as well as the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, are based close to the Palace of Westminster, particularly along Whitehall. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself, and not to Westminster, by John Bright) because it has been a model for many other parliamentary systems. There are 73 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, elected from local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament., 49 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, and three are Liberal Democrat.

The UK government ministerial post of Minister for London was created in 1994 and currently occupied by Jo Johnson.

Policing in Greater London, with the exception of the City of London, is provided by the Metropolitan Police Service, overseen by the Mayor through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). The City of London has its own police force – the City of London Police. The British Transport Police are responsible for police services on National Rail, London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and Tramlink services.
A fourth police force in London, the Ministry of Defence Police, do not generally become involved with policing the general public.

Crime rates vary widely by area, ranging from parts with serious issues to parts considered very safe. Today crime figures are made available nationally at Local Authority and Ward level. In 2015 there were 118 homicides, a 25.5% increase over 2014. The Metropolitan Police have made detailed crime figures, broken down by category at borough and ward level, available on their website since 2000.

Recorded crime has been rising in London, notably violent crime and murder by stabbing and other means have risen. There have been 50 murders from the start of 2018 to mid April 2018. Funding cuts to police in London are likely to have contributed to this, though other factors are also involved.

London, also referred to as Greater London, is one of nine regions of England and the top-level subdivision covering most of the city's metropolis. The small ancient City of London at its core once comprised the whole settlement, but as its urban area grew, the Corporation of London resisted attempts to amalgamate the city with its suburbs, causing "London" to be defined in a number of ways for different purposes.

Forty per cent of Greater London is covered by the London post town, within which 'LONDON' forms part of postal addresses. The London telephone area code (020) covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are excluded and some places just outside are included. The Greater London boundary has been aligned to the M25 motorway in places.

Outward urban expansion is now prevented by the Metropolitan Green Belt, although the built-up area extends beyond the boundary in places, resulting in a separately defined Greater London Urban Area. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. The city is split by the River Thames into North and South, with an informal central London area in its interior. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London, traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, are about. However the geographical centre of London, on one definition, is in the London Borough of Lambeth, just 0.1 miles to the northeast of Lambeth North tube station.

Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have city status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are counties for the purposes of lieutenancies. The area of Greater London includes areas that are part of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. London's status as the capital of England, and later the United Kingdom, has never been granted or confirmed officially—by statute or in written form.

Its position was formed through constitutional convention, making its status as "de facto" capital a part of the UK's uncodified constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. More recently, Greater London has been defined as a region of England and in this context is known as "London".

Greater London encompasses a total area of, an area which had a population of 7,172,036 in 2001 and a population density of. The extended area known as the London Metropolitan Region or the London Metropolitan Agglomeration, comprises a total area of has a population of 13,709,000 and a population density of. Modern London stands on the Thames, its primary geographical feature, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. Historically London grew up at the lowest bridging point on the Thames. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width.

Since the Victorian era the Thames has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time because of a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of the British Isles (up in Scotland and Northern Ireland and down in southern parts of England, Wales and Ireland) caused by post-glacial rebound.

In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2070, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.

London has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb ") receiving less precipitation than Rome, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Naples, Sydney or New York City. Temperature extremes in London range from at Kew during August 2003 down to at Northolt during January 1962.

Summers are generally warm, sometimes hot. London's average July high is 24 °C (74 °F). On average each year, London experiences 31 days above and 4.2 days above every year. During the 2003 European heat wave there were 14 consecutive days above and 2 consecutive days when temperatures reached, leading to hundreds of heat-related deaths. There was also a previous spell of 15 consecutive days above in 1976 which also caused many heat related deaths. The previous record high was in August 1911 at the Greenwich station.

Winters are generally cool with little temperature variation. Heavy snow is rare but snow usually happens at least once each winter. Spring and autumn can be pleasant. As a large city, London has a considerable urban heat island effect, making the centre of London at times warmer than the suburbs and outskirts. This can be seen below when comparing London Heathrow, west of London, with the London Weather Centre.

London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names, such as Bloomsbury, Mayfair, Wembley and Whitechapel. These are either informal designations, reflect the names of villages that have been absorbed by sprawl, or are superseded administrative units such as parishes or former boroughs.

Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but without official boundaries. Since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London. The City of London is the main financial district, and Canary Wharf has recently developed into a new financial and commercial hub in the Docklands to the east.

The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, attracting tourists. West London includes expensive residential areas where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for properties in Kensington and Chelsea is over £2 million with a similarly high outlay in most of central London.

The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which was developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

London's buildings are too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, partly because of their varying ages. Many grand houses and public buildings, such as the National Gallery, are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures in central London pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, these being a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. Further out is, for example, the Tudor-period Hampton Court Palace, England's oldest surviving Tudor palace, built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey 1515.
Part of the varied architectural heritage are the 17th-century churches by Wren, neoclassical financial institutions such as the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, to the early 20th century Old Bailey and the 1960s Barbican Estate.

The disused – but soon to be rejuvenated – 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St. Pancras and Paddington. The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area and Canary Wharf, high residential densities in inner London, and lower densities in Outer London.

The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane, respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of central London. Older buildings are mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings.
In the dense areas, most of the concentration is via medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers, such as 30 St Mary Axe, Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square, are mostly in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. High-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of St Paul's Cathedral and other historic buildings. Nevertheless, there are a number of tall skyscrapers in central London (see Tall buildings in London), including the 95-storey Shard London Bridge, the tallest building in the European Union.

Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the Art Deco BBC Broadcasting House plus the Postmodernist British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross and No 1 Poultry by James Stirling. What was formerly the Millennium Dome, by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now an entertainment venue called the O2 Arena.

The London Natural History Society suggest that London is "one of the World's Greenest Cities" with more than 40 per cent green space or open water. They indicate that 2000 species of flowering plant have been found growing there and that the tidal Thames supports 120 species of fish. They also state that over 60 species of bird nest in central London and that their members have recorded 47 species of butterfly, 1173 moths and more than 270 kinds of spider around London. London's wetland areas support nationally important populations of many water birds. London has 38 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), two National Nature Reserves and 76 Local Nature Reserves.

Amphibians are common in the capital, including smooth newts living by the Tate Modern, and common frogs, common toads, palmate newts and great crested newts. On the other hand, native reptiles such as slowworms, common lizards, grass snakes and adders, are mostly only seen in Outer London.

Among other inhabitants of London are 10,000 red foxes, so that there are now 16 foxes for every square mile (2.6 square kilometres) of London. These urban foxes are noticeably bolder than their country cousins, sharing the pavement with pedestrians and raising cubs in people's backyards. Foxes have even sneaked into the Houses of Parliament, where one was found asleep on a filing cabinet. Another broke into the grounds of Buckingham Palace, reportedly killing some of Queen ElizabethII's prized pink flamingos. Generally, however, foxes and city folk appear to get along. A survey in 2001 by the London-based Mammal Society found that 80 per cent of 3,779 respondents who volunteered to keep a diary of garden mammal visits liked having them around. This sample cannot be taken to represent Londoners as a whole.

Other mammals found in Greater London are hedgehogs, rats, mice, rabbit, shrew, vole, and squirrels, In wilder areas of Outer London, such as Epping Forest, a wide variety of mammals are found including hare, badger, field, bank and water vole, wood mouse, yellow-necked mouse, mole, shrew, and weasel, in addition to fox, squirrel and hedgehog. A dead otter was found at The Highway, in Wapping, about a mile from the Tower Bridge, which would suggest that they have begun to move back after being absent a hundred years from the city. Ten of England's eighteen species of bats have been recorded in Epping Forest: soprano, nathusius and common pipistrelles, noctule, serotine, barbastelle, daubenton's, brown Long-eared, natterer's and leisler's.

Among the strange sights seen in London have been a whale in the Thames, while the BBC Two programme "Natural World: Unnatural History of London" shows pigeons using the London Underground to get around the city, a seal that takes fish from fishmongers outside Billingsgate Fish Market, and foxes that will "sit" if given sausages.

Herds of red and fallow deer also roam freely within much of Richmond and Bushy Park. A cull takes place each November and February to ensure numbers can be sustained. Epping Forest is also known for its fallow deer, which can frequently be seen in herds to the north of the Forest. A rare population of melanistic, black fallow deer is also maintained at the Deer Sanctuary near Theydon Bois. Muntjac deer, which escaped from deer parks at the turn of the twentieth century, are also found in the forest. While Londoners are accustomed to wildlife such as birds and foxes sharing the city, more recently urban deer have started becoming a regular feature, and whole herds of fallow deer come into residential areas at night to take advantage of London's green spaces.

The 2011 census recorded that 2,998,264 people or 36.7% of London's population are foreign-born making London the city with the second largest immigrant population, behind New York City, in terms of absolute numbers. About 69% of children born in London in 2015 had at least one parent who was born abroad. The table to the right shows the most common countries of birth of London residents. Note that some of the German-born population, in 18th position, are British citizens from birth born to parents serving in the British Armed Forces in Germany.

With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was for some time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the most populous city in the world. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, but had declined to 7,192,091 at the 2001 Census. However, the population then grew by just over a million between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses, to reach 8,173,941 in the latter enumeration.

However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 9,787,426 people in 2011, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe. During the period 1991–2001 a net 726,000 immigrants arrived in London.

The region covers an area of. The population density is, more than ten times that of any other. In terms of population, London is the 19th largest city and the 18th largest metropolitan region.

According to the Office for National Statistics, based on the 2011 Census estimates, 59.8 per cent of the 8,173,941 inhabitants of London were White, with 44.9 per cent White British, 2.2 per cent White Irish, 0.1 per cent gypsy/Irish traveller and 12.1 per cent classified as Other White.

20.9 per cent of Londoners are of Asian and mixed-Asian descent. 19.7 per cent are of full Asian descent, with those of mixed-Asian heritage comprising 1.2 of the population. Indians account for 6.6 per cent of the population, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis at 2.7 per cent each. Chinese peoples account for 1.5 per cent of the population, with Arabs comprising 1.3 per cent. A further 4.9 per cent are classified as "Other Asian".

15.6 per cent of London's population are of Black and mixed-Black descent. 13.3 per cent are of full Black descent, with those of mixed-Black heritage comprising 2.3 per cent. Black Africans account for 7.0 per cent of London's population, with 4.2 per cent as Black Caribbean and 2.1 per cent as "Other Black". 5.0 per cent are of mixed race.

Across London, Black and Asian children outnumber White British children by about six to four in state schools. Altogether at the 2011 census, of London's 1,624,768 population aged 0 to 15, 46.4 per cent were White, 19.8 per cent were Asian, 19 per cent were Black, 10.8 per cent were Mixed and 4 per cent represented another ethnic group. In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken in London and more than 50 non-indigenous communities with a population of more than 10,000. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that,, London's foreign-born population was 2,650,000 (33 per cent), up from 1,630,000 in 1997.

The 2011 census showed that 36.7 per cent of Greater London's population were born outside the UK. A portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British Armed Forces in Germany. Estimates produced by the Office for National Statistics indicate that the five largest foreign-born groups living in London in the period July 2009 to June 2010 were those born in India, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

According to the 2011 Census, the largest religious groupings are Christians (48.4 per cent), followed by those of no religion (20.7 per cent), Muslims (12.4 per cent), no response (8.5 per cent), Hindus (5.0 per cent), Jews (1.8 per cent), Sikhs (1.5 per cent), Buddhists (1.0 per cent) and other (0.6 per cent).

London has traditionally been Christian, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination. Church attendance continues on a long, slow, steady decline, according to Church of England statistics.

London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities.

Notable mosques include the East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets, which is allowed to give the Islamic call to prayer through loudspeakers, the London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park and the Baitul Futuh of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Following the oil boom, increasing numbers of wealthy Middle-Eastern Arab Muslims have based themselves around Mayfair, Kensington, and Knightsbridge in West London. There are large Muslim communities in the eastern boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham.

Large Hindu communities are in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which hosts what was, until 2006, Europe's largest Hindu temple, Neasden Temple. London is also home to 44 Hindu temples, including the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir London. There are Sikh communities in East and West London, particularly in Southall, home to one of the largest Sikh populations and the largest Sikh temple outside India.

The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Finchley, Hampstead, Hendon and Edgware in North London. Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London is affiliated to London's historic Sephardic Jewish community. It is the only synagogue in Europe which has held regular services continuously for over 300 years. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2006 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.

London produced in 2016 was £408 billion or $534 billion, over 22% of UK GDP, while the economy of the London metropolitan area—the largest in Europe—generates about 30 per cent of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005). London has five major business districts: the City, Westminster, Canary Wharf, Camden & Islington and Lambeth & Southwark. One way to get an idea of their relative importance is to look at relative amounts of office space: Greater London had 27 million m of office space in 2001, and the City contains the most space, with 8 million m of office space. London has some of the highest real estate prices in the world. London is the world's most expensive office market for the last three years according to world property journal (2015) report. the residential property in London is worth $2.2 trillion – same value as that of Brazil annual GDP. The city has the highest property prices of any European city according to the Office for National Statistics and the European Office of Statistics. On average the price per square metre in central London is €24,252 (April 2014). This is higher than the property prices in other G8 European capital cities; Berlin €3,306, Rome €6,188 and Paris €11,229.

London's finance industry is based in the City of London and Canary Wharf, the two major business districts in London. London is one of the pre-eminent financial centres of the world as the most important location for international finance. London took over as a major financial centre shortly after 1795 when the Dutch Republic collapsed before the Napoleonic armies. For many bankers established in Amsterdam (e.g. Hope, Baring), this was only time to move to London. The London financial elite was strengthened by a strong Jewish community from all over Europe capable of mastering the most sophisticated financial tools of the time. This unique concentration of talents accelerated the transition from the Commercial Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, Britain was the wealthiest of all nations, and London a leading financial centre. Still, London tops the world rankings on the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), and it ranked second in A.T. Kearney's 2018 Global Cities Index.

London's largest industry is finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Around 325,000 people were employed in financial services in London until mid-2007. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. It is also the world's biggest currency trading centre, accounting for some 37 per cent of the $5.1 trillion average daily volume, according to the BIS. Over 85 per cent (3.2 million) of the employed population of greater London works in the services industries. Because of its prominent global role, London's economy had been affected by the financial crisis of 2007–2008. However, by 2010 the City has recovered; put in place new regulatory powers, proceeded to regain lost ground and re-established London's economic dominance. Along with professional services headquarters, the City of London is home to the Bank of England, London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd's of London insurance market.

Over half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies have their headquarters in central London. Over 70 per cent of the FTSE 100 are within London's metropolitan area, and 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London.

Media companies are concentrated in London and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector. The BBC is a significant employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the City. Many national newspapers are edited in London. London is a major retail centre and in 2010 had the highest non-food retail sales of any city in the world, with a total spend of around £64.2 billion. The Port of London is the second-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year.

A growing number of technology companies are based in London notably in East London Tech City, also known as Silicon Roundabout. In April 2014, the city was among the first to receive a geoTLD. In February 2014 London was ranked as the European City of the Future in the 2014/15 list by FDi Magazine.

The gas and electricity distribution networks that manage and operate the towers, cables and pressure systems that deliver energy to consumers across the city are managed by National Grid plc, SGN and UK Power Networks.

London is one of the leading tourist destinations in the world and in 2015 was ranked as the most visited city in the world with over 65 million visits. It is also the top city in the world by visitor cross-border spending, estimated at US$20.23 billion in 2015. Tourism is one of London's prime industries, employing the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in 2003, and the city accounts for 54% of all inbound visitor spending in the UK. London is the world top city destination as ranked by TripAdvisor users.

In 2015 the top most-visited attractions in the UK were all in London. The top 10 most visited attractions were: (with visits per venue)

The number of hotel rooms in London in 2015 stood at 138,769, and is expected to grow over the years.

Transport is one of the four main areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control does not extend to the longer distance rail network that enters London. In 2007 he assumed responsibility for some local lines, which now form the London Overground network, adding to the existing responsibility for the London Underground, trams and buses. The public transport network is administered by Transport for London (TFL).

The lines that formed the London Underground, as well as trams and buses, became part of an integrated transport system in 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board or "London Transport" was created. Transport for London is now the statutory corporation responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London, and is run by a board and a commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London.

London is a major international air transport hub with the busiest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the word "London" in their name, but most traffic passes through six of these. Additionally, various other airports also serve London, catering primarily to general aviation flights.

The London Underground, commonly referred to as the Tube, is the oldest and third longest metro system in the world. The system serves 270 stations and was formed from several private companies, including the world's first underground electric line, the City and South London Railway. It dates from 1863.

Over four million journeys are made every day on the Underground network, over 1 billion each year. An investment programme is attempting to reduce congestion and improve reliability, including £6.5 billion (€7.7 billion) spent before the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which opened in 1987, is a second, more local metro system using smaller and lighter tram-type vehicles that serve the Docklands, Greenwich and Lewisham.

There are more than 360 railway stations in the London Travelcard Zones on an extensive above-ground suburban railway network. South London, particularly, has a high concentration of railways as it has fewer Underground lines. Most rail lines terminate around the centre of London, running into eighteen terminal stations, with the exception of the Thameslink trains connecting Bedford in the north and Brighton in the south via Luton and Gatwick airports. London has Britain's busiest station by number of passengers – Waterloo, with over 184 million people using the interchange station complex (which includes Waterloo East station) each year. is the busiest station in Europe by the number of trains passing.

With the need for more rail capacity in London, Crossrail is due to open in 2019. It will be a new railway line running east to west through London and into the Home Counties with a branch to Heathrow Airport. It is Europe's biggest construction project, with a £15 billion projected cost.

London is the centre of the National Rail network, with 70 per cent of rail journeys starting or ending in London. Like suburban rail services, regional and inter-city trains depart from several termini around the city centre, linking London with the rest of Britain including Birmingham, Brighton, Reading, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Exeter, Sheffield, Southampton, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Cambridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Some international railway services to Continental Europe were operated during the 20th century as boat trains, such as the "Admiraal de Ruijter" to Amsterdam and the "Night Ferry" to Paris and Brussels. The opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 connected London directly to the continental rail network, allowing Eurostar services to begin. Since 2007, high-speed trains link St. Pancras International with Lille, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and other European tourist destinations via the High Speed 1 rail link and the Channel Tunnel. The first high-speed domestic trains started in June 2009 linking Kent to London. There are plans for a second high speed line linking London to the Midlands, North West England, and Yorkshire.

Although rail freight levels are far down compared to their height, significant quantities of cargo are also carried into and out of London by rail; chiefly building materials and landfill waste. As a major hub of the British railway network, London's tracks also carry large amounts of freight for the other regions, such as container freight from the Channel Tunnel and English Channel ports, and nuclear waste for reprocessing at Sellafield.

London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with about 8,500 buses, more than 700 bus routes and around 19,500 bus stops. In 2013, the network had more than 2 billion commuter trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 million is taken in revenue each year. London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are an internationally recognised trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.

London has a modern tram network, known as Tramlink, centred on Croydon in South London. The network has 39 stops and four routes, and carried 28 million people in 2013. Since June 2008 Transport for London has completely owned Tramlink, and it plans to spend £54m by 2015 on maintenance, renewals, upgrades and capacity enhancements.

London's first and only cable car, known as the Emirates Air Line, opened in June 2012. Crossing the River Thames, linking Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks in the east of the city, the cable car is integrated with London's Oyster Card ticketing system, although special fares are charged. Costing £60 million to build, it carries over 3,500 passengers every day, although this is very much lower than its capacity. Similar to the Santander Cycles bike hire scheme, the cable car is sponsored in a 10-year deal by the airline Emirates.

In the whole Greater London Area, around 650,000 people use a bike everyday. But out of a total population of
around 8.8 million, this means that just around 7% of Greater London's population use a bike on an average day. This is a small proportion, when compared to many other cities in the world A reason may well be the poor investments for cycling in London of about £110 million per year, equating to around £12 per person, which can be compared to £22 in the Netherlands.

Cycling is nevertheless becoming increasingly popular way to get around London. The launch of a cycle hire scheme in July 2010 has been successful and generally well received. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision. There are many cycle routes in London, including several Cycle Superhighways.

From being the largest port in the world, the Port of London is now only the second-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year. Most of this actually passes through the Port of Tilbury, outside the boundary of Greater London.

London has frequent river boat services on the Thames known as Thames Clippers. These run up to every 20 minutes between Embankment Pier and North Greenwich Pier. The Woolwich Ferry, with 2.5 million passengers every year, is a frequent service linking the North and South Circular Roads. Other operators run both commuter and tourist boat services in London.

Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, car travel is common in the suburbs. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes—but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. The M25 is the second-longest ring-road motorway in Europe at long. The A1 and M1 connect London to Leeds, and Newcastle and Edinburgh.

London is notorious for its traffic congestion, with the average speed of a car in the rush hour being.

In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £10 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a greatly reduced season pass. London government initially expected the Congestion Charge Zone to increase daily peak period Underground and bus users by 20,000 people, reduce road traffic by 10 to 15 per cent, increase traffic speeds by 10 to 15 per cent, and reduce queues by 20 to 30 per cent. Over the course of several years, the average number of cars entering the centre of London on a weekday was reduced from 195,000 to 125,000 cars – a 35-per-cent reduction of vehicles driven per day.

London is a major global centre of higher education teaching and research and has the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. According to the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, London has the greatest concentration of top class universities in the world and its international student population of around 110,000 is larger than any other city in the world. A 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers report termed London the global capital of higher education.

A number of world-leading education institutions are based in London. In the 2014/15 "QS World University Rankings", Imperial College London is ranked joint 2nd in the world, University College London (UCL) is ranked 5th, and King's College London (KCL) is ranked 16th. The London School of Economics has been described as the world's leading social science institution for both teaching and research. The London Business School is considered one of the world's leading business schools and in 2015 its MBA programme was ranked second best in the world by the "Financial Times".

With 120,000 students in London, the federal University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the UK. It includes five multi-faculty universities – City, King's College London, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway and UCL – and a number of smaller and more specialised institutions including Birkbeck, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the London Business School, the London School of Economics, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Royal Academy of Music, the Central School of Speech and Drama, the Royal Veterinary College and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Members of the University of London have their own admissions procedures, and some award their own degrees.

A number of universities in London are outside the University of London system, including Brunel University, Imperial College London, Kingston University, London Metropolitan University, University of East London, University of West London, University of Westminster, London South Bank University, Middlesex University, and University of the Arts London (the largest university of art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts in Europe). In addition there are three international universities in London – Regent's University London, Richmond, The American International University in London and Schiller International University.
London is home to five major medical schools – Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry (part of Queen Mary), King's College London School of Medicine (the largest medical school in Europe), Imperial College School of Medicine, UCL Medical School and St George's, University of London – and has a large number of affiliated teaching hospitals. It is also a major centre for biomedical research, and three of the UK's eight academic health science centres are based in the city – Imperial College Healthcare, King's Health Partners and UCL Partners (the largest such centre in Europe).

There are a number of business schools in London, including the London School of Business and Finance, Cass Business School (part of City University London), Hult International Business School, ESCP Europe, European Business School London, Imperial College Business School, the London Business School and the UCL School of Management. London is also home to many specialist arts education institutions, including the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, Central School of Ballet, LAMDA, London College of Contemporary Arts (LCCA), London Contemporary Dance School, National Centre for Circus Arts, RADA, Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, the Royal College of Art, the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban.

The majority of primary and secondary schools and further-education colleges in London are controlled by the London boroughs or otherwise state-funded; leading examples include Ashbourne College, Bethnal Green Academy, Brampton Manor Academy, City and Islington College, City of Westminster College, David Game College, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, Leyton Sixth Form College, London Academy of Excellence, Tower Hamlets College, and Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre. There are also a number of private schools and colleges in London, some old and famous, such as City of London School, Harrow, St Paul's School, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, University College School, The John Lyon School, Highgate School and Westminster School.

Leisure is a major part of the London economy, with a 2003 report attributing a quarter of the entire UK leisure economy to London at 25.6 events per 1000 people. Globally, the city is amongst the big four fashion capitals of the world, and according to official statistics, London is the world's third busiest film production centre, presents more live comedy than any other city, and has the biggest theatre audience of any city in the world.
Within the City of Westminster in London, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs, and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district (in Soho), and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The city is the home of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose musicals have dominated the West End theatre since the late 20th century. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Royal Opera, and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, the London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre, and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as touring the country.
Islington's long Upper Street, extending northwards from Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the United Kingdom. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long, making it the longest shopping street in the UK. Oxford Street is home to vast numbers of retailers and department stores, including the world-famous Selfridges flagship store. Knightsbridge, home to the equally renowned Harrods department store, lies to the south-west.

London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo, among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan, and New York City. London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese restaurants of Chinatown.
There is a variety of annual events, beginning with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, a fireworks display at the London Eye; the world's second largest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival, is held on the late August Bank Holiday each year. Traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.

London has been the setting for many works of literature. The pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's late 14th-century "Canterbury Tales" set out for Canterbury from London – specifically, from the Tabard inn, Southwark. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based there, and some of his work, most notably his play "The Alchemist", was set in the city. "A Journal of the Plague Year" (1722) by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague.

The literary centres of London have traditionally been hilly Hampstead and (since the early 20th century) Bloomsbury. Writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London, and Virginia Woolf, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century.
Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are Dickens' novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Also of significance is Letitia Elizabeth Landon's "Calendar of the London Seasons" (1834). Modern writers pervasively influenced by the city include Peter Ackroyd, author of a "biography" of London, and Iain Sinclair, who writes in the genre of psychogeography.
London has played a significant role in the film industry. Major studios within or bordering London include Twickenham, Ealing, Shepperton, Pinewood, Elstree and Borehamwood, and a special effects and post-production community centred in Soho. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. London has been the setting for films including "Oliver Twist" (1948), "Scrooge" (1951), "Peter Pan" (1953), "The 101 Dalmatians" (1961), "My Fair Lady" (1964), "Mary Poppins" (1964), "Blowup" (1966), "The Long Good Friday" (1980), "Notting Hill" (1999), "Love Actually" (2003), "V For Vendetta" (2005), "" (2008) and "The King's Speech" (2010). Notable actors and filmmakers from London include; Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, Gary Oldman, Christopher Nolan, Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Keira Knightley and Daniel Day-Lewis., the British Academy Film Awards have taken place at the Royal Opera House. London is a major centre for television production, with studios including BBC Television Centre, The Fountain Studios and The London Studios. Many television programmes have been set in London, including the popular television soap opera "EastEnders", broadcast by the BBC since 1985.

London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens, and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. In 1824, the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square.

In the latter half of the 19th century the locale of South Kensington was developed as "Albertopolis", a cultural and scientific quarter. Three major national museums are there: the Victoria and Albert Museum (for the applied arts), the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum. The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 to house depictions of figures from British history; its holdings now comprise the world's most extensive collection of portraits. The national gallery of British art is at Tate Britain, originally established as an annexe of the National Gallery in 1897. The Tate Gallery, as it was formerly known, also became a major centre for modern art; in 2000, this collection moved to Tate Modern, a new gallery housed in the former Bankside Power Station.

London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and hosts major music corporations, such as Universal Music Group International and Warner Music Group, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. The city is also home to many orchestras and concert halls, such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (The Proms). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the London Coliseum. The UK's largest pipe organ is at the Royal Albert Hall. Other significant instruments are at the cathedrals and major churches. Several conservatoires are within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Trinity Laban.
London has numerous venues for rock and pop concerts, including the world's busiest indoor venue, The O2 Arena and Wembley Arena, as well as many mid-sized venues, such as Brixton Academy, the Hammersmith Apollo and the Shepherd's Bush Empire. Several music festivals, including the Wireless Festival, South West Four, Lovebox, and Hyde Park's British Summer Time are all held in London. The city is home to the original Hard Rock Cafe and the Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles recorded many of their hits. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, musicians and groups like Elton John, Pink Floyd, Cliff Richard, David Bowie, Queen, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Small Faces, Iron Maiden, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, Cat Stevens, The Police, The Cure, Madness, The Jam, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Dusty Springfield, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Adam Ant, Status Quo and Sade, derived their sound from the streets and rhythms of London.

London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city. More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include George Michael's Wham!, Kate Bush, Seal, the Pet Shop Boys, Bananarama, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bush, the Spice Girls, Jamiroquai, Blur, McFly, The Prodigy, Gorillaz, Bloc Party, Mumford & Sons, Coldplay, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Paloma Faith, Ellie Goulding, One Direction and Florence and the Machine. London is also a centre for urban music. In particular the genres UK garage, drum and bass, dubstep and grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hip hop and reggae, alongside local drum and bass. Music station BBC Radio 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of local urban contemporary music both in London and in the rest of the United Kingdom.

A 2013 report by the City of London Corporation said that London is the "greenest city" in Europe with 35,000 acres of public parks, woodlands and gardens. The largest parks in the central area of London are three of the eight Royal Parks, namely Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens in the west, and Regent's Park to the north. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts. Regent's Park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is near Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Primrose Hill, immediately to the north of Regent's Park, at is a popular spot from which to view the city skyline.

Close to Hyde Park are smaller Royal Parks, Green Park and St. James's Park. A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including Hampstead Heath and the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the southeast and Bushy Park and Richmond Park (the largest) to the southwest, Hampton Court Park is also a royal park, but, because it contains a palace, it is administered by the Historic Royal Palaces, unlike the eight Royal Parks.

Close to Richmond Park is Kew Gardens which has the world's largest collection of living plants. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. There are also parks administered by London's borough Councils, including Victoria Park in the East End and Battersea Park in the centre. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London, and Epping Forest, which covers 2,476 hectares (6,118 acres) in the east. Both are controlled by the City of London Corporation. Hampstead Heath incorporates Kenwood House, a former stately home and a popular location in the summer months when classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.

Epping Forest is a popular venue for various outdoor activities, including mountain biking, walking, horse riding, golf, angling, and orienteering.

Walking is a popular recreational activity in London. Areas that provide for walks include Wimbledon Common, Epping Forest, Hampton Court Park, Hampstead Heath, the eight Royal Parks, canals and disused railway tracks. Access to canals and rivers has improved recently, including the creation of the Thames Path, some of which is within Greater London, and The Wandle Trail; this runs through South London along the River Wandle, a tributary of the River Thames. Other long distance paths, linking green spaces, have also been created, including the Capital Ring, the Green Chain Walk, London Outer Orbital Path ("Loop"), Jubilee Walkway, Lea Valley Walk, and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk.

London has hosted the Summer Olympics three times: in 1908, 1948, and 2012. making it the first city to host the modern Games three times. The city was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934. In 2017, London hosted the World Championships in Athletics for the first time.

London's most popular sport is football and it has six clubs in the English Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, and West Ham United. Other professional teams in London are Queens Park Rangers, Brentford, Millwall, Charlton Athletic, AFC Wimbledon and Barnet.
From 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team.
It hosted the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final, with England defeating West Germany, and served as the venue for the FA Cup Final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000.

Two Aviva Premiership rugby union teams are based in London, Saracens and Harlequins. London Scottish, London Welsh and London Irish play in the RFU Championship club and other rugby union clubs in the city include Richmond F.C., Rosslyn Park F.C., Westcombe Park R.F.C. and Blackheath F.C.. Twickenham Stadium in south-west London hosts home matches for the England national rugby union team and has a capacity of 82,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.

While rugby league is more popular in the north of England, there are two professional rugby league clubs in London – the second tier Championship One team, the London Broncos, who play at the Trailfinders Sports Ground in West Ealing, and the third tier League 1 team, the London Skolars from Wood Green, Haringey; in addition, Hemel Stags from Hemel Hempstead north of London also play in League 1.

One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Played in late June to early July, it is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and widely considered the most prestigious.

London has two Test cricket grounds, Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C.) in St John's Wood and the Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C.) in Kennington. Lord's has hosted four finals of the Cricket World Cup. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon, in which some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the University Boat Race on the River Thames from Putney to Mortlake.
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South East England and the Home Counties (the counties bordering London) tend to reflect the interface between the London region and other regional accents. Affluent districts are associated with a modified Received Pronunciation (RP) accent, reflecting their traditional popularity with upper middle and upper-class residents which has spread throughout more social classes broadly in rural areas with commuting access to London. Less affluent areas have traditionally mainstream London accents (that is, variants of the Estuary English accent) that grade into southern rural outside urban areas.

English language in southern England

English in southern England (also, rarely, Southern English English, or in the UK, simply, Southern English) is the collective set of different dialects and accents of the English spoken in Southern England.

Commentators report widespread homogenisation in the south-east (Kerswill & Williams 2000; Britain 2002). The features present a levelling between the extremes of Estuarine pronunciation and careful Received Pronunciation and except where an intuitive neutral parity position exists, they include:

Wells notes traditional aspects of rural south-eastern speech as lengthened in "trap" words and use of or in "mouth" words.

Accents are nonrhotic, that is, (phonetically ) occurs only before vowels.

General characteristics of all major London accents include:

It is also common to hear young Londoners drop "(to) the" from sentences related to going places (such as: Do you want to go cinema?/Do you want to go West End?).

Sloane-speak or Sloaney-speech is spoken by the upper middle and upper classes, ultralocalised in Inner South-West and West London by a range of inhabitants of the very expensive private housing in and around Sloane Street and Sloane Square, Chelsea, Mayfair and alongside Marylebone High Street. The speakers of Sloaney are sometimes defined as Sloane Rangers. Levelling aspects of the speech of the young aristocracy were heightened in the early 1980s by the 'Princess Diana' accent and effect yet drew upon public school and historic vocabulary to form a distinct Sloane-speak of the young and wealthy soon dubbed 'Sloane Rangers'. Here aristocrats' clipped Received Pronunciation was modified in this particular speech community as the young upper and upper-middle classes, like Diana and contemporaries, increasingly settled as singles in the'muesli belt' round Sloane Square on the border of Belgravia and Chelsea, Chelsea's King's Road into Fulham and even in expensive parts of Putney, Richmond, London, Wandsworth and Battersea. Sloanies followed the 1960s fashion boom of King's Road and became lesser cultural icons for a time in fashion, as well as seeking out idiosyncratic cultural pursuits and language.

Features, whether affected or throwback to particular aristocratic shorthands include 'jah' for yes; "(s)he's rairly, rairly (really, really) nice', or shortened ('Nick's' for Harvey Nichols; 'Rods' for Harrods; 'Fred's' for Fortnum and Mason's). Hyperbole was for a period rife ('frightfully', 'ghastly', 'appalling', 'thanks awfully'), but subject to influences from more demotic speech of the capital, particularly towards its fringes."

Reflecting national upper class moves towards slightly less formal pronunciation, or indeed the middle-dialect influence of Sloane-speak, end-of-sentence glottal stop and final-t sounds came into the speech of younger Royalty: for instance in the speech of Diana and Prince Edward; and vocoids for "l" as in ""; all juxtaposed against borrowed vocabulary from opposing dialects such as 'bog' ("toilet") and 'yonks'
("a long time").

To many middle-class Londoners, however, the often drawled pronunciation of the Sloane Rangers was deemed as'marked' or 'affected' as the Queen's, so closely identified was with a particular social group: the rah-rah accent and dialect, named in 1982, coupled with the most obscure vocabulary became Rah (slang), synonymous with snobbery. The once trendy rah concepts faded into fashion oblivion during the Cool Britannia decade but in the late 2000s staged a comeback with slightly different, edgier, rougher forms continuing to develop:Cockney is an accent traditionally from the working classes of the areas immediately surrounding the City of London (most famously including the East End). It is characterised by a number of phonological differences from RP:

Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE), colloquially called Blockney or Jafaican, is a dialect (and/or sociolect) of English that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly by youths in inner London.

The speech of Jamaicans, or children of Jamaican parents, in London shows interesting combinations of the Jamaican accent with the London accent. For example, in Jamaican English, is replaced by, for example "both". In London, word-final is realised as, as mentioned above. In Jamaican-London speech, glottalization of applies also to from, for example "both of them". Hypercorrections like for "foot" are also heard from Jamaicans. John C. Wells's dissertation, "Jamaican pronunciation in London", was published by the Philological Society in 1973.

Essex, is usually associated with Estuary English, mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants. The non-urban Essex accent, generally found in the north of the county, is more closely related to those of East Anglia. Residents of places within Essex such as Basildon, Billericay and Grays are more likely to have an accent similar to the traditional 'Cockney' accent, due to the proximity to East London and East End migration to these areas since WWII.

Estuary English is the name given to an accent (or group of accents) that may informally be considered a compromise between Cockney and RP. It retains some aspects of Cockney, such as the vocalisation of (dark L) to, and "yod"-coalescence in stressed syllables (for example, "duty" ) and replacement of with (the glottal stop) in weak positions, or occasionally with d).

The east Herts accent traditionally spoken is akin to a native central/north Essex rural accent. The largest towns in particular have the diverse sociolect variants of Received Pronunciation and Estuary English as seen in London, with smaller settlements tending towards the traditional dialects or variants of RP.

Before the 21st Century, West Herts and Buckinghamshire tended to have r-coloured vowels; for instance, here the established dialects made a distinction between the words "farther" and "father" ( and ). However, in recent times, strong influences have come from London's Estuary English, thanks to the influx of post-World War II migrants from across London, and thus Estuary English is now the norm across West Herts and Buckinghamshire (though some of the older dialect can be heard in older generations, particularly in more rural areas).

Hampshire is often missed in dialect definitions and placed on borderlines between South East and West England. It is thought that Hampshire is generally a posh county using a Queen's English accent, however, use of Estuary English accent is also very common in Hampshire. Contrary to popular belief, it has been found [by whom?] that very few people from Hampshire use a West Country dialect or accent. [Timeline necessary - What about John Arlott, Lord Denning or Reg Presley?] Due to urbanization, the numbers have steadily decreased and it can be argued [how? by whom? vague] that Hampshire is a borderline county moving East, linguistically.

The traditional Portsmouth dialect (affectionately known as the Pompey dialect, and less favourably as Pompey Slang) is an oddity and somewhat an isolate. It stands well apart both structurally and phonetically from all other local English varieties around it. The traditional origin story is that the Dockyards attracted an influx of East Londoners at the turn of the 20th century and the accent is based in "Dockyard slang". Though structurally it is based around an East London model, it has retained a lot of traditional Hampshire features. Whilst it follows the consonant rules of Estuary English closely, the vowel sounds are quite different. The dialect is not a recent phenomenon, and can be heard in the speech of local people in their nineties. The surrounding accents geographically are quite different, and few contain as many of the "Estuary-isms" found in the Pompey dialect and some of those may actually originate from Portsmouth, rather than Estuary English.

As with neighbouring Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire has a variety of accents.

In the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area, the accent is similar to a London accent, and it is often mistaken as one. This is because of the overflow of Londoners and their subsequent generations in the area. The Lutonian accent is not as strong as an accent from Essex.

In Mid Bedfordshire the more traditional accent of the area is still held. Especially by those of an older generation, or in very remote areas.

While in North Bedfordshire especially near the border with Northamptonshire it can be argued that the dialect is one which sounds more like East Midlands English, Bedford itself is linguistically diverse, reflecting the more varied demographics of the town (compared with the surrounding villages). A typical Bedford accent is more similar to a Londonian Luton or Dunstable accent, due largely to movement of people from these places to Bedford.

Accents today are a cross between Estuary English and Received Pronunciation which both evolve over time and are becoming significantly more similar; where towards the former, accents have been strongly influenced by proximity to towns in the London Gateway involved in heavy trades, fishing and repairs and merchant sides of the Royal Navy, which was concentrated in Greenwich and Chatham. This corresponds to the name of the dialect which refers to the Thames Estuary. 'H dropping' is in general rare, as in the other Home Counties, but 't dropping' or substitution with a weaker vowel is common.

However of particular note, one vowel usage is unique to West Kent which is the realization of the phoneme..

A traditional Surrey accent again has r-coloured vowels while being entirely nonrhotic.

Estuary English is common throughout the county, particularly in the northern areas bordering on London, although many large settlements further south into Surrey, such as Guildford and Woking, share in variants of estuary English. Furthest north into Surrey is the borough of Spelthorne, where the accent is indistinguishable (as formerly part of Middlesex) from the London accent due to it sharing borders with the London boroughs of Hounslow, Richmond-upon-Thames and Hillingdon.

Jafaican, also known as Tikkiny or less commonly "Hood-Chat" is part accent, part dialect, from around the mid-1990s, and influenced not only by British black urban culture, but by rap music. This variant is used by the youth of all races as a'street' patois, American English influences (such as the greeting "Yo!"), but also Caribbean patterns such as "aks" (rather than "ask"). The dialect is used mainly by young people, regardless of racial background. It can be heard in many parts of England, but especially around London.

This family of similar strongly rhotic accents, now perceived as rural, originally extended across much of southern England south of the broad A isogloss, but they are now most often found west of a line roughly from Shropshire via Oxfordshire. Their shared characteristics have been caricatured as Mummerset.

They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with a largely indigenous population, particularly the West Country. In many other areas they are declining because of RP and Estuary accents moving to the area; for instance, strong Isle of Wight accents tend to be more prevalent in older speakers.

As well as rhoticity, here are common features of West County accents:

In traditional Southern rural accents, the voiceless fricatives always remain voiceless, which is the main difference from West Country accents.

Features which can be found in East Anglian English (especially in Norfolk) include:

There are differences between and even within areas of East Anglia: the Norwich accent has distinguishing aspects from the Norfolk dialect that surrounds itchiefly in the vowel sounds. The accents of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are different from the Norfolk accent.