Britain and foreign languages

[JAperson]

I think people's accent are tending to merge more than previously, probably because people of mine and @Matt N 's generation hear more peoples accents because of the internet, meaning our accents aren't as strong as our parents. But yes the UK has so many accents, there is definitely no such thing as a British or English accent because everywhere is different. In all the countries of the UK there are just so many different accents, words and phrases that vary so much, it really is interesting. It must be hard for some foreign visitors to understand for sure.

 

[Matt N]

I think the stereotype “British accent” you often hear in foreign media is modelled off of a London/South East accent. People from the South East do generally speak in a similar kind of way to how foreign media portrays British people (albeit usually not quite as posh).

 

[JAperson]

I think the stereotype “British accent” you often hear in foreign media is modelled off of a London/South East accent. People from the South East do generally speak in a similar kind of way to how foreign media portrays British people (albeit usually not quite as posh).

Yeah the American media and public in particular can't seem to grasp how many regional accents there are in the UK, usually just saying British accent or English accent when no such thing exists. Then again Americans barely ever go abroad (statistically) and therefore have a not very good understanding of other countries at all. Most Americans won't even know someone who's been abroad unless they live in a big city.

 

[Matt.GC]

It takes you almost 2 hours to get to Birmingham from the FOD? Do you walk it or something?

You may have a mild accent, but I bet if you walked into a pub in Leeds a guy in a flat cap with a tankard of ale in hand would say otherwise. Trust me, they'd be singing Worzels songs to you in no time.

 

[Matt N]

Yeah the American media and public in particular can't seem to grasp how many regional accents there are in the UK, usually just saying British accent or English accent when no such thing exists. Then again Americans barely ever go abroad (statistically) and therefore have a not very good understanding of other countries at all. Most Americans won't even know someone who's been abroad unless they live in a big city.

In the US’ defence, America is effectively the same size as Europe, so travelling between states in America is almost equivalent to travelling between countries in Europe as opposed to travelling within your own country in Europe.

It takes you almost 2 hours to get to Birmingham from the FOD? Do you walk it or something?

You may have a mild accent, but I bet if you walked into a pub in Leeds a guy in a flat cap with a tankard of ale in hand would say otherwise. Trust me, they'd be singing Worzels songs to you in no time.

That may have been a slight over exaggeration. I don’t know about the centre of Birmingham itself, but I know Birmingham Airport takes around 1.5 hours from my area, and Birmingham Airport is on the side of the city closer to us.

In hindsight, and from having talked to my mum, I’m not sure I have any semblance of a Forester accent at all. My mum, as before, described me as “completely accentless”, and said that I have “a completely generic English accent”. She looked baffled when I suggested that I’d developed even a slight “Forest-y twang” with age, saying that I didn’t sound vaguely like a Forester, while saying that I also didn’t develop my dad and grandparents’ fairly strong Kent accent either. She thinks I have a totally generic English accent, as does my sister.

The only change in my fairly generic English accent is that I’ve grown slightly less posh as I’ve aged. For instance, I used to pronounce words like bath and castle as “bar-th” and “car-stle” like the people with stereotypical English accents in American films do, whereas I now pronounce them in the less formal way of bath and castle. I’ve also developed a habit of often shortening things and often not enunciating that I never had as a child; for instance, I often say something like “all right?” without enunciating nowadays (although far from always; I do still sometimes enunciate), whereas I enunciated without fail when I was a child.

 

[JAperson]

In the US’ defence, America is effectively the same size as Europe, so travelling between states in America is almost equivalent to travelling between countries in Europe as opposed to travelling within your own country in Europe.

Yes you are right however I don’t think it does any good to just experience one culture, especially when the American education system is so poor, most Americans couldn’t tell you where Europe is, what countries are in the UK or anything along them lines.