It’s only the 2nd day of the new year, but I am going to nominate this for “Thread Drift of the Year.”
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We need Linda and Gretchen on the thread. They are the only two Onions I’ve met and who could comment on this particular “oop norf” accent.
It’s not something I’ve any expertise in but I think British accents have changed over the decades since WW2. I remember watching a BBC documentary series about WW1 when many veterans were interviewed. Apart from a small handful who spoke with distinctive accents, most spoke what was known as the “Queens English” - a sort of vaguely south east England “posh” accent that wasnt a London accent.
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I’m glad you wrote that because that was going through my head.
For me, I kept wondering which “British accent” @gaffk was imagining because each comes with its own particular class connotation. Also because I can’t imagine @Harters Harters doing anything but the Mancunian (certainly not RP-- apologies if I’m wrong). Certain posh English accents make me want to boak and hearing one discussing no need to consider affordability might drive me to violence.
I know others want to point out the regional accents of their turf, but the UK really is something given how small it is and how many accents there are here.
My guess is that most Americans who say “British Accent” are imagining RP. It was what was demanded for broadcasting before finally regional accents started to get a look in.
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Oh that Brooklyn one is horrible. I can’t say much for the US southern ones nor did I care for the Dublin or Belfast ones. Shame she gave no specificity to the Scottish one. Definitely not West Coast. Thank HaShem she didn’t try Boston. That’s one that really is so often done wrong it’s painful. In that regard, this is brilliant:
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Ha! I read this after posting my comments.
I can’t speak to that but I remember reading an article about how the Queen’s own accent changed over the years from the original cut-glass (the BBC’s term) to an accent more closely related to the southeast, mostly East Sussex.
When I worked with B&Q and Focus, I got pretty good at picking up localities by accent, but the subtleties have faded. I atill was able to pick up the origins I was sat near last week…he a Yorkshireman and she from Southampton.
I’ve always attributed this as the reason for the American lack of recognition of my accent in my early visits to the States. They didnt hear me as being British so assumed I must be from somewhere else where they didnt actually know what the local accent was - hence New Zealand. As regional accents have become accepted on TV over more recent years, Americans will have heard them which is why it must be 20 years since the origin of my accent was asked about. By the by, I also recall a taxi driver in Toronto asking if we were Scottish.
So, there we were having dinner in a buffet restaurant in the small town of Galax, Virginia, in 2013. It was a quiet night and the young woman looking after our table had time toi chat. She was fascinated by our accents - not least as she’d never met a Briton before. She was in to fashion and thought we were so lucky to have fashion centres, like London and Paris, on our doorstep. Funniest thing was she asked if she could call over her colleague and then asked if we could just say something to her, as she also wouldnt have met one. When we did, colleague dissolved into embarrassed giggles. It all made it a nice evening - nice enough that I’m still telling the story almost a decade later.
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It’s as good a guess as any, I suppose. I’m not a native American, have traveled the UK on numerous occasions, and recognize regional accents in countries other than the British isles 
This reminds me of one of my wife’s favorite movies, Love Actually. Kris Marshall’s character can’t get a date at home in England so he goes to the US to find women who will want to be with him just because he is English and speaks with an accent that Americans will find irresistible. They have him say amazing things like bottle.
Many of Amy Walker’s accents sound like a parody to me. I hope she’s not an American as she does American accents poorly. Would love to hear her try a Chicago accent. Maybe make her LA accent be Chicano. That would show some talent.
As to the Boston accent, in order to be authentic you have to remember a key rule. Just like in physics where you have the law of the conservation of mass, there is the conservation of R. If you remove an r from a word like pa’k, then that r must be found somewhere else like in an idear.
What do the British think about the “American Accent”?
At least this Brit.
Well, she did the video 15 years ago and now has a gig as a voice and accent coach because of the video, so it would seem that someone thougt she was doing a pretty good job.
I can’t recall it being a subject for discussion/analysis in the UK.
My own trips to the States have always been to the east, so my experience is limited by that. But my sense is that I don’t detect as much geographical difference in accents as here - as I mentioned, there are distinct differences even within my metro area. I know when I’ve reached the South, as the broad accent is different to, say, a New England or New York City one. But I’ve not spent enough time there to determine any differences between a Virginia or Louisiana one.
You’re very good. Most of the people I know who speak English as a second or third language struggle with accents. (I’m good with French language accents but that’s it really, with maybe a little bit.) I do think, though, that people struggle with the variations until they’ve actually stayed in a place for a significant period.
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The Southerners I know can’t stand people’s approximations of how they talk (caricature, flattening of regional distinctions) but are possibly more polite than Bostonians when on the receiving end. Scots I know cringe a lot at what people try to get away with.
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I can understand that. I’m aware that we Brits use certain of our regional accents as negative caricatures - think of the last time you heard a rural southwestern English accent on TV. Bet they werent playing someone with a good middle class type job. I suspect (and am very happy to be corrected) that having a American accent from the South may also bring connotations with it.
Absolutely. All you have to do is watch American movies/shows for the stereotypes. There’s the standard southern belle femme fatale with the ridiculous drawn out accent, the country bumkin hick without proper grammar, the conniving lawyer trying to steal the farm with the urbane slick accent and so on.
Hardly anyone in the South talks like that. When I first arrived up north I talked too slow for my college classmates. My first Christmas break when I went back home, my friends told me I was starting to talk strange. I couldn’t win.
I recall going to a meeting early in my career and when I opened my mouth to talk for the first time, someone at the table asked me “where are you from?” I clearly wasn’t a local.
Now after having lived and worked in different places, you can’t place me anywhere. Unless I have a few drinks. Then the south comes out.
I can tell some place some accents but there’s a lot of variations of the southern accent. I used to work with for two guys from Virginia. One was from Richmond. We had clients in Virginia and went to Richmond often. I had one of the clients tell me that even for someone from Richmond, you could tell that the partner I worked for came from a certain area and went to certain schools as he had “that” accent. The other partner was from eastern Virginia and had a very different upbringing. Once we were in another meeting and someone at the meeting we had just met says “so what part of Tidewater are you from?”
My wife from Boston can tell people from Boston proper to Southie to the North Shore or western Mass by how they talk. Virginia and Massachusetts are places that were settled early so I think the regional accents from places like that are a lot stronger than California or Washington. Places that were settled before there was a railway have much stronger regional accents.
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My wife adopts accents very quickly (and is good with languages). Put her in the company of a group with a distinctive regional British accent and, within an hour or so, she’ll have started to use the accent to some degree. I get embrrassed by it sometimes as I think they must think she’s using it jokingly. She puts it down with a need to fit it. When she was a child, her dad was a soldier and they moved around a lot to different postings. So, she was always needing to make new friends and this was ther strategy to fit in.
In similar vein, when my niece was about 11, the family moved from the UK to upstate New York. We went to visit about a year later. By then, she had developed an American accent which she used at school and with friends. But, when she came home from school, it took her only minutes to settle back into her “normal” Manchester accent.
It depends on the Southern accent. Some are upper crust, and some are not, as one would find with accents from various parts of England, largely depending on one’s socio- economic status & education .
Whether there’s a connotation attached to an accent or not, that likely depends on how much time one has spent in the South, the experiences one has, the filters or bias one has. The media of course has shaped people’s views on some accents, in an unfair way.
When I hear someone make a negative comment using a fake German, fake First Nations, Fake South Asian, fake Southern, or any other accent to put people down , I admit, my respect for them drops. I try not to judge anyone for their accent.
In the States, some people try to erase their accents, if they’re working somewhere where they might be judged for their accent or from where they came.
I remember being interviewed in NYC, and I couldn’t identify my interviewers accent. She told me that she used to sound like me, Midwestern. I hadn’t really considered that an Ontarian sounds fairly Midwestern to someone who has become a New Yorker or spent decades in NYC.
Some people also adjust their accent, or choice of words, depending on their company.
I think this is true everywhere.
I used to be a volunteer at our local hospital. I was part of the volunteer team that staffed the welcome points. You developed a usually accurate sense of the person approaching you (based on dress and demeanor) as to whether you were going to welcome them with a casual (and very locally accented) “hiya” or a more formal “good morning”.
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