A recently re-employed coleague has a very strong manx accent. (it is very close to scouse, probably due to the fact that the main port of travel to/form the IOM is Liverpool)
Today I was speaking to him and I mentally compared my own voice (as I heard it in my head) to his and thought “shit, do I really sound this posh?”, “do I sound, to him like a stuck-up asshole?”
Judging by his willingness to converse with me I think not, but you can’t know what people are really thinking.
Few. Toffee-nosed prat.
Depends where I am. I’ve never had a really strong southern (US) accent, but it’s there, and it comes and goes. When I’m down there talking to people, I get the feeling that I’m talking like a stuck-up Yankee. When I’m here on the west coast, I get the feeling I sound like a redneck. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I tend to kind of assimilate my manner of speech to those that I’m talking with, but I would never ever use the word “posh” unless under threat of unspeakable physical violence.
Sometimes I get puzzled looks from my friends when I meet someone that has had a hard life, and I start to speak slang. I was once informed that I had a vocabulary that most people of my ilk might not use. In other words, my stuck-up friends were uncomfortable with my interaction with a person that they saw as being below them.
Affectations are a different matter altogether though.
I just pick up accents like some kind of weird sponge. It’s embarrassing to be halfway through a conversation with someone who has a different accent than mine and suddenly realize I’ve picked up a piece of their accent, or a speech pattern, or a verbal tic. I used to be unaware that I did this until someone got upset with me for mocking them, and someone else chimed in and said, “Oh, she does that all the time, she doesn’t mean to.” Now I’m very conscious of it when I speak to others and I have to force myself NOT to do it.
Out of curiosity (I know very little about England) where do “posh” accents come from and how can you tell it’s not a standard, garden variety English accent? I mean, I can generally pick out a Liverpool accent, or a strong Cockney, but I can’t tell the difference between “posh” and “common.”
I wouldn’t say I “talk posh” on an everyday basis; however when my husband sent me in to the video store to grab a movie for him and I was forced to ask the clerk where I could find “Pootie Tang”, I came across like I was choking on the plum in my mouth. I just appreciate that he didn’t laugh at me to my face.
I was once asked to write a eulogy for a family member. I put in it that the guys family had all ‘predeceased’ him- which they had. They removed it because they said normal people don’t talk like that.
I spend a lot of time on the phone with an agency in Texas and my admin is from Texas, so I have developed a Texas twang. It’s rare that I get on the phone to collect on an account, but when I do, if I use a texas twang, Im more likely to get a payment. My 5 yo daughter has picked up on the twang and now she can’t say ice cream, she says ass cream .
I do sound posh normally - like that grey poupon guy in the limo. 
Eh, it’s what it is. The “posh” accent is properly called “received pronunciation” or less formally, “BBC English.” It’s sort of a willful obliteration of any trace of regional accent, and it’s entirely the product of generations of elocutionists.
Have you heard Stephen Fry speak? (Maybe in his role as Jeeves in Jeeves & Wooster?) That’s as posh as it gets.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of having Mr. Fry’s dulcet tones making their warm and gentle way into your otological orifices, I have some .mp3s of Saturday Night Fry here for your edification.
Gunslinger, native Texan, pronounces it “ass cream” as well, but refuses to admit he does.
Sometimes my own Yankee accent really sticks out to me. I say the “aw” sound in such an oddly overemphasized way - I never noticed it before, but it’s been pointed out to me by Texans a couple of times since I moved down here, and now I notice it every time. When I saw “hawk” it’s almost a “haw-ek” or a “hoe-wek,” it’s so horribly “awwwww.” “Toss” comes out “tawss.” “Walk,” “talk” and “dog” are USUALLY fairly normal, but if I use two of them in the same sentence, or if I’m pissed off, or under some other circumstances, they will sometimes come out “wawlk,” “tawlk,” and “dawg.” I used to think I spoke American Standard but now that I’m acclimated to the Texan drawl I sound almost like Bugs Bunny in comparison - and I’m from upstate New York, nowhere near Brooklyn.
Also, I have unusual speaking patterns. I speak just as I write. I use archaic word forms, unusually precise phraseology, and generally talk like I’m reading out of a Jane Austen novel.
The other day Gunslinger was so kind as to pump some gas for me, while I sat in the driver’s seat and lazed about. I forgot to turn the engine off, for some reason, and didn’t notice this until he was done and about to get back in his seat. When he climbed back in, I looked at him and said “I’m afraid I have inadvertantly placed you in danger.” He cracked up at my phrasing.
Yes. But then, I do sound posh. I’m from Berkshire, I was public-school educated, I’m horribly middle-class. To try to speak any other way would be pretending.
LifeOnWry - do you watch Absolutely Fabulous? Posh = Joanna Lumley (Patsy), common = Kathy Burke (who plays Magda, the magazine editor).
Me too – except my syntax is more mid-19th-century: long sentences with intricately connected clauses. Yes, in speaking. It’s a little creepy, even to me – I often make a serious effort to talk more like a normal person.
My specialty is the well-turned phrase: I totally cracked up a friend the other day when, in the course of a fairly normal conversation, I described someone as “a malodorous troll.”
My accent, however, is generic East Coast educated, with perhaps a bit of a Southern California drawl.
People demand to know where I’m from. I’m from right here, Glasgow, but my father, after a hellish upbringing in the Edinburgh slums, was so determined that I would speak properly that I ended up with a really weird accent. At best it’s a soft Scottish accent but those with little experience of the range of accents in the UK generally say I have an English accent. Yesterday I was doing security at a concert and became distinctly aware that I was the only one saying “portakabin”… I should, of course, have been saying “porrakabin”.
It is a fairly isolating thing, and prevents my fitting into conversations even when I really need to. I’m pretty unhappy with it. This is what we do to our kids, and we are utterly convinced we’re doing them a favour.
[QUOTE=Francesca]
Yes. But then, I do sound posh. I’m from Berkshire, I was public-school educated, I’m horribly middle-class. To try to speak any other way would be pretending.
QUOTE]
Ditto. It cost my parents a FORTUNE to get me to talk like this. (Actually I’d rather have had the money).
Incidentally I was at School with Joss Wheedon of Buffy fame - but I don’t sound like him!
I was raised by a roving pack of Philadelphia Main Line Dowagers, and I speak like one now . . . A friend of mine had her driver’s license stolen recently, and I said, “Goodness—did you call the license bureau?” She laughed for five minutes and said, “It’s called the DMV, Mrs. Rittenhouse.”
Yup. I do sometimes think “I can’t be that posh, can I?” And then hope and pray that there is still some trace of Lancashire in my accent.
I was dragged up by my parents to speak the “Queen’s English”. However, having travelled around Britain quite a lot since leaving home who knows what I sound like. I also have that annoying habit of picking up on people’s accents. I’ve yet to be accused of mocking somebody but no doubt it’s just a matter of time.
Living here in Bristol is really beginning to stretch my ability to mimic accents though.
That’s what I hope I sound like. There is a Baltimore accent, and I definitely don’t sound like that.
As a side note, I read a newspaper article (it was years ago, no cites) that traced the Baltimore “Hon” accent with its drawn-out ‘Os’ to the Cockney accent. I don’t remember all the details, but there were a lot of similarities. If you listen carefully to someone with the true Bawl’mer accent, you can hear it.
I saw one of those “History of English” docus, and they interviewed a bunch of inbred folks on an island off the Maryland coast—their ancestors had been cockneys, and their interviews had to be subtitled. I understood them perfectly, though—sounded like a really bad Bawlmer accent (yes, I know “really bad Bawlmer accent” is an oxymoron).