Which British accent sounds closest to American accent?

Super Korean   Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:36 pm GMT
1. Which British accent/dialect sounds closest to American accent(General American)?

2. Which British accent/dialect sounds closest to Canadian accent?

3. Which British accent/dialect sounds closest to Australian accent?

4. Which British accent/dialect sounds closest to NZ(Kiwi) accent?
Guest   Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:41 pm GMT
Just out of interest. Why do you ask?
WRP   Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:49 pm GMT
Well not strictly British, but some Irish accents sound fairly close to most US and Canadian accents. The Northern Ireland accents I've heard are certainly not the closest to NA accents of any Irish accents, but they are the closest of any UK accents I can think of. And I can't really hear it that well, but old school Cockney accents are supposed to be closest to Australian and NZ accents.

I would note that doesn't mean I think general American accents are the same as most Canadian accents or that NZ and Australian accents are the same, just that they are in comparison to any accent in the UK they are more similar than not.
Damian in Edinburgh   Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:02 pm GMT
1 Some British accents do have elements of rhoticism - the English West Country accents in particular - the Southern Western counties of England: Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire in particular, but even in these former strongholds of rhoticism it is now dying out with the passing of the generations. This is the part of England from which the Puritans sailed off into the sunset to sek new lives in the land of promise - the Americas, far away across the ocean. It was these brave and hardy people, and their accents, which set the foundation of what was eventually to become the standard, and highly rhotic, American accent we hear now.

Apart from that, no current British accent much resembles an American accent at all.


2 The Canadian accent - pretty much applies here as to the American accent except that there are elements of the Canadian accent which may well have more in common with some British accents than do those of the American......those of the Maritime Provinces in particular - Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia come to mind here, and I believe there are traces of the Scottish accent among some of the people of Nova Scotia - that's no surprise when you consider its name and its origins and meaning.
Most Brits find it virtually impossible to tell the Canadian accent fom the American until they get to recognise the distinctive Canadian "out" sound -a wee bit of a giveaway really.

3 The Australian accent - it's generally supposed that this evolved from the Cockney (London) accent in the main - many of the original settlers in Oz were in fact convicts who had been transported to Australia, against their will, as a punishment for crime. Transportation was effected for the most trivial of offences in the 18th/19th century - taking pot shots at rabbits on the estate of a local landowner or poaching trout in his stream and all that kind of caper usually resulted in immediate transportation to this uncharted territory on the other side of the world called Australia. So the accents of these first ever Aussies (discounting the true native Aussies - the Aboriginals). Many aspects of the Australian accent really are similar to the Cockney - or to the Cockney which used to exist in its original form - it has now been subsumed into present day Estuary for the most part.

A surprising number of British (English) people who do not speak in the familar standard English English RP accent seem to be mistaken for Australians when in America and they can't for the life of them understand how on earth that can be. It seems that some regional English English accents are taken for Australian by many Americans, and I did hear that some Brits over there have worn tee-shirts with the logo: "No - I am NOT an Aussie - I'm a Brummie!" Or perhaps some other location in England.

4 New Zealand - pretty much the same as Australia, I reckon. Again, we Scots settled in large numbers in NZ - particular down in the southernmost tip of South Island - which has a much cooler climate than that of the rest of NZ and one almost as chilly as that here in Scotland. Some of the place names down there bear testimony to the presence of my fellow countrymen all those years ago - Invercargill, Stewart, St Andrews, Hampden, Mosgiel and good old Dunedin ( this being the original name of Edinburgh).
John Cowan   Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:18 pm GMT
There are links between the Eastern New England and East Anglia accents that go back to settlement days.
Guest   Fri Oct 03, 2008 4:49 am GMT
>> I would note that doesn't mean I think general American accents are the same as most Canadian accents <<

Actually most Canadians speak a dialect that is more similar to the General American newscaster accent, whereas a good many Americans (such as most northern Midwesterners, East coasters and Southerners) do not. The Canadian accent is closest to the Western and Midland accents in the US which are the closest living accents to General American.
WRP   Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:11 am GMT
Similar, but not the same. That's why playing "that actor is so Canadian" when watching TV is fun, because usually it's only something you hear if you really listen for it. I've lived in Canada and it's very true I was never picked out as American by Canadians, just other Americans (who being in a different country were more aware of such things I imagine).

OT Note: It's a little sad actually that I wasn't picked out since at the time I had a light but noticeable Boston accent. Many times when I told people where I was from I'd get some like, "Well you talk kinda strange, but you don't talk like *insert impression of Coffee Talk here*." The kind of comment that makes every proud New Englander weep inside. Purely anecdotally, I'd say Canadians suffer from the same accent obliviousness that Americans are often accused of having.
myshashi   Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:27 pm GMT
The accent in Tidewater, Virginia, apparently, is very close to the original colonial accent. I have not heard it myself, but others tell me it sounds very British.


Source: http://www.neutralaccent.com
Ferris   Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:38 am GMT
The second sentence about the strong men was very understandable though. I don't think any Americans would have misunderstood you. You have a very good accent for someone who has lived so long in France. I have a friend from France who has been in the USA for two years now and you speak better than she does, so I can tell you have been practicing. Just keep practicing and be willing to accept some criticism and someday you will speak very well as Tom. Listen to as many native speakers as you can as well.
Guest   Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:53 am GMT
I don't think Atlantic Canada accents sound British.
Ellen Page, Resident of Halifax, is a perfect example of urban Atlantic Canada accent, which is fully low back merged to unrounded /A/, and Canadian vowel shift is slight or absent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcUKAb5EX-Y


(which is so different than Alberta/B.C. or Ottawa where rounded vowel /Q/
in John, Dawn, cot/caught is preferred)
Guest   Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:38 am GMT
<<A surprising number of British (English) people who do not speak in the familar standard English English RP accent seem to be mistaken for Australians when in America and they can't for the life of them understand how on earth that can be. It seems that some regional English English accents are taken for Australian by many Americans, and I did hear that some Brits over there have worn tee-shirts with the logo: "No - I am NOT an Aussie - I'm a Brummie!" Or perhaps some other location in England.>>

I can't tell the difference between British, Australian, and South African accents most of the time. They honestly all sound the same to me, although many would sware that they are totally different.

Just the other day I met a South African who I had first assumed was British.
Guest   Thu Oct 09, 2008 1:22 am GMT
"............the Southern Western counties of England: Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire in particular, but even in these former strongholds of rhoticism it is now dying out with the passing of the generations. This is the part of England from which the Puritans sailed off into the sunset............."

This is not entirely accurate. Although some Puritan immigrants to America did come from the Southwest of England the point of origin for most of them was the East. David Hacket Fisher lays out the origins what he calls the regional cultures of America in his work “Albion’s Seed, Four British Folkways in America”

The four major chapters are:

East Anglia to Massachusetts

The South of England to Virginia

North Midlands to the Delaware

Borderlands to the Backcountry

Though all the colonies had immigrants from a variety of places in Great Britain and elsewhere these four chapter headings pretty much illustrate the major cultural (and probably linguistic) influence.

The people we call yankees today are the cultural descendants of the Puritans. Southerners ain’t.
Guest   Thu Oct 09, 2008 1:50 am GMT
Not really all "yankees" are descendants from the Puritans. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, most of Connecticut, etc., have absolutely no connections to the Puritans aside from a handful of separatist colonies in parts of CT. They were Dutch, Swedish, or unsettled until the English army captured them, basically.

I mean, what us Northerners call "Yankees" are what you're talking about (as in, New Englanders), but Southerners don't really know what New England is ... people from Michigan are "yankees" to them. They don't even understand their own pejoratives.
Guest   Thu Oct 09, 2008 1:52 am GMT
"They" as in Southerners. If you don't act like some knuckle-dragging yokel, you're a "yankee". Since you guys gave us Bush twice, and will probably give us McCain for a third go, I feel fully right to say that.
O'Bruadair   Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:29 pm GMT
“Not really all "yankees" are descendants from the Puritans.”

Did you read my post? I wrote “CULTURAL DESCENDANTS”. Not literal. The puritan influence unfortunately is not genetic (if it had been perhaps that influence would have died out by now) and Yes I am fully (and painfully) aware of what a yankee really is. Clyde Wilson, that imminent South Carolina scholar, came up with the best definition of the term I have ever read:

“By Yankee I do not mean everybody from north of the Potomac and Ohio. Lots of them have always been good folks. The firemen who died in the World Trade Center on September 11 were Americans. The politicians and TV personalities who stood around telling us what we are to think about it are Yankees. I am using the term historically to designate that peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around. Puritans long ago abandoned anything that might be good in their religion but have never given up the notion that they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image.”

I take the two posts above as good evidence that Wilson was right.

BTW the quote above came from his article “The Yankee Problem in America” It is worth reading.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html