David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
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 _______________________________________________
Most of the world can't even tell what language i'm speaking most of the time. I'm from Newcastle, England and have the accent to suit.
I think that in Britain, the further North your accent originates from, the harder it is for those not from your area to understand you. The London accent is fairly easy to comprehend in comparison to a Manchurian or Geordie accent.
- D. Hedley
Manchurian? I didn't even know the northern Chinese generally spoke English... :) Mancunian's not a difficult accent to understand (IMHO) -- see the current Doctor Who (well, it's Salford rather than Mancunian, but it's right next door). As to the further north you go, once you get past Glesga' and Embra, and west of Aberdeen you find they speak a very clear English in the Highlands/Inverness area with just a nice soft accent. The real distinction isn't "north" -- the really impenetrable accents are urban, and of course the accents which consistently end up at the bottom of surveys of desirability are Scouse and Brummie.