What's your favourite accent?

[Patricia55]

This month has been great for bookings... if a little tough on my ears 😉  [NB not complaining!!]

Out of 6 guests, all but one had English as their mother-tongue, the other was French. The accents were: California, RP English, Dublin, Belfast, Welsh. To be honest, I'm not sure it's any harder for me to decipher a foreign accent than an “English” one! Ah, it's all good, keeps me on my toes, love a good accent, me. I rather pride myself on figuring out from someone's accent, as to where they're from 🙂

Does anyone else enjoy accents?  Any favourites? 🙂

[J-Renato0]

@Patricia55 

I can know at once if someone is from the US and UK. People from the UK stress the consonants and tend to speak more pausedly. People from the US stress the vowels. Sounds very different.

However, based on the accents,  I can not say precisely from what part of the UK the citizen is.
It is like Portuguese from Brazil and Portugues from Portugal. In Portugal they stress the consonants and we recognize a Portuguese person at once. In both countries there are lots of different accents, but in general it is easy to recognize who is Brasilian and Portuguese. It is the same with British and US people.

To me the easiest english accent to understand is the RP accent, kind of BBC accent. (They say it is in extinction)

Anyway, I have been talking in english with people from throughtout the world. If they speak too fast, I ask them to speak slowly, then I can folllow them.

[Sarah977]

@Patricia55   I love it that you started this topic! 

Okay, I really dislike Guy Ritchie movies, first of all because I don't find them at all entertaining, and second of all, I can't understand a word they are saying. They might as well be speaking Swahili. I had a boyfriend, brought up in England, who loved them, and had to translate all the dialogue for me. That boyfriend also told me that if you're a Brit, you can pretty much tell what village someone in England comes from by their accent.

I always find it strange when anyone talks about an American or Canadian accent, because someone born and raised in New York has a completely different accent from someone from the Deep South, or someone from the Midwest or someone from the West Coast.

Same in Canada. I had a Newfie friend I could barely understand. People from Vancouver tend to talk really fast, almost leave off the last syllable, and slur it into the next word.

Argentinian Spanish has an Italian inflection.

Mexicans tell me I speak really good Spanish, but that's not true at all. I can converse fine on a day to day basis, but there's no way I could carry on an in-depth political discussion with an educated Mexican. I haven't masterd many of the complicated verb conjugations of Spanish and my vocabulary is scanty. But they perceive my Spanish as good because I have a good ear and don't have one of those crass American accents- I can pronounce Spanish perfectly except for the double r- which is a rolled, vibrated r- that sound kids all over the world make when playing cars, which my tongue simply won't do.  

Not sure what my favorite accent would be- maybe East Indian- I find it very melodic. Least favorite accent- White South African.

[Ann72]

@Sarah977 Side note:  the ability or inability to roll your "R"s is genetic!  I'm one of 6 children.  My mother and my five siblings can all roll their "R"s, while my father and I can't!  🙂

[Sarah977]

@Ann72  Wow, thank you for that info. So many Mexicans have tried to teach me where to place my tongue to roll those Rs, and I get it, but my tongue simply won't vibrate like that. And I was the only kid on my block growing up in the US who couldn't make that sound when we were all playing with little cars.

I can sort of fake the single R in Spanish, which is slightly rolled, at least I don't use a hard American R, but no way can I do the vibrated double R.

[Gordon0]

Throwing my hat (or sombrero) in the ring, I too struggle with the double-r thing. My husband is Venezuelan (lovely accent) and has been trying to teach me to roll my tongue for the perfect r for 20+ years. And still no good.

[Patricia55]

@Gordon0 

Ah, someone elsewhere said it's a genetic thing (the ability to roll the rrs) - who knew? - so, don't worry about it 😉 As I mentioned, my beloved struggles with even single "r"s, especially when preceded by eg a "g" or an "f"! 

[Patricia55]

@J-Renato0 

It's the same for me, the easiest accent to understand is the standard BBC type! It's definitely a good thing to have a standard (RP) accent, but I know we can't all be the same 😉 I do wonder how so many different accents have originated, ie WHY do people speak the same language so differently? (Not to mention dialects...)

I've heard that Americans struggle with Brit accents and need subtitles on some of our TV programmes, whereas we Brits can easily understand most American programmes. I remember some Brit saying, when in an American restaurant, she couldn't make herself understood when asking for water! She was pronouncing it “war-ter” and had to change it to “woddurr” so I guess that shows how one is forced to adapt one's accent. I'm sure I used to have a stronger Geordie* accent when I was younger, but after spending a lot of time abroad and not being understood at times, the rough edges got rubbed off!

We tend to think that non-Anglophones don't pronounce the “th” sound very well, if at all, but I can tell you there are loads of British speakers who don't either! Some Cockneys say eg “firty-free” (and also miss out the “t”), instead of thirty-three. Also, the “th” at the end of words, gets pronounced as “t” - I think that's an Irish thing, eg Tynemout instead of Tynemouth.

I think it must be a little irritating, for non-anglophones who've spent years studying English, with a “proper” accent, when they go to small town UK and find the locals speaking some weird variation, lol. Sorry!

*I just found this interesting article: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/01/british-geordie-dialect-another-planet which states: “The Geordie dialect is about 80 percent Angle in origin, compared with Standard English which is 30 percent Angle.” I never knew that!

@Sarah977 

I've had the same experience when speaking French, people have told me my French was good... and it's just my accent! My vocabulary is poor. When living in France for a while we set ourselves a target of learning one new word per day, which doesn't sound a lot, but we couldn't keep it up for long! I'm in awe of people who are bilingual who speak two languages very well.

Well, for whatever reason, my favourite accents are New York and Dublin – I could just listen to the sound without even noticing the content, lol.

[J-Renato0]

@Patricia55 

You are right. As a non native speaker of English I know we have some difficult with the "th". To me, the most dificult word in english is "thirsty" :). I avoid to say that word at any rate.

Well, I have said that, the easiest accent to understand to me is the standard BBC type of nowadays, more precisely I would say the modern RP accent. The RP has the purpose of being a more regionaly neutral accent...

Anyway I am not able to speak good or beautiful english, since I am a non native speaker. I will ever speak english like a foreigner be I in Brazil, US or UK.  Somewhat awkward, I must admit.
Moreover, my native Portuguese language accent is from Minas Gerais states, where people stress consideraly the "R", and of course, it influences my way of speaking.

I thought this video interesting, comparing modern RP with older RP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj0Rh__1kDw

[Patricia55]

@J-Renato0 (sorry, tag not working)

Thanks for the video, sooo interesting.  I absolutely agree that modern RP is better than a "toff" (upper class) accent any day!  Too many class associations there!  In fact, there are now BBC news announcers with slight regional "lilts", eg Welsh or Scottish, which is great - more inclusive.

Your English is very good and it doesn't matter if you have a foreign accent as long as you can make yourself understood.

If it's any consolation, my partner has trouble with his “r”s! His ex would ask him to get her a grapefruit juice from the bar and if he wasn't feeling confident, she'd get a pineapple juice instead 😉

[Adriana719]

and the funny part of the story is when ,after many attempts, the woman from the cash point moans in a loud voice to her colleaque and now you feel like an idiot.Yesterday-Deichman store-Walsall-West Midlands-SOAIZ eight -in a hurry and with a huge pressure on O.Of course I ll never go back there.Thanks God,this never ever happens in London.

[Gordon0]

I lived in Yonkers/NYC back in the 80s and the local 7-11 guys took great joy in asking me to repeat 'water' over and over again. I didn't find it quite so amusing. 

[Sarah977]

@Patricia55  I have a Liverpudlian friend who named her daughter Thea. But she pronounces her daughter's name Thee-er. I asked her why she named her daughter something she couldn't pronounce correctly 🙂 I've never ben able to understand why Brits leave off a final R sound, yet add an R sound to the end of words that end in a vowel!

Here's a good one- There are tons of bootleg DVD movies sold in Mexico. They'll either be dubbed in Spanish or have Spanish subtitles. But the subtitles are obviously just written by somone listening to the dialogue and translating what they hear. I watched a movie where the actor said "I don't like it when people use the word 'poor' like that." (she was referring to the other character saying "Poor Mrs. McMurphy.")

But it was a British movie, so the actor pronounced it something like "po". The movie translator thought they were saying "pork", so that's how it was translated in the subtitles "I don't like it when people say things like "Pork Mrs. McMurphy'."

I almost fell off the sofa laughing.

[Rachel0]

@Patricia55 I suppose I have a London accent sometimes, RP other times, with a hint of my native Suffolk slipping in now and then.  I have had guests from all over the world but still get fits of giggles when people from the southern states of USA call me "Ma'am" - it makes me feel like Princess Margaret who apparently insisted on being called "Ma'am as in Jam."

I had a great guest from S Korea back in February whose English was pretty good but he had also taken the trouble to learn some colloquial phrases.  One evening he came back after a long day sight seeing and announced "Gosh, I'm knackered."  That just cracked me up!

[Patricia55]

@Rachel0 

One of our favourite things when we had a group of exchange students over in Newcastle was to teach them Geordie phrases; hearing chic young Parisians coming out with 'Haway the lads' or something – they had to get the right accent too! - was a hoot 😉