David Gerard wrote:
I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17).
I heard accents
from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON EARTH I'd
ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly homogeneous by
comparison.
American, too. I pride myself (more or less) on speaking a very
standard American English with a very standard American accent. This
has become more important as I speak to people whose first language is
not English, because a very mainstream American accent is easy to
understand (for people who watch American movies, at least, which
means a lot of people).
Germans and Dutch and French have reported to me that I am easier to
understand than Angela, for example. (She has a beautiful accent in
my opinion, but it sounds Very British.)
Now, even so, I once took a fun little quiz/survey online (which I
can't find now) which was able to identify that I'm from the south --
it utilized vocabulary and pronounciation questions and in some cases
I had no idea that there were regional variations at all.
--Jimbo