Accents you like and those you don't

Here in the UK I like the Newcastle accent, and the southern Ireland (OK, not strictly the UK) and the Scottish highlands (as long as it’s comprehensible) accents. I really don’t like the Birmingham or Northern Ireland accents.

I know that there is a large range of accents in the USA, but I’m not familiar with Canadian or Australian accents.

What are your likes and dislikes?

You’re not alone. I’ve seen several polls rating the Birmingham / Midlands accent least attractive and the Newcastle / Sunderland accent most (or more) attractive. I’d tend to agree with you and the polls.

I guess it’s because the Midlands accent sounds quite downbeat a lot of the time.

Me, I like English spoken with a really heavy French accent.

I like the Dutch accent when Dutch women speak German. I like the French accent when French people speak German or English.

I really don’t know why I like or dislike a particular accent. I wonder what people who speak in a Birmingham accent (for example) think of their own accent. I have a (I don’t know what the proper name for it is) BBC/Queen’s/middle class accent, and to me, I think my accent is neutral. But I’m sure to others, it isn’t.

One of my wife’s good friends is from Devon, England and she has one of the most beautiful accents I’ve ever heard. Everything is so soft about it.

Don’t mind a brummie accent on the ear, but it does sound a bit doleful and forlorn.

Find the Liverpool accent curious - a moderate one sounds great to me, quietly musical and distinctive. Taken to excess, though, scally-style, it must rank as the worst accent in the British isles. Guess Norn Ireland is similar - can be beautiful, but a hard one is an assault on the ears.

People have accused me of only dating ,er, British subjects because of their accents but it’s really my dislike of almost all American accents that buoys my interest in imports :stuck_out_tongue:
I don’t remember noticing it as much when I lived on the west coast but since I’ve been living in Florida where we get all the transplants from the midwest, I’m constantly, silently wishing most people would stfu.

I can’t think of any nonAmerican accents I don’t like, though the sound of Chinese being spoken isn’t particularly pleasing to me.

I guess I’m a connoisseur of worldly things. There’s not many accents that I don’t like, all for different reasons. I have a Texas twang in my accent, but not living there for the past 20+ years, it has smoothed off quite a bit, but still noticeably there. Whenever I travel in the US and around the world, I get lots of compliments on my accent and have people continue to engage me in conversation, expressly to hear me talk. At first it was a bit off-putting, but now I’ve learned to accept it.

There are several southern US accents that I like, and several that set my teeth on edge. Ditto British accents.

I hate New Joisey and Long Island accents, but Maine accents are nice to my ear.

My own accent is a very odd mixture of east coast and northeast Florida, with an occasional overlay of generic British for words/terms I learned while in the UK (or that I have problems saying in a US accent, like “process”.)

I like most every accent. I think Scottish and Irish are some of the the most interesting. An Iceland accent is also cool to hear.

As far as US accents in everyday life I would have to say North Carolina accents are some of the most pleasing to me, probably because they are usually accompanied by such friendly dialogue. I also like the Appalachian Mountain accents, which are much like Scottish. I also like the “old Virginia” accent but don’t hear it much any more, seems to be dying out along with the mostly elderly speakers of it.

US:
Like - Southern Coastal, very soft and slightly uppercrust
Dislike - Strong Wisconsin and New Jersey accents grate on my ears horribly

World:
Like - Australian, Irish
Dislike - Most asian accents are, for some reason, very difficult for me to understand.

Coincidentally, I was just having this conversation last night. I’m a Southern and was talking with a friend who’s from North Dakota. Accents came up.

I told her I really liked the accent in Minnesota. (Think Betty White’s Rose character from “The Golden Girls”).

I also told her the only accent I really didn’t care for is that strong New York/New Jersey accent.

My favorite accent is Australian.

Favorite language: Italian

The only language I speak or understand: West Coast Murkin

I don’t generally enjoy English spoken with an Italian accent.

Current girlfriend/SO/not sure what to call her is a former Londoner who has been here in the US for 8 years. Her charming accent is about 1/2 southern girl and 1/2 London girl.

It sure works for me. :smiley:

Our admin at work is originally from a small town in Oregon. Most of the time her accent is fairly generic, but words like “wash” come out as “worsh” and for some reason it just sets my teeth on edge.

I hope that I don’t offend anyone here, but I find many of the accents from the Northeastern U.S. very annoying. New York City, Upstate New York and Boston all have unique accents that can be quite hard on the ears of someone from the Southeast (Georgia). The northernmost areas of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota also have some very strong accents, some rather abrasive and some that almost endearing.

As a whole, the Southern accent that most of my fellow Georgians (and those in surrounding states) share is probably the most commonly derided and mocked of all U.S. accents. Thankfully, I decided to learn diction at an early age to avoid sounding stupid. Someone with a genius-level IQ who speaks with a very strong Southern drawl sounds like an idiot to most people. I go to California to visit my cousin several times each year and very few people have identified me as being Southern based on my accent. My use of Southern phrases (or Southernisms) is what occasionally gives me away. Phrases such as “fixin’ to” instead of “getting ready to” are dead giveaways of my Southern origin, accent or not!

I worked at a bookstore during my first few years of college. The senior sales associate (assistant manager) was a lady named Sandy. She was in her late 50s and was originally from International Falls, Minnesota. Her accent always amused me. She bought a new Honda Accord when we worked together and it was her first vehicle with a sunroof. On sunny days, she’d say, “It’s such a nice day, I think I’ll open the “sky ruuf” on the way home!”

Your post made me realize just how impressive Betty White’s portrayal of Rose was, especially the accent. I loved her St. Olaf stories.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to play a character who spoke with an accent that you had never naturally spoken? I know Kyra Sedgewick had a coach on set for every episode of “The Closer” to help the native New Yorker speak in sugary-sweet sarcasm as Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson. “Thank you so much…”

In Spanish, no accent is better than Bogotá accent, especially coming from the always gorgeous Colombian women.
Lima accent is very nice, and “neutral”* although they say it’s a bit fast and singsongy.
Castillian Spanish (Madrid, Navarre) are good, but going further south not so much
Chilean only sounds nice in women, it’s too high-pitched in men
Posh Mexican is awful.
Venezuelan, Central American, and Caribbean: hate them.
Brazilians and Italians speaking Spanish have nice accent.

*Neutral here means that if you want to speak as accente-less as posible you sound middle-class, coastal Peru.

You evidently have no idea - no idea whatsoever - what a Scottish Highlands accent sounds like if you think the people in that clip are from the Highlands.