Sheffield accent named best in Britain, new study reveals, ahead of Geordie and Essex

When we’re meeting new people, one of the first things we notice is the way people talk. While the ‘best’ accent is a subjective matter, there is science behind us finding certain regional variations of English more attractive than others.

A study by WordTips has found that of all the 40 different British dialects, the most popular British accent is closer to home than we perhaps thought, with Sheffield stealing first place.

To find the top British and international accent, WordTips analysed a total of 528,600 Tweets, and used Hugging Face AI algorithm to determine the positivity of each Tweet. This algorithm returned the possibility of a text being positive, negative or neutral. They then calculated the proportion of positive Tweets about each accent.

Sheffield topped first place with a 39.9 per cent of tweets about this accent being positive. While the Sheffield accent doesn’t quite have the same je ne sais quoi as say, French, celebrities such as the Game of Thrones star Sean Bean and the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner are sure to be thanked for raising the profile of the warm and welcoming accent.

Close behind Sheffield came Wiltshire, located in the West Country, with a 39.5 per cent positivity rating. Hagrid from the Harry Potter franchise had a similar lilt to this. For those curious, the study also found that world’s overall favourite accent is Tunisian, with a 52 per cent positivity rating.

Top 10 British accents:

• Sheffield

• Wiltshire

• Geordie

• Nottingham

• Somerset

• Derry

• Lancashire

• Cardiff

• Essex

• Bristol.