Is British English held in prestige in US?

oops! I missed out the link to thopse old guys in the Marazion Male Voice choir, near to Penzance, in Cornwall.

Marazion (Marra-ZYE-un) is a coastal village right near St Michael's Mount (an old monastery situated on the top of a rocky island which can only be reached on foot from the shore at Marazion at low tide. You have to be very careful about the swiftly moving incoming tides as you cross the causeway across the sands.

On the other side of the bay is Penzance, the largest town in Cornwall I believe (George will correct me if I am wrong - maybe it's Truro, but what does a Scot know about such things. Also nearby is Newlyn and the cute wee village called Mousehole (which is most definitely pronouced as "MA-OO-zl" and not, please not, as mouse hole!

The old guys of Marazion with the type of accent now largely confined to their generation nowadays:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/group/cornwall-marazion.shtml

Damian, thank you for your kindness of posting the links.

Listening through the filter of a Southern/Western American English ear, I can understand Geordie with some difficulty, but not understand a single word of the Scouse.

I understand every word of the English spoken in Edinburgh; it's quite a lovely accent, at least to me. :-)

Damian, on a related note, is the accent of Aggie on How Clean Is Your House a Scottish one? I've always thought it lovely; it evokes a sense of warmth and comfort...

Och, that's so nice of you to say that, Jasper - you must visit us here someday - it sounds as if you'll have nae problems at all understanding the natives.

As for Scouse - it really isn't the intention of Scousers to be understood by anyone other than themselves anyway! Did you know that when Scousers moved out of the formerly WW2 badly bombed city areas out into the countryside surrounding Liverpool years and years and years ago, to newly built towns such as Skelmersdale, in Lancashire, they used to take the piss out of the locals big time - they looked down on them as "simple minded country yokels" (quite untrue as it happened - it's just that Liverpudlians have the reputation for being very sharp witted and street wise, with a wicked sense of humour, and they called all the local people out there in the far more rural areas "woollybacks" - a clear reference to sheep.

In much the same way as English people refer to Welsh people in similar terms and whom they regard as being very amorously, and very unnaturally, inclined to the sheep wandering about the Welsh hillsides. "Sheep shaggers" is the term used. ;-) Of course it isn't true - it's just yet another Anglo Saxon slur on the Celtic races....

It varies, but in general English people use longer vowels- especially people who we (americans) hear on TV. This often sounds educated to Americans.

It also is often less nasal. This is why americans consider many english accents educated, even if in England they have negative conotations.

Even accents which aren't perceived as educated in the USA, such as cockney, is still seen as "interesting"

We must remember that our perseptions of accents has to do less with the accent and more with the people that speak it.

The mainstream media makes fun of american southern accents mostly due to history and the mainstream medias perception of it.
If the mainstream media(TV,books, IVY league) were placed in the south, southern accents would probably be seen as educated.

I have heard some English people saying they like New York and Boston accents, even though in the USA, these accents have sort of a stigma to it.

Yes, Jasper - Aggie is definitely a Scottish lassie - she comes from a wee place called Rothiemurchus*, right up there in the middle of the Cairngorms National Park, in the Scottish Highlands, about as truly Scottish as it's possible to get. Her accent betrays that fact. She's a right wee tartar with the fluffy duster and air feshener spray is she not?

http://www.aboutaberdeen.com/aggiemackenzie.php

*If you attempt this name, please remember to clearly roll the R and make the CH as Teutonically guttural as you possibly can, Scottish style!

btw Aggie went to school in Kingussie - now to pass for a Scot you MUST pronounce this name the correct way - "Kin-YOU-see"! Much like Moniaive, down in Galloway, is pronounced as "Mon-EE-eye" and Kirkcudbright, also in Galloway, as "Kurr-COO-bree" with the OO bit identical to the very closed French "u" in "du" or "tu". We so love to fox all our tourists with our placename pronunciations - we're almost as bad as the Welsh in that regard.....you'll have no problems with the part of Edinburgh where I live - Corstorphine - "Currrrr-STORR-fin". Just rrrrememberrr those rolled Rs....

<<I do wish people would stop using the word British when it's quite clear they are referring to the bog standard English English RP accent!>>

Eeee, first we get yelled at for using "English", now we get yelled at for using "British". You just can't make people happy sometimes! ;P

I feel that people think you are better educated if you use British English.

<I feel that people think you are better educated if you use British English. >
This is of course a myth and untrue. Why is it so?

<<GEORDIE - the accent of the North East England region = Northumberland, Cleveland, Tyne and Wear (pronounced as "Weeah" - definitely NON rhotic!), the Newcastle-upon-Tyne area and Country Durham (pronounced as "DURR-um") >>

Very much not so. The word "Geordie" is used *specifically* for Tyneside, from Newcastle as far as the sea. Referring to people from Sunderland (or Seaham, as in the above link) as Geordie would not tend to be a good idea. They really hate being so associated.

The actual differences in terms of accent between these areas are small, though. One thing I can think of is that in Sunderland/Durham you would hear a diphthong in words such as "book" - [bUuk], whereas on Tyneside it would be [buk]; a diphthong only occurring in open syllables.

An accent from Cleveland is very much different, though, more of a Yorkshire than North Eastern accent.

I stand corrected, AJC - I am a "foreigner" after all and tend to think that the entire north east corner of England is Geordieland, even up to, but definitely not including, Berwick-upon-Tweed which is more Scottish than English even though it is now back in England again ftb anyway!)

Although I pass through Geordieland every time I take the train from Edinburgh to London and back again - or to Leeds when I was at uni there) my only real overnight stopover in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (apart from a day trip once) was when I went for an interview at the uni there in 2000. The two guys on the student reception desk had very broad but very easy to understand Geordie accents, which was so necessary in their jobs considering the fact that many of the students come from all parts of the UK as well as from abroad. It's a very interesting city with lovely Georgian architecture and the Tyneside metro system is great....I wish I had had the time to do the whole circular trip from Eldon Square underground station and back again....I think that was what the station is called...it's the one close to the Earl Grey column and statue.

I really thought that Cleveland was Geordieland...Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees and all those places....it only goes to show how locally confined many of the accent bases really are in the UK. It's like crossing over the Forth Bridge out of Edinburgh and Lothian and into Fife and into a noticeably different accent base.....Gordon Brown country! ;-)

A Teesside and Tyneside accent seem to be seen as identical by may outside of the region - casting in TV shows doesn't seem to be too strict about it for example - but they are really quite different. Here's a recording of someone from Hartlepool

http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personalisation/object.cfm?uid=021MMC900S01607U00016C01

Compared to a Newcastle accent, most of the vowels are more open e.g.

/e:/ -> [E:]
/o:/ -> [O:] (they've transcribed that wrong by my listening)
/O:/ -> [Q:]

There's also H dropping which is not a feature you find on Tyneside or further North in Durham. And... oh, I could go on but we're far off topic.

It is very much a case of only noticing when you're familiar enough with them, though. I'd struggle to distinguish between Gordon Brown's accent and one from Edinburgh.

Most people who are not from this part of the world would indeed be inapable of distinguishing Edinburghspeak from Gordon Brownspeak, but we who literally live within sight of the Forth Bridges can manage it quite easily.

Gordon Brown is a man of the Kingdom of Fife, so called for historical reasons, over the other side of those bridges from here, but I reckon the accent of his youth has become much modified since he left home, left uni and then entered the big wide world of national, and now international, politics.

He represents, as MP, the Westminster Parliamentary seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (remember to pronounce the first as "Kurr-CODDY"!!!), just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh, and the accent of those two town locations, and of Fife generally, is quite clearly distinguishable from ours here - at least it is to us, but as you say, we are familiar with our local accentual differences and regional idiosyncracies.

There is a very important Westminster by-election coming up very soon at Glenrothes (pronounced as Glen-ROTH-ess), which adjoins Brown's own constituency. The result should be very interesting, and it looks set to be taken from Gordon Brown's Labour Party by the SNP (Scottish National Party), just as happened at Glasgow East recently. Watch this space.....

RP is a respected foreign accent in the U.S., it's true, but it's also the Accent of Evil. All the villains in the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch in my misspent youth spoke RP, preferably basso.