It is best known for Richard III, Jamie Vardy and Walkers Crisps.
But now the city of Leicester has another claim to fame.
Experts have discovered that the East Midlands city is home to Britain’s fastest talking people.
On average, Leicesterians speak 255 words per minute (wpm), which easily exceeds the UK average of 189.8 wpm.
Other fast-talking cities include Glasgow and Liverpool, while the slowest-talking cities are Edinburgh, Birmingham and Leeds.
Leicester takes the cake as Britain’s fastest talking city, with its residents’ rapid chatter allowing them to speak a whopping 254.8 words per minute
It’s best known for Richard III, Jamie Vardy and Walkers Crisps, but now the city of Leicester has another claim to fame
The research was conducted by online language learning marketplace Preply, which analyzed videos and radio broadcasts from across the UK.
Kalendra Withanaarachchi, digital executive at Preply, thinks Leicester’s high level of multiculturalism may be linked to the result.
According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, 59.1 percent of people in Leicester are from ethnic minority groups.
By comparison, 81 percent of people in England and Wales are of white ethnicity.
“The Leicester accent has many factors that make it feel fast, with one of the most notable being its diverse and multicultural population,” Withanaarachchi said.
‘As the local accent is influenced by many different heritage languages and dialects, this can make the accent sound very fast to those unfamiliar with it and living outside Leicester.’
To determine how fast and slow different parts of Britain speak, the team at Preply created a starting list of the 10 most populous British cities.
They calculated the average words said per minute based on a selection of YouTube videos from each of the cities and analyzed transcripts from local news channels and podcasts.
Leicester topped the list, while London was only the third fastest-talking city in the south (and fifth overall)
According to the results, the slowest talking cities are Edinburgh (pictured), Birmingham and Leeds
By a wide margin, Leicester proved to be the fastest talking city, with an average of 254.8 wpm, followed by Glasgow with 218.13 wpm.
Citizens in both cities tend to omit certain syllables and use shorter vowels, possibly caused by “external factors” such as “the fast-paced nature of their environment.”
Despite scousers being known for their rapid-fire talk, Liverpool were only third with 210.3 wpm, followed by Bristol (195.1 wpm) and London (192.9 wpm).
This was an interesting result considering that London is Britain’s most multicultural city, and that one of Britain’s famous fast talkers – record breaker Steve Woodmore – was from London.
Meanwhile, the slowest speaking cities were found to be Edinburgh at 132.2 wpm, followed by Birmingham (164.2 wpm), Leeds (173.9 wpm) and Sheffield (174.7 wpm).
Although Britain’s ten most populous cities are hardly representative of the whole of Britain, the influence of each city’s speech can spread further into regional areas due to the wide availability of local broadcasting.
While scousers are known for their lightning fast talk, Liverpool were only third with 210.3 wpm, followed by Bristol (195.1 wpm) and London (192.9 wpm)
When analyzing the video and audio, the experts noticed that football was one of the topics that mainly led to fast speech.
One example was a video posted by Leicester City’s YouTube channel, where a whopping 716 words per minute were spoken in their video about midfielder Abdul Fatawu joining Leicester City in August.
While on BBC Radio Leicester, Andy Pierce’s interview with the band Courthouse featured a speech on 180.4 wpm.
Londoner Steve Woodmore, who died last year, entered the Guinness World Records book in 1990 by talking at 637 wpm.
Woodmore lost his record in 1995, when Canadian Sean Shannon was able to articulate at 655 wpm.
To break the record, Shannon recited Shakespeare’s Hamlet monologue ‘To be or not to be’ in 23.8 seconds on August 30, 1995 in Edinburgh.