which accent do you prefer British or American?

Bernie   Sat Jun 17, 2006 6:43 pm GMT
I agree with Terry. I'm not even American nor a native speaker of English myself, I'm just a guy who lives in France, and I can tell you: British English sucks!
Ed   Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:32 pm GMT
To my ears American English can sound rather like catterwauling, in fact when my sister does an amusing imitation of American speech she does it by making a cat-like sound. I think it is pronunciation of short O's as a sound rather like my A that is most grating. Perhaps this is because it a rendering of O that does not sound like any other language I know.
Kirk   Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:07 pm GMT
<<I think it is pronunciation of short O's as a sound rather like my A that is most grating. Perhaps this is because it a rendering of O that does not sound like any other language I know.>>

Well, linguistically speaking, it's interesting you make that comment because the sound you're referring to in American English, [A], is quite common crosslinguistically while British [Q] is pretty rare. While with spelling it's <o> calling the American sound a "short o" isn't really that accurate.
Ed   Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:34 pm GMT
> Well, linguistically speaking, it's interesting you make that comment because the sound you're referring to in American English, [A], is quite common crosslinguistically while British [Q] is pretty rare. While with spelling it's <o> calling the American sound a "short o" isn't really that accurate.

First of all, sorry I should have said that was merely my personal impression of some American dialects, I did not mean to be offensive - re-reading it it came across as rather rude!

Anyway, I meant the American pronuncion of O in words like "hot" is very strange to my ears not because the sound itself is unusual but because its use in these words seems very alien. With American pronunciation the term "short O" makes little sense, but in British (actually South African) English it made sense, for example at school the O in "note" was refered to as a long O and that in "not" as a short O.
Kirk   Sat Jun 17, 2006 11:16 pm GMT
<<First of all, sorry I should have said that was merely my personal impression of some American dialects, I did not mean to be offensive - re-reading it it came across as rather rude! >>

Nah, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I just found it amusing that you seemed to be implying [A] was strange sound to be heard in languages while [Q] isn't.

<<Anyway, I meant the American pronuncion of O in words like "hot" is very strange to my ears not because the sound itself is unusual but because its use in these words seems very alien.>>

Yeah, it must be quite a change when that's not what you're used to hearing! I think I tend to think the same thing about nonrhotacism in RP words like "party," whose vowels sound very similar to how I say "potty," so it definitely goes the other way around, too :) I remember thinking as a kid that British people were silly for saying "potty" when they meant "party." ;)
Travis   Sat Jun 17, 2006 11:18 pm GMT
>>Yeah, it must be quite a change when that's not what you're used to hearing! I think I tend to think the same thing about nonrhotacism in RP words like "party," whose vowels sound very similar to how I say "potty," so it definitely goes the other way around, too :) I remember thinking as a kid that British people were silly for saying "potty" when they meant "party." ;)<<

That one is made even weirder here, as the pronunciation of "party" here uses [V], not [A] or [a] (which "potty" here uses).
Uriel   Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:26 am GMT
Now we sound like cats?
Hermione   Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:24 am GMT
>I remember thinking as a kid that British people were silly for saying "potty" when they meant "party." ;)<

They don't, but the average cot-caught-merged American would however say "pahty" (which is how English people - and antipodeans - actually pronounce party) when he meant "potty", would he or she not?
Travis   Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:40 am GMT
>>They don't, but the average cot-caught-merged American would however say "pahty" (which is how English people - and antipodeans - actually pronounce party) when he meant "potty", would he or she not?<<

I assume you mean "father-bother-merged" by "cot-caught-merged", as the cot-caught merger is the merger of the phonemes /A/ and /O/, not the merger of /A/ and /Q/ (the father-bother merger), which is what is really being discussed here.

And in this case, actually, most North American English-speakers would pronounce "potty" like such, considering that most NAE-speakers are father-bother-merged, with the only exceptions concerning father-bother-merged NAE-speakers being those who have merged such to something other than /A/ such as /O/ (such as in Canadian English) and those who have subsequently shifted the /A/ resulting from such to something else, such as to /a/ or even /{/ (as in much of the Upper Midwest) or towards /O/ (as in more progressive forms of Californian English).
Rene   Thu Jun 29, 2006 6:00 pm GMT
what the heck is catterwauling? I recently fell in love with the Manchester accent sounds a bit like growling but in a cool way.
from OHIO   Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:17 pm GMT
"Americans themselves, generally speaking, do not like their accents. In fact, research as shown that products sell better in America when the announcer has a British accent; a team of psychologists even found in their tests that American police officers were more likely to let a traffic violator with a British accent off with just a warning than one with an American accent. "

Brennus,

Where the heck you heard this? I have never heard of such stupid "research"...
Joe   Tue Jul 04, 2006 9:48 pm GMT
I think the reason Americans like the British accent more is because it is different to there owen.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
For me it´s very difficult to realy choose one seeing as there are so many different American and British accents.
I do like a Cape Town accent, even though I´m not from there.
Guest   Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:25 am GMT
"Americans themselves, generally speaking, do not like their accents."

How generally specifically are we talking? Vaguely generally or generally generally?
Adam   Wed Jul 05, 2006 6:11 pm GMT
"Where the heck you heard this? I have never heard of such stupid "research"... "

It's a known fact that Americans often sell goods using British accents, as British accents sound more intelligent than Americans accents. British accents are evry good at selling cars.

"In any case, the Boston upper class and its perceived
approximation of "received" British English was long the
"received" American standard. Among the naive the argument was
"well, that's where the language came from, so they must speak
it better than us". Even today attitude studies show that
British accents tend to get good ratings, among most segments of
the American population, but, naturally, with less
discrimination of different kinds of British accents than in
Britain itself. They're used for selling expensive (NB prestige)
cars, among other things, and impart inevitable European
"culture" and time-tested sophistication. Japanese, among other,
market researchers are well aware of such things and use it in
their advertising strategies to compete with Europe for market
shares in the US."


http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9605a&L=linguist&D=0&P=1235



And another reason why Americans love the British accent is because they are insecure about their own -

"Baugh's research shows that not all accents get a neutral or negative reaction from the American public. He has found that many Americans consider people with a British upper-class accent to be more cultured or intelligent than those who used General American. Listeners' snap judgments about the culture behind the British accent may reflect American's insecurity about their own English, he says."

http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/6500.html
Guest   Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:36 am GMT
>>I just found it amusing that you seemed to be implying [A] was strange sound to be heard in languages while [Q] isn't. <<

[Q] is so close to [O] that most couldn't tell them apart or treat them as allophones. But [A] is unique in that it falls neatly between [a] and [O] so one can be confused for the other in many European languages.