Find the best English Multicultural voice overs

If you are traveling on the London Underground, you most likely will listen to someone speaking in Multicultural London English (MLE). As the name explains, it is spoken in multicultural parts of London, mainly by young, working-class people with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Multicultural English emerged in the 1980s in parts of London with high levels of immigration. It is rooted in the immigration waves from the Caribbean, South Asia, and West Africa after World War II. As people learned English, they began speaking with foreign accents and native words. One of the strongest influences of Multicultural London English is Jamaican-rooted slang. That's why MLE is sometimes miscalled "Jafaican," implying it is "fake Jamaican."

London is the second city in the world with the most immigrant population, only behind New York. Imagine that 37% of people living in London were born outside the UK. With such diverse cultural backgrounds, you can find more than 300 languages in a single city. While it is difficult to measure exactly how many people speak Multicultural English, it is believed that it will be the future dominant dialect of the UK. And not only in the UK. Some elements of MLE have already spread internationally, thanks to the entertainment industries.

Does Multicultural London English sound very different from the more traditional Cockney accent? MLE has very distinctive vowel sounds. People who speak MLE tend to pronounce words like “now”, “go”, and “do” with longer sounds. Other words like “dear”, “feed”, or “bat” have their vowels more relaxed. But MLE is so dynamic that you can find plenty of variation from one speaker to another.

MLE speakers don’t show the Cockney-characteristic h-dropping, meaning they pronounce the aitches at the beginning of words. For example, they say “house” instead of “ouse”. But they do drop the “g” in the “ing” endings. In an English multicultural voice over, people would say “walkin” or “talkin”. You might also notice that vowels tend to sound with a Scottish or Newcastle accent in words like “home” or “face”.

A multicultural voice over is a must if you want to portray ethnic and culturally diverse environments in cosmopolitan London.