It’s been an odd week for Northern Irish accents.
First Coronation Street made a joke about a Belfast voice not being “smooth”. Then a Mail on Sunday reviewer admitted she resorted to using subtitles while watching Troubles-inspired drama Trespasses because the accents were “mighty”.
Meanwhile, two of the show’s stars, Gillian Anderson and Tom Cullen, have been apologising in interviews for struggling with the NI dialect, with Cullen earnestly explaining that he listened to Jamie Dornan’s Desert Island Discs on repeat in an attempt to get it right (although I’m not convinced it helped).
All of this raises a familiar question: why is the Northern Irish accent still being treated as a novelty?
I’m 24 and part of the first generation to grow up post-Peace Agreement. To me, the Northern Irish accent isn’t loaded with the political associations older generations recall, it’s simply how we speak. Yet every few months we’re reminded that in the rest of the UK, our voices are still considered unusual enough to attract comment.
It’s not that people genuinely can’t understand us, it’s that many don’t expect to, so they don’t try very hard.
This isn’t a new observation. In 2013, journalist Suzie McCracken wrote about the long-standing habit among NI people to wince at their own voices on television. She described how, for many who grew up during the Troubles, the accent felt linked to a past they’d rather not revisit. You could hear the echoes of politicians and preachers in it, she wrote, even if you didn’t agree with them.
But the landscape has shifted and my generation didn’t inherit that reflex – we’re not muting the TV when someone from home speaks. The embarrassment doesn’t sit with us, it sits with the reaction of others.
A large part of the problem is the persistent idea that Northern Ireland has a single accent, and of course it doesn’t. A Tyrone accent sounds nothing like an Antrim one. Derry has its own rhythm and Belfast alone contains multiple variations. But these distinctions rarely register outside the six counties. “Northern Irish” is treated as one broad category – loud, harsh and often suspicious.
This disregard for our vernacular reflects a wider habit of treating NI voices as caricatures rather than ordinary speech, while other regional accents – Scouse, Geordie, Glaswegian – have been normalised through continuous representation.
The reality is that the Northern Irish accent is no more difficult to follow than any other regional voice. When British TV audiences want to understand something, they manage. We’ve all watched shows set in Scotland, Liverpool or the North East without throwing our hands up in despair. The difference with Northern Irish speech is that people approach it assuming it will be difficult and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So what do we do? The answer isn’t to soften our voices or smooth out our vowels. That instinct – to apologise before we’ve even opened our mouths – is exactly what McCracken was writing about more than a decade ago and it’s insulting and unnecessary.
What could make a difference is simple: more Northern Irish voices on screen, on radio and in public life, speaking naturally and without commentary. And less inference that our accent is inherently “harsh” or “brash”, rather than simply unfamiliar.
The Northern Irish accent doesn’t need defending or romanticising. It deserves the same recognition and acceptance as any other regional voice.
It shouldn’t be considered “mighty” or “not smooth”, it’s just an accent, one that deserves to be heard without continuous comment and criticism.
