# Question for non-US native English speakers (Brits, Aussies, Irish, etc.) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 16, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720 "2011-06-16T18:08:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/41 "2011-06-19T08:15:01Z")
In [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRzjvFa_lc) It’s strange. Sometimes he says words like “out” and “about” and I hear the accent, then he’ll say them later and I don’t. At 0:45 1:01 “out”. I guess it’s not really oot, but it’s close. At 1:38 1:50 he says “about”, but his Canadian accent is more mild for some reason. And at 1:55 he says “out” and I don’t hear an accent at all. And I can’t link to this, but I work at a help desk. If I get a caller from Canada, especially Ontario, who says out or about, I will hear it pronounced closer to oot and aboot. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/42 "2011-06-19T08:42:17Z")
> [@Nobody](#): > > In [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRzjvFa_lc) It’s strange. Sometimes he says words like “out” and “about” and I hear the accent, then he’ll say them later and I don’t. > > At 0:45 1:01 “out”. I guess it’s not really oot, but it’s close. > > At 1:38 1:50 he says “about”, but his Canadian accent is more mild for some reason. > > And at 1:55 he says “out” and I don’t hear an accent at all. So you yourself say things like “close,” and “it’s mild.” But you cannot say that it is anything overtly different from what you hear in the US. > [@](#): > > And I can’t link to this, but I work at a help desk. If I get a caller from Canada, especially Ontario, who says out or about, I will hear it pronounced closer to oot and aboot. I think you may be mistaken, especially as regards Ontario. Maritimers, perhaps, but Ontarians and western Canadians tend to speak as Americans do. Again, I would welcome an audio cite where a Torontonian says “oot and aboot.” Note that my CTV News cite below features Ontarian news personalities, all from Toronto, and I do not hear them saying anything close to “oot and aboot.” You may hear differently, and if so, I would like to know where. Nobody, your cite is not good enough. I heard no “oots and aboots” in that video. [Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQk5XuEPgu0) (YouTube video), for example, is a typical Canadian news report. At what point in this video do you hear “oots and aboots”? ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/43 "2011-06-19T09:06:30Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > So you yourself say things like “close,” and “it’s mild.” But you cannot say that it is anything overtly different from what you hear in the US. The parts where I hear a difference, it is overt, it’s just not exactly oot or aboot, but it’s close. > [@](#): > > I think you may be mistaken, especially as regards Ontario. Maritimers, perhaps, but Ontarians and western Canadians tend to speak as Americans do. We take information about our callers. When I hear a caller say out or about, or something similar, in a way that sounds “Canadian” to my ears, I’ll check out where the caller is located, and it’s always Canada. Being from Canada, you’re use to the various accents, so you probably don’t hear them the way we do. > [@](#): > > Nobody, your cite is not good enough. I heard no “oots and aboots” in that video. Like I said, it’s not exactly oot, but it’s close. But then being from Canada you’re probably use to the various Canadian accents and maybe that’s why don’t hear it. > [@](#): > > [Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQk5XuEPgu0) (YouTube video), for example, is a typical Canadian news report. At what point in this video do you hear “oots and aboots”? I didn’t hear the words out or about at all, so if they did say them, then I guess they said them as out and about. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/44 "2011-06-19T09:41:44Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Note that my CTV News cite below features Ontarian news personalities, all from Toronto, and I do not hear them saying anything close to “oot and aboot.” You may hear differently, and if so, I would like to know where. Here’s the last minute of an episode of Corner Gas, where Brent Butt gives a monologue to the audience, and listen to the first few seconds. “Hey, if you enjoyed our episode about reading, why not check out some of the books we mentioned on our show?” https://www.youtube.com/embed/gu_C0gez9Ac?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque I agree with **Nobody**. it isn’t exactly “oot” and “aboot”, but it sounds like that to Americans. The phonomenon is called “Canadian raising”, and here’s part of a description from a professor of linguistics at York University. > [@](#): > > To American ears, the Canadian pronunciation of _about_ often sounds like aboot, but this is only an illusion. Because the more familiar pronunciation of /aw/ is articulated with the tongue in a **low** position, and because it raises to a **mid** position in Canadian English when the vowel precedes the voiceless obstruents listed above, speakers of other varieties of English will immediately detect the vowel raising, but will sometimes think that the vowel has raised farther than it actually does, all the way to /u/, which is a **high** vowel–hence the mishearing (and not-quite-right imitation) of this pronunciation as _aboot_. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/45 "2011-06-19T10:33:22Z")
Other people have covered Australian accents pretty well, so I’ll just say that I’ve never heard a US newsreader/commentator that wasn’t _instantly_ identifiable as American. To my ears, the way Hollywood actors speak is often much more un-accented than US newsreaders. Hollywood English still sounds American, but not as jarringly American as US newsreaders and similar. And it depends on the actor, of course. I can hear regional differences in US accents, but I’m sure a US native would hear a lot more detail than I would. Canadians to me sound like slightly better spoken Americans, the difference isn’t obvious to me. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/46 "2011-06-19T10:39:44Z")
Oh, yeah, I should mention that the most distinctively American part of American speech is the selective pronunciation of words with the letter U in them. Only Americans say “stoodent” and “toosday” and so on. Every other form of English I’ve heard pronounces the U in those (and similar) words as **yoo** and not **oo**. If you want to sound un-American, losing the “oo” pronunciation would be step one. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/47 "2011-06-19T11:17:51Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I wouldn’t call Hepburn Mid-Atlantic. Her accent is traditional northeastern upperclass. Right. That is traditionally what mid-atlantic refers to. It is meant to describe an accent that is neither upper class British nor American but something in between. But like I said the label gets applied to a lot of things these days. The poster could have meant mid-atlantic like Delaware or Maryland. That’s why I asked. Most actors I know are taught SAE in voice and speech these days but in the early 20th Century the traditional Mid Atlantic accent was more common. Hepburn isn’t really a great example but any 1930s screwball comedy will find you tons of people with that sort of accent. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/48 "2011-06-19T12:48:26Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > Right. That is traditionally what mid-atlantic refers to. It is meant to describe an accent that is neither upper class British nor American but something in between. I’ve always understood these to be two different things. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/49 "2011-06-19T22:38:09Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I thought he meant mid-western USA and mis-spoke. Mid-Atlantic is different. Cary Grant had a different accent to most people I’ve ever heard on film. Cary Grant’s natural accent was British, since he was born in Bristol, and didn’t come to the US until he was 16. He worked to lose his natural accent and ended up sounding like no one other than Cary Grant. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/50 "2011-06-20T00:56:56Z")
Bullshit. The best mimics of regional Brit Pom accents I ever heard were French linguists, and they could also, as party tricks, mimic regional French accents. I only climbed onto this thread to say, that, a native English speaker (=me) can tell in an instant where some Englishman is from. And I don’t like it. Apparently, they’re all migrating, and since I’m chatty by nature, I talk to a bunch of them. I can’t do regional Irish accents – I only know the one where my family’s from – and I can’t tell French beyond the obvious ones. French is even more normatively-centered than the RP thing (except in Canada, but that’s not really French – I communicate better whilst talking with a swamp Cajun than a … those people up with that river and the “French” street names) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/51 "2011-06-20T01:14:40Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > Right. That is traditionally what mid-atlantic refers to. It is meant to describe an accent that is neither upper class British nor American but something in between. But like I said the label gets applied to a lot of things these days. The poster could have meant mid-atlantic like Delaware or Maryland. That’s why I asked. Most actors I know are taught SAE in voice and speech these days but in the early 20th Century the traditional Mid Atlantic accent was more common. Hepburn isn’t really a great example but any 1930s screwball comedy will find you tons of people with that sort of accent. > [@Acsenray](#): > > I’ve always understood these to be two different things. Think Frasier Crane, or an American trying to do received pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/52 "2011-06-20T03:01:06Z")
Are you guys talking about Harvard Lockjaw? [Example 1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA3AJPWphQ) [Example 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfaTLkDM17E) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720/53 "2011-06-20T03:38:46Z")
SAE is basically what happens when all our other accents get mixed together. Every American accent has some SAE in it, so it it sounds like that must be the correct accent. SAE is the pronunciation on which two different accents can agree. The reason this doesn’t happen so much in Britain is that there are so many accents in such a close area that there’s no agreement that works for any three people. And, of course, in Australia, there are basically only two accents as mentioned above, so the of agreed upon accent is missing. I do still see an argument that SAE is “more pure,” though. There are no “mixed” vowels. All front vowels are unrounded and back vowels are rounded. There are only two unnecessary diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ]. The only mid vowel, the schwa, is nearly perfectly neutral. Even the merger of /a/, /ɑ/, and /ɒ/ makes sense because they are spelled by the same letter. Heck, even /ɔ/ is often spelled with an A, hence its minimal use. While there may be accents that are more pure, I am unaware of them, especially in the U.S. It really does seem like the other U.S. accents are SAE, plus some minor changes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-us-native-english-speakers-brits-aussies-irish-etc/585720.md?page=2)