# Ok, so what exactly do the Americans think is a British accent
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [August 3, 2011, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305 "2011-08-03T09:58:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/41 "2011-08-04T12:42:15Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Please note that I didn’t say that the range of accents in the U.K. was more or less than the range of accents outside the U.K. I take no position on that question. What I said was that it’s not possible for a resident of a region to accurately say that the range of accents within his own region is more or less than the range of accents in some other region. In general, one will always tend to overestimate the variety of accents in one’s own region and underestimate the variety of accents in some other region. One will be more familiar with the range of accents in one’s own region and more able to notice the differences and less familiar with the range of accents in some other region and less able to notice the differences. An objective account of how large the differences are in accents would take a phonologist (a linguist specializing in the sound structure of languages) doing a thorough survey of the region.
This would be true if there was considerable exposure to the range of home accents. In my case, I don’t think there is. I come into contact with South African people more frequently than people from the Scottish highlands. I experience higher exposure to a collection of American accents (on TV) than I do Welsh accents, and so on. Of course, I can’t plausibly declare objectivity, but I don’t think I’m quite as provincial as all that - and your argument above, if true, will apply in reverse to many people like myself.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/42 "2011-08-04T12:48:27Z")
I think y’all are the ones making the problem here.
I might hear a speaker and think, “That’s a British accent” or “That’s an English accent”. I’d never think, “That’s THE British accent.”
Why do \*you \*think I think there’s only one British accent? Or only one English accent? I don’t.
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### Author:  [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/43 "2011-08-04T14:22:01Z")
Sure, **Wendell Wagner** , but it’s hard not to read your comments to **Mangetout** in post 7 as being a little patronising and just as subjective / speculative as what Mangetout originally posted. How did you know Mangetout wasn’t referring to empirical evidence (probably he wasn’t, but I know that relevant work on this subject has been being carried out for decades)?
Incidentally, I think your use of the word ‘region’, or the assumption that all the UK’s accents belong to a single ‘region’, might turn out to be erroneous if we did get hold of a philologist.
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### Author:  [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/44 "2011-08-04T14:31:00Z")
> [@Raguleader](#):
>
> The fact that the concept of a “British” accent is silly does nothing to detract from the fact that the concept of a “North American” accent is also silly.
True, I just used the phrase to include both Canada and the USA. It was meant to be assumed that I meant native English speakers (just as people do when they say ‘British accent’).
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### Author:  [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/45 "2011-08-04T15:02:13Z")
> [@Scheidt-Hoch](#):
>
> Incidentally, I think your use of the word ‘region’, or the assumption that all the UK’s accents belong to a single ‘region’, might turn out to be erroneous if we did get hold of a philologist.
Right, but there’s a colloquial concept of region that people unconsciously map to accent.
Here’s what I guess is going on unconsciously for the Americans that identify AK84’s accent as “British”:
I am an American and I am familiar with many North American accents. I am also somewhat acquainted, through media and a few people I’ve met, with a smattering of British accents, and maybe a few other accents like Australian.
I hear AK84 speak, and he has an accent that definitely does not match any North American accents I am familiar with. His accent has a few features (non-rhotic, word choice, etc) that are similar to the British accents I’ve heard. IOW, AK84 sounds more like announcers on the Beeb than he sounds like any American, to an American who can’t hear subtleties between unfamiliar accents.
Personally, I have a vague familiarity of the differences between RP, Cockney, Geordie, Welsh, Glaswegian, etc, but this is almost entirely through watching British media and a few weeks’ touristing. And even I would probably think, at first, that AK84 sounds vaguely British.
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### Author:  [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2011, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/46 "2011-08-04T22:38:46Z")
I’ve have two teachers from England with the same mellifluous accent- don’t know where exactly it’s from. The other day I heard a guy talking the same way, and I asked him where he was from, and yup, British.
I know there are eight zillion different accents in England, let alone the whole United Kingdom, but because of my teachers that’s the one I most associate with it.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2011, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/47 "2011-08-05T09:12:50Z")
Britons tend to think that they know what the full range of American accents is when in fact they usually don’t. They claim that because they watch a lot of American TV shows and movies they know how Americans speak. As I have said a number of times before on the SDMB, you’ve got to remember one thing: Most American TV shows and movies are utter lies. The accents in them are only one of the many problems. They don’t accurately show how Americans actually act or what American cities or small towns look like or anything else. TV is worse than movies, since occasionally a smaller budget film is released that gets a few things right. I sometimes find myself watching a TV show and saying, “This is supposed to be set somewhere far from L.A., but it appears that nobody involved with the show has been outside of southern California in their entire life.” And the shows don’t get life in southern California right either.
A Briton who takes American TV shows as if they showed the full range of American accents is similar to an American who’s watched a lot of _Masterpiece Theater_ who thinks that he knows how most Britons speak. I stand by my statement that most Britons underestimate the variety of accents spoken by Americans, just as most Americans underestimate the variety of accents spoken in the U.K. I don’t know what the true range of accents is and which country has a greater variety of accents, but I don’t think someone who only knows the other country from TV knows either.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2011, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/48 "2011-08-05T11:55:29Z")
Be that as it may, I have more frequent contact with American accents _of any kind_ than I do with Welsh accents. And it’s not just movies and American TV shows - it’s impressions from watching travelogues, documentaries and stage comedians too - where, largely, people are speaking in their own accents.
I stand by my assertion that the differences between accents in the UK is probably greater than the difference between any two English-speaking accents in the world.
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### Author:  [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/49 "2011-08-05T15:24:51Z")
> [@AK84](#):
>
> So; for Americans, a British accent is= speaking clearly, enunciating every word and employing complex vocabulary?
I don’t really know. My major exposure to “English” accents is watching Dr. Who,
Plus I have a very good friend who is of Irish birth, raised in England until she was 20, lived in Texas until her early 30s and now lives in Chicago. Her accent is…unique.
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### Author:  [@Cinnamon\_Imp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinnamon_Imp)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/50 "2011-08-15T09:43:19Z")
> [@Clothahump](#):
>
> I don’t really know. My major exposure to “English” accents is watching Dr. Who,
>
> Plus I have a very good friend who is of Irish birth, raised in England until she was 20, lived in Texas until her early 30s and now lives in Chicago. Her accent is…unique.
I know a kid with one South African parent, and one American parent, being raised in Scotland. They say his accent sounds Swedish 🙂
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/51 "2011-08-15T10:41:29Z")
> [@Scheidt-Hoch](#):
>
> Great Britain also has 3 native languages currently being spoken.
Four, last I checked. English, Scots, Welsh and Gaelic.
5 if you include Cornish (I wouldn’t)
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### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/52 "2011-08-15T12:38:01Z")
> [@hermette](#):
>
> I know a kid with one South African parent, and one American parent, being raised in Scotland. They say his accent sounds Swedish 🙂
Which Swedish accent? Stockholm, Norrland, Göteborg, Skånsk, Blekinge … ? 😉
What it really comes down to is that unless you are familiar with somewhere you neither have an understanding of the range of accents nor the ability to recognise them. I haven’t studied French since I was fourteen so all French people sound the same to me. However, I would never claim that there is a singular “French” accent.
But as has been pointed out, some seem to claim that the UK has a rich variety, more so than many other countries. This may well be true. The town in which I grew up had mostly people talking like this:
[http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england4.mp3](http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england4.mp3)
Or this:
[http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england86.mp3](http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england86.mp3)
(I sound like the first one. The reason there is both is that one is a town in South Warwickshire, the other is from Coventry, I grew up in a town on the border between the two).
Where I went to university the locals sounded like this:
[http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england53.mp3](http://web.ku.edu/~idea/europe/england/england53.mp3)
(Not exactly, but that is the closest to Brummie on that site).
Anyway, can the Americans hear much of a difference? I ask as the distance door to door between where I grew up and where I went to University was a massive eighteen miles.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/53 "2011-08-15T13:31:33Z")
> [@amanset](#):
>
> Anyway, can the Americans hear much of a difference?
Goodness, yes, that’s a lot of difference! This American can hear it, anyhow.
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/54 "2011-08-15T14:23:19Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> 5 if you include Cornish (I wouldn’t)
Cornish is an officially recognised language, with around 2000 fluent speakers, according to [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language#Current_status).
If you want to include the minor British isles that are not part of the UK, you find a few more languages. The Norman dialects in the Channel Isles, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, and Sercquiais have a handful of native speakers. Manx Gaelic is currently being revived, and some children are learning it, there are no adults who can be called native speakers though.
Lallans (Lowland Scots) is sometimes considered a distinct language from English, and not merely a dialect.
Which gets us to possibly 10 native languages in the British Isles.
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### Author:  [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/55 "2011-08-15T14:48:59Z")
> [@amanset](#):
>
> Anyway, can the Americans hear much of a difference? .
Absolutely! I don’t know really how to explain the difference, but the three sound very different to me.
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### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/56 "2011-08-15T15:31:27Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#):
>
> Absolutely! I don’t know really how to explain the difference, but the three sound very different to me.
Excellent (and WhyNot, I saw your reply too!). I expected you to be able to as, yes, they are quite different. And as I said, the catchment area for those accents are only eighteen miles apart.
In fact, the distance may be smaller. That’s just the distance I had to go.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/57 "2011-08-15T20:49:39Z")
> [@Steophan](#):
>
> Cornish is an officially recognised language, with around 2000 fluent speakers, according to [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language#Current_status).
Yeah, Cornish is problematic. Not a one of those are pure mother tongue speakers. Some few kids are raised bilingual, but it’s an artificial revival, not a relict. That’s why, while I acknowledged it, I didn’t want to include it in the list, although I won’t fight too hard about it.
Compare it with Gaelic, at 58000, or Welsh at 611,000, or Scots, which has 2.7 million speakers and is spoken by up to 85% of Scotland “to varying degrees”.
> [@](#):
>
> If you want to include the minor British isles that are not part of the UK
I don’t, the nit I was picking said specifically “Great Britain”
> [@](#):
>
> Lallans (Lowland Scots) is sometimes considered a distinct language from English, and not merely a dialect.
Which was why I included it in my 4. Scots _is_ Lallans (or, at least, Lallans is a dialect of Scots).
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### Author:  [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/58 "2011-08-16T14:00:58Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Which was why I included it in my 4. Scots _is_ Lallans (or, at least, Lallans is a dialect of Scots).
Ah, I’ve just read your original post again, and I though when you said Gaelic you meant Irish Gaelic, and Scots as Scots Gaelic. Now you’ve clarified that you specifically meant Great Britain, it all makes sense!
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### Author:  [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2011, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/59 "2011-08-16T14:41:15Z")
Irish Gaelic is an official language of the UK, btw, as it is spoken in Northern Ireland. Technically that’s not Great Britain, of course.
If we’re including immigrant tongues such as English, how about Punjabi, Gujarati etc.? There’s a fair few native speakers of those.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2011, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ok-so-what-exactly-do-the-americans-think-is-a-british-accent/591305/60 "2011-08-16T16:25:27Z")
> [@Ximenean](#):
>
> If we’re including immigrant tongues such as English,
English isn’t an immigrant tongue.
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