Reddit mentions of Accents: A Manual for Actors- Revised and Expanded Edition

I have this handy!

Accents, a Manual for Actors

Learning IPA(International Phonetic Alphabet) is a real game changer with dialect and accent work. I have a little collection of index cards of accents(the ones a white guy like me are expected to do) that have a cheat sheet of the most important sound differences.

Go ahead and pick up one of these

In the mean time, I'll open up my copy and tell you what Blumenfeld has to say about Cockney. But before that, let me just stress this: You can read all of the phonetics and rules that you want, but at the end of the day, the thing that is going to help you the most is listening to a native speaker. Michael Caine has been a giant help to me. So sit yourself down, watch The Dark Knight trilogy and pay attention to Alfred.

As for what Blumenfeld has to say:

• The jaws are held loosley with the lips a bit forward. Drop your jaw and say "ah" which will give you the general position of the accent.
  
  
• The accent is non-rhotic, meaning that the final R or the R before another consonant are not pronounced. E.G. "shoogah" instead of "shoogar" for sugar or "tah-tid" instead of "tar-tid" for tarted.
  
  
• H is often not pronounced at the beginning of a word. So hand, how and hat become 'and, 'ow, and 'at.
  
  
• The g in -ing is often dropped. I.E. Runnin' instead of running.
  
• The glottal stop is an important stereotype to the accent. It's the absence of vocalization that is used during a "tt" sound. You'd know the sound if you heard it. It's hard to explain the sound through type.
  
• Voiced TH (where you use your voice to make the sound) is often replaced by a V. "Together" becomes "tuhgevah." if it's at the beginning of the word it is either replaced by a 'd' or dropped all together. So that can sometimes become either "dat" or "at"
  
• Voiceless TH (Where you have your tongue between your teeth and push air out) is substituted with an "F". This is a pretty indicative Cockney trait that will instantly say to the audience "HEY. THIS IS COCKNEY"
  
• Now for the vowel sounds. The vowel 'A' in father is a pure open vowel just like in British Received Pronounciation.
  
• The 'ay' sound shifts to 'I'. So day and brain sound more like "die" and "brine"
  
• The 'I' sound becomes 'oy' so 'I am', 'night', and 'fine' become "oy am" "noyt" and "foyn" But don't make it sound too open or your going to start to sound Australian.
  
• The "O" sound in "home" becomes "Ow" So "I know that bloke" becomes "Oy now dat blowk"
  
• The final L in a word can often become "oo" Table becomes "tayboo" Even though he's not quite cockney, this is really obvious in Ricky Gervais' accent. He says 'people' a lot and that will always sound like 'peepoo'
  
  That's a general rundown of the phonetics. There's more to be learned obviously. Now for tips.
  
  
• Go through parts of the script and rewrite it phonetically using these rules.
  
• A funny joke people like to make about Cockney is that when Michael Caine tries to say his name, he sounds like he's saying "my cocaine".
  
• Seriously. Listen to native speakers.
  
• Don't get too caught up in the accent. Still put all your focus on acting and being truthful to the character. Make it another aspect of the character instead of letting it define the character. We've all seen productions where an actor is clearly doing an accent and it's so distracting that you can't pay attention to anything.
  
• Definitely buy that book on Accents. It's my baby <3
  
• Most importantly, break a leg! Cockney is always fun and fellow actors are ALWAYS willing to be silly and talk in cockney for days. My fellow actors and I have done it for hours on end.

I'm a professional voiceover artist, when not DMing, and this book is absolutely essential to me. I've had to learn accents overnight, and this one has saved my skin on a number of occasions.

http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Actors-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/087910967X

If you're sticking with one cockney character, try to watch movies with exclusively cockney accents. My Fair Lady is great, but Liza's accent is buried amongst other accents.
Check out any movie with Jason Statham, incl Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Michael Caine in Alfie; This is England, or any episodes of Only Fools and Horses.

You would probably be interested in this book. It goes in detail about different accents - particularly in the UK, but also in India and Australia and whatnot. I haven't listened to the accompanying CD yet, but the book itself goes into really good detail. I'm not an actor myself, I just love phonology, but I find the book well-written and very interesting.

This article on Wikipedia also does a fairly good introduction on the different regional differences of American English, though you might want to brush up on your International Phonetic Alphabet skills to get a good understanding of this subject.

My recent revival of my DMing career was inspired by Mercer, so I have been more interested in the roleplay/voice acting aspect, something I never really cared about in the past. Just yesterday, my brother's (and one of my players) birthday gift to me showed up, and I'm really excited about it. Despite having zero experience as a voice actor, I find it relatively easy to follow, at least so far, and I haven't broken out the 2 CDs in the back yet.

Having that variety of voices makes characters feel much more individual and alive, and I hope really increases the immersion and feel of the game.

I'll second the folks encouraging emphasis on tone and add in word choice - remembering that this character only uses one-syllable words or this character overuses (or misuses) 50-cent words goes a long way towards making them memorable to the PCs.

I have a book from my Speech & Debate days on Accents called Accents - A Manual for Actors that I've found super helpful when I want to make use of an accent: it's got pronunciation guides and a CD to help.

https://www.amazon.com/Accents-Manual-Actors-Revised-Expanded/dp/087910967X

Seems like this could help you.

In Dutch: Accepted American Pronunciation - A Practical Guide is een geweldig boek als je het normale Amerikaanse accent wil leren. Als je je dat eenmaal aangeleerd hebt is de stap naar het Southern US accent denk ik makkelijker.

I am not an auditory learner, so I have a huge amount of difficulty with accents. I primarily differentiate my NPCs by their word choices, not by accents, though I can pull off a Texas accent pretty well. However, this book has helped me some, better than nothing at least. I'm working on a couple of accents and am hoping to eventually expand my repertoire, but at the moment all I can do particularly well is my own American accent (don't ask me for the region, I moved around enough as a kid that it's a mutt accent with elements of the places I've lived and my parents' accents), a Texan accent, a semi-passable "Southern belle" accent, and a decent Welsh accent.

Though the Welsh I mostly learned from watching scenes in Torchwood repeatedly and repeating all of Merrill's lines from Dragon Age 2.

I'm working on a Manchester accent and attempting to learn whatever Tali from Mass Effect's accent is.

You may want to look into some dialect books directed towards actors, they can give you some definite direction.

I believe that this one is a commonly used one: http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Actors-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/087910967X/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Thanks! I've just started to really work on my various accents ( got a sweet book to help ). I'm American, so I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle with the ridiculous amounts of different English/Commonwealth accents.