A website has published a list of the sexiest accents in England, and there's a clear winner in the polls.
The website Lovin Manchester has proclaimed that – unsurprisingly, perhaps – Mancunian is the sexiest accent in the country.
The list only takes into account England, not Ireland, Scotland or Wales – which we're sure many would believe to be top if they were included.
Number two in the round up is the capital's twang – a good London drawl is apparently lots of people's idea of seductive.
As the list of 51 different accents progresses, entries span the entire breadth of the country, and there seems to be no clear preference for northern or southern accents. Received pronunciation-speaking regions sit higher up on the chart, with Cambridge, Oxford and Hereford occupying three of the top ten spots.
Strong northern dialects were also scattered throughout the list, with Carlisle, York and Newcastle occupying spots 14, 31 and 39 respectively.
And West Country accents like Bath and Exeter landed at 18 and 35, whilst the stronger Bristolian sat way down at 50.
One thing that was consistent was the placing of broad Midlands accents lower down on the list, with Birmingham firmly last in place. Similar accents like Coventry and Wolverhampton fared only slightly better, at 40 and 47 respectively.
However, plenty of people were somewhat offended by the blog's rankings, and took to Twitter to vent their frustrations.
'How is St Albans in the bottom 10 of 'sexiest accent' wtf is a St Albans accent ???' wrote one bemused commenter.
Another asked: 'do u think the Sheffield accent is gross it got voted number 48 out of 51 in the sexiest accents how rude'.
Sexiest English accents ranked (according to Lovin Manchester)
1. Manchester 2. London 3. Cambridge 4. Gloucester 5. Salford 6. Ripon 7. Nottingham 8. Oxford 9. Lichfield 10. Hereford 11. Ely 12. Derby 13. Chichester 14. Carlisle 15. Chelmsford 16. Canterbury 17. Brighton 18. Bath 19. Lancaster 20. Worcester 21. Chester 22. Lincoln 23. Bradford 24. Warrington 25. Wells 26. Winchester 27. Reading 28. Liverpool 29. Stoke-on-Trent 30. Plymouth 31. York 32. Sunderland 33. Durham 34. Peterborough 35. Exeter 36. Preston 37. Portsmouth 38. Leicester 39. Newcastle 40. Coventry 41. Truro 42. Southampton 43. Salisbury 44. St Albans 45. Norwich 46. Wakefield 47. Wolverhampton 48. Sheffield 49. Hull 50. Bristol 51. Birmingham
These kinds of regional lists are nothing new, mind you – more 'thorough' research from across the whole of the UK was published by YouGov in 2015 and found that a southern Irish accent ranked the best.
Similarly though, received pronunciations – ie, a standardised form of English spoken in the Home Counties – came in at number two, and was differentiated from Cockney (London), which featured lower down.
A conductor of the 2015 study, Will Dahlgreen did make some interesting points about our perceived attitudes toward dialects.
'There are some vast differences in perceived attractiveness of accents by age,' he revealed. 'The West Country accent is considered the most attractive to over-60s.'
'Additionally, there is a tendency to like ones own.'
Tellingly, this earlier (and arguably, less biased) version of the study placed the Mancunian accent much further down on the list. Once again though, the Brummie twang came in bottom of the polls!
