Do you like British accents?   Right now if you are an American you are probably thinking 'British accents?  Plural?   You mean that there is more than one?'   I  love watching anything and everything on YouTube and recently I have come across a number of teen girls posting on YouTube about just how dreamy and exotic the British accent is... One girl states that she hates her American accent, she considers it too flat and monotonous for words.    I have noticed though that when these girls attempt a British accent they ALWAYS do a mock-Cockney, south-east of England accent(Think of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, and spike in Buffy).    It seems that they are absolutely convinced that this is the only British accent.   Imagine if I insisted that ALL Americans spoke with a Texan accent.   Even if they came from Washington, Nebraska, Ohio, Maine and Louisiana?


Incidentally, click this link to hear how a lot of people - although not me - talk in my area.  I probably have the accent but I don't use those Scots dialect words.  I say 'head' and not 'heid', 'talk' and not 'toke'.

Outnumbered - Scottish Accent.mp4

I love British accents! As a matter of fact, I live in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and our police force goes to Weymouth, England once a year. They listen over there, then come back here and lock up anyone who isn't speaking proper English!

I collect accents. I love them. I love all the little intricacies that vary by geographic location all over the world. Accents throughout the UK are lots of fun (especially Scottish and Welsh), but I love all kinds of others too.

I'm American, but I'm also Alaskan. I have an Anchorage accent (similar to a SoCal accent lightly influenced by Minnesotan and Texan). I used to have a redneck drawl, but I decided to nip that in the bud when I was a teenager. I use dialect words that my NorCal friends find amusing and confusing. Using the word "dope" for mosquito repellant, for instance, led to one particularly funny misunderstanding.

And no, Sarah Palin, does NOT have an "Alaskan accent." She affected a Minnesotan accent (badly) in public to sound more folksy. 

Quote from: Princess of Hearts on October 17, 2011, 04:53:41 PM
Do you like British accents?   Right now if you are an American you are probably thinking 'British accents?  Plural?   You mean that there is more than one?'   I  love watching anything and everything on YouTube and recently I have come across a number of teen girls posting on YouTube about just how dreamy and exotic the British accent is... One girl states that she hates her American accent, she considers it too flat and monotonous for words.    I have noticed though that when these girls attempt a British accent they ALWAYS do a mock-Cockney, south-east of England accent(Think of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, and spike in Buffy).    It seems that they are absolutely convinced that this is the only British accent.   Imagine if I insisted that ALL Americans spoke with a Texan accent.   Even if they came from Washington, Nebraska, Ohio, Maine and Louisiana?






Incidentally, click this link to hear how a lot of people - although not me - talk in my area.  I probably have the accent but I don't use those Scots dialect words.  I say 'head' and not 'heid', 'talk' and not 'toke'.

Outnumbered - Scottish Accent.mp4

Kia Ora Princess,

I'm a Cockney [accent wise] even though I was born on the South side of the Rotherhite tunnel,  however  I haven't lived[for more than a few months] in the UK for around forty years, but I still have a Cockney accent...

Jamie Oliver's accent is [what those of us with the authentic Cockney accent]  call a  'Mockney' accent... "Ya na wat er meen !"

Metta Zenda

Hmmmm, British accents, eh? It's kinda annoying to me.

I just like accents in general. Well, as long as I can understand them. I once went to England and went to order something from Burger King and I couldn't understand the guy's accent at all. It sounded Indian but it was really slurred. And then I went into a bank to mail a postcard for my dad and couldn't understand the teller's accent either, not to mention I felt like a complete ass when I didn't know what coins he was telling me to give him.

Otherwise, I like most of the British accents. I also like most of the American accents. Heck, I like any accent as long as I can understand it when they speak in English. Some of them just have a really exotic feel to them that gives me goosebumps...

Um I hope I don't offend anyone, lol, but tbh I generally don't like any of the British accents. My friend thinks they're the sexiest thing in the world, and I'm like, "Eww." I like all the other accents, just not British ones, or Austrailian, ugh. (Including the American accent which isn't flat or monotone to me )

Actually they can sound nice on women, but ugh, Idk I don't like them on men.

Most Americans think that Hugh Grant's terribly posh and buttoned up way of speaking is common.  His 'Oh golly gosh', and 'Oh I say!'  died out decades ago.   The other type of English accent the one that pronounces 'said' as 'side', and 'paid' as 'pied' and says things like 'bleeding 'ell' only accounts for about 5% of the British population.  However, thanks to film and television and lazy actors Americans think those two accents and ways of speaking dominate in Britain.

Kia Ora Princess,

Our North American cousins have a hard time working out the difference between a British accent, an Aussie accent and a Kiwi one...But then again many Britons can't tell the difference between an Aussie accent and a Kiwi accent...

I'm guessing it's somewhat similar when it comes to the northern states American [close to the Canadian boarder] accent and the Canadian accent...

BTW For the most part I tend to have a good ear for picking accents...

Metta Zenda  

My accent is pretty messed up to be honest. I was born in Scotland but spent most of my  childhood in Germany. And around other military children. But I didn't learn to speak English first. German is my first language.
I'm sure you can see just how messed up this voice sounds. I mean when I moved back to England, other kids would ask me if I was American, ( I've also been asked if any of my relatives were India. Or Pakistani because of my usually dark skin which I get from my gypsy heritage).
So here I have this German/ mixed English accent and I move to Indiana. 11 years later, I have what my S/O calls a New England accent. There's American, German and English all thrown in together.

How's that for being screwed up;)

I was in the UK for several months about ten years ago, and didn't have a lot of trouble with the various accents I encountered.
My father was from Belfast and apparently like most pre-kindergarten kids I sounded like my parent. I can still hear traces of it in my own voice if I listen carefully, so Ulster has an accent  I like, as well as the Scots'. Sean Connery is top of my list of men I would go straight for.
  As for the rest of the UK Jamie Oliver's Essex(?) accent is cool, as is the East End of London for some reason.  Too many episodes of "The Sweeney" when I was younger maybe?

Karen.

Actually, there are still countless numbers of people in the UK who speak like Hugh Grant (or even posher) and it's just as annoying when they do it as when he does it (though he's cute ).

Britain being a tiny island with 60 million people stuffed into it, it's a matter of tribal honour (and sense of identity) to sound a bit different from the people 3 miles away, so there's a lot of accent diversity here.

My only real problem is trying to take people seriously when they have a Black Country accent (that's the accent that people think is the Birmingham accent, but which is stronger than the brummy, which is itself quite mellow).

I think it depends on the individual whether you like how their voice sounds or not - if someone's annoying their voice will grate wherever they're from. For the record, I get turned on by some American accents (I met a gorgeous freckled Kentucky gal last year...) - but it's the Kanucks that really make my blood race - it's something about how they pronounce their T's, yum.

I think Jasper Carrot summed it up when he said no-one like Brummys. And he is from there!

British accents are generally OK although personally I'm not crazy about the Ulster or Geordie ones. Anyway accents are constantly changing and the kids round here have moved from a South London one to something influenced by Jamaican (Kingston) and South Asian slang. I spent the first 16 years of my life in the South West and have lost the accent apart from the 'R' and for the rest most people have no idea where I'm from.

US accents are fine apart from those who like to pretend they are in one of Martin Scorsese's Cosa Nostra films. It's the South African one that's hard to take sometimes.

In the first scene in the clip Grandpa's friend, played by Jake D'Arcy, is introduced. Does anyone know what he says? Talking to Scottish people here...

He says something and then he says Ciamar a tha thu? which is Scottish Gaelic for 'How are you?'. He should have said Ciamar a tha sibh? but that's besides the point.

Any thoughts?

As a linguist I loved this episode of Outnumbered. I love the different dialects, languages and accents of the UK.

Quote from: mimpi on October 25, 2011, 04:57:16 AM
British accents are generally OK although personally I'm not crazy about the Ulster or Geordie ones.

Ulster is in Ireland not in Britain so it's an Irish accent.

Some British accents aren't understandable, not even for the British, Liverpool slang for example.
Once I spoke to a lady from Liverpool in my profession as a nurse, I couldn't understand a bloody word of it, thankfully her husband could and trenslate it into estuary English for me.
I think the British has the same problem as the Dutch do, sometimes you can't understand people from a nearby village because of their accent.
For what about the American accent, it's good to understand for foreigners, except the things Americans use for shorten the things, you have to live there to understand that.
Well, I think that's the problem with any language or accent.

LOL... When I was a kid we lived in southern Calif. and had some Scottish relatives visit for about a week... Generally nice folks, but none of us knew what they were on about most of the time... We spent allot of time going to the beach and watching movies at the theatre

When people think of British accents its feels like they just think we all speak like Cockneys lol My accent is very rounded, as I am from The South West of England, in whats considered royal country. I would be considered to have a posh country (somerset/glos) bumpkins accent. We have a lot of silver spoon 'horsey' posh tarts round here. Thank god I don't speak like them. I originally came from Lancashire and my accent was kinda Liverpool cross with Yorkshire borders lol It took years to grow out of it, and I still do it when I am very tired. I love all the accents in England, Scottish is awesome, but I rarely understand strong Scottish dialect.

I love accents from all over, I like the sound of the Jamaican accent and the Texas accent, and all kinda southern belle.

Something I've learned is that regardless of where you visit or who visits you, the accents are going to vary quite a bit in pretty much every country

It cracks me up when people generalize Americans and think we don't notice or understand the world around us    But we do notice, we also have a variety of accents and cultural influences... It's unavoidable, we literally have people from all over the world living here

So anyone that takes a cookie cutter image of the USA possibly needs to adjust their own perspective