Then all you need to do is add the guttural sound of the Flemish and throw a few ‘errs’ and ‘eughs’ in for authenticity.

You’ll also have trouble pronouncing ‘h’s and ‘th’s, the first of which will become silent and the second of which will be replaced by a ‘z’.įor example, “I heard that” will become “I eard zat”. Therefore, “little” becomes “l-ee-telle.” The French part of this means rolling your ‘R’s and lengthening your ‘er’s and ‘ed’s transforming your ‘le’s into ‘elle’s, and speaking ‘i’s as if they were ‘ee’s. Suchet’s dossier is top secret, so we have created our own How To guide for speaking like Poirot.įirst, Poirot’s English is spoken with a mixture of French and Belgian accents. The answer was: “ four, sometimes three, occasionally five“. Whilst playing the role, Suchet was just as fastidious as the detective himself: watching every single recorded episode before filming the next, refusing to act (even from behind the camera) without the infamous moustache, and once halting filming to phone his wife and ask her to consult his dossier of Poirot-isms as he had forgotten how many sugars the detective takes in his tea. The accent most associated with Christie’s fictional character was developed by actor David Suchet, who has spent 24 years and 70 episodes as Hercule Poirot, working from a list of around 90 traits and idiosyncrasies detailed within Christie’s novels and short stories. To celebrate the release of The Monogram Murders, the brand new Hercule Poirot novel from best-selling crime fiction novelist Sophie Hannah, we’re putting a spotlight on Christie’s most beloved character – specifically on his accent, which is so renowned that it has even become an event: Talk Like a Poirot Day (20th September), a bookish spin-off of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Poirot dentist