Shirley, England
The Shirley Accent
Shirley sits inside the Birmingham dialect area, which covers Birmingham, the Black Country and the West Midlands, England. The nearest other area is Black Country, about 8km away.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Shirley sound like
- A falling intonation at the end of statements.
- The “price” vowel is lowered — “nice” towards “noice”.
- No foot–strut split in broader speech: “put” and “putt” can match.
- The Black Country keeps older forms like “am” for “are” — the “Yam Yam” nickname.
These are the markers of the Birmingham accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Shirley has all of them — the full Birmingham profile sets out where the region varies.
Shirley against West Country
Shirley is close enough to the West Country area that the two get confused. These are the questions where the survey expects a different answer on each side.
| Question | Shirley | West Country |
|---|---|---|
| When you say “car” by itself, do you pronounce an R sound at the end? | “car” ends in a vowel, with no R sound | the R at the end of “car” is pronounced |
| Do “singer” and “finger” rhyme in your natural accent? | yes — “singer” has a hard g | no — they sound different |
Dialect areas near Shirley
Is your accent from Shirley?
There is no way to answer that from a description. The test asks 29 questions about the words you use and how you say them, scores your answers against the Birmingham / West Midlands English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.