Due primarily to immigration, the population of England does speak some additional languages at home, the most common in 2011 being Polish at 1% of the population. As a category, many South Asian languages are spoken (2.5% of the population) as well, including Punjabi and Urdu. London by far has the highest concentration of foreign language speakers; the Greater London Authority suggests in its 2022 report that over 300 different languages are spoken within the city.

England is home to many diverse regional accents and dialects, complicating intracultural and intercultural communications. It is frequently estimated that there are more than 30 different dialects of English spoken within England, though the exact number and classification of these may vary from source to source. Generally, English dialects in England are separated into 7 major categories that can then be divided further: Standard English (which has no specific geographical region), Northern, East Midlands, West Midlands, East Anglia, Southern, West Country, and Highland English. It’s important to bear in mind that while geography is a good determiner of accent, accent and dialect can also diverge according to how rural of an area a person comes from as well as their social class. A prime example of this is one of England’s most famous dialects, Cockney, which is mainly spoken by the lower and middle class of London.

Differences in dialect can be broadly broken down into three categories: pronunciation, grammar, and lexicon. Phonological variance largely revolves around a difference in the pronunciation of vowels but also extends to the articulation of consonants (including r, h, t, p, k, and ng sounds). Grammatical differences can include abnormal pronoun usage, word order, and the formation of tenses. Lastly, regions often exhibit their own unique vocabulary, colloquialisms, and slang. Due to the pervasiveness of these three factors, it is said that the English people can easily determine quite precisely what region of England another speaker comes from– in extreme instances, dialectic speech may not be easily understood by those from different regions.

It should also be noted that regardless of original dialect or natural speech, many people are quite capable of shifting the way they talk to more closely resemble Standard English. Similarly, Received Pronunciation, or RP, is an English accent of no particular region and the model for dictionaries and English language teaching. The British Library notes that historically RP was adopted by speakers in an effort to “conform linguistically and thus adopt the accent of the establishment” and is “the instantly recognisable accent often described as ‘typically British’”. Quite frequently associated with class, educational background, and the news media, RP should not be seen as a natural accent and is falling out of favor today as regional accents become more accepted in a public context.