North American Accent in Britain

Guest   Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:51 am GMT
In Britain how does the North American accent compare to RP, Estuary, and Cockney in terms of the perceived class associated with it?
Uriel   Thu Oct 13, 2005 1:09 am GMT
Can people from another country really be perceived in terms of "class"?
Guest   Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:08 am GMT
What I meant was how prestigious it is generally considered compared to the ones listed above. Is it well liked like RP, or is it disliked like the Cockney accent?
Uriel   Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:48 am GMT
;) I don't think they like it much.
Pong   Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:15 am GMT
>> I don't think they like it much.<<
why not?
Brennus   Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:15 am GMT
Although Britain is no longer a world power and the United States is the driving force behind English in the world today, studies have shown that British English (RP) is the more popular form of the language even in the U.S..

Products sell better in America when the announcer has a British accent and a team of psychologists 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.

A century ago, I'm sure that American and Canadian English were both looked down upon by most Britons as hayseed colonial varieties. Today, the British still consider theselves custodians of the language and the final arbitraters on what is and isn't correct English but the pejorative view of overseas Englishes seems to have largely disappeared.

The only criticism of my English ever offered by a Britisher so far has been that I should say tuh-mah-to instead of tuh-may-to (tomato). Other than that, I've been criticized much more by American speakers in my lifetime. I still remember an argument that some of my classmates and I had with our teacher in first grade nearly 50 years ago. We all said "bedj-tuh-bulls" for vegetables and she said "No, it's not "bedj-tuh-buls" it's vedj-tuh-bulls." She, of course, won the argument.
Ping   Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:09 am GMT
I don't get the "b-egetables" thing but tomahto/tomayto thing is very trivial.
Damian in Scotland   Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:16 am GMT
Quite honestly I don't think the average Brit thinks too much about who "owns" the English Language. We live in a country which has a multitude of accents and dialects as we've discussed in here loads of times. Amazing really when you consider the size of the whole UK....it would fit into Texas two and a half times but with many, many times the population...you can't really go anywhere here without seeing people or hearing motor traffic unless you're on top of a mountain (but even there you can see cars streaming along roads way, way, way down the glen...or valley if you're in England or cwm if you're in Wales :-)

Maybe purists jealously "guard" the Language, much more so in England where the RP accent, most well known to people outside this country, is more evident. But I think most people know full well that English is spread widely across the planet and as a result has developed separately in those other countries which are English speaking...the same Language with different accents and forms of expressions etc. It adds even more to the richness and diversity of the English tongue.

Just as there are favoured and less favoured accents within the UK itself (some are pretty horrible, believe me, but it all depends on personal opinion) so there are other worldwide English accents which people either like or like a little less.

As for the question raised in here re the North American accent...to be honest I think it's fair to say that all in all most Brits don't go too wildly enthusiastic about it, but as here, accents in N America are pretty varied as well. But Brits are not familiar with most of them and just have the standard GenAm accent in mind...... much the same way that many Americans think that RP is standard here which is not the case at all. It's all a very complicated picture in this complex small island of ours.

I reckon that on average more Americans probably think that British accents (especially that darned RP one) are more attractive than American accents are so considered by Brits.

The tomato thing is weird really....logically the North Americans have it right, I reckon. The way it's spelt suggests that, and when you think that Brits pronounce "potato" the same way as do the Americans, then we British are being (typically!) perverse.

This country has it's fair share of contradictions! LOL
Uriel   Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:22 am GMT
<<Just as there are favoured and less favoured accents within the UK itself (some are pretty horrible, believe me, but it all depends on personal opinion) so there are other worldwide English accents which people either like or like a little less. >>

Could you be a little specific, Damian? C'mon, give us the dirt!
Damian Specifically   Thu Oct 13, 2005 10:28 am GMT
Uriel:

I don't really do dirt dishing...honest injun. Ok...here's some "consolation" if you think I'm doing another anti-American stunt, however much the BBC would dearly love me to do.....but I won't.....there cannot possibly be ANY accent within the United States of America that is so grating, minging and irritating to the ear as a certain two British accents*...which shall remain nameless for fear of causing offence (oops..soz..offense).

D'ya still think I'm wimping out, honey child? :-)

*Please note...I used British and not English.......ok I'll narrow it down......one is Scottish...the other English. I have no personal objection to Welsh accents....but a certain bias maybe a driving force there.

American accents...personally I have a strange sort of fascination with the Southern American accent.....it's kinda quaint and kinda...funny...amusing funny I mean. I'm not being unkind here am I?

OK you asked....I met several American girls at uni..the first I'd ever met to chat with. They all seemed to speak exactly the same way although if I remember correctly they came from different parts of the USA. To me their accents were the same but you no doubt would think differently. Lovely looking girls... but the accents? .... not so attractive really...they spoke at about 100 miles an hour and sort of swallowed some of their words...tended to be a wee bit harsh**....and it's true what they say about "Oh! My Gaaahd" . It's universal it seems and a standard response to practically every situation however trivial. LOL

Sorry, but you pushed me to say this. Now I expect it's the saltmines for me..... :-(

**Still nowhere near as bad as those Brit accents I mentioned...
Rick Johnson   Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:20 am GMT
I think Damian has, in part, summed up what I was going to say. As there isn't just one American or one British accent, it really comes down to the type of accent. General American accents sound "educated" and easy to understand. Some southern white trash and slack jawed tobacco-spittin' frog-giggin' yokel accents can grate a bit, but that in turn is part of their appeal- Jerry Springer would be no-one without them. For me personally I find Cockney accents hard to listen to, sort of like someone scratching their fingernails down a blackboard. If Eastenders comes on the TV I have to switch over immediately and I've never watched Coronation St since they brought in a family with such awful accents.

I think as a general rule in both countries the further spoken English diverges from written English (more slang, grammatical errors, odd pronuciations, the dropping of letters and the merging of words) the lower the class people are perceived to be.
Rick Johnson   Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:24 am GMT
<<way down the glen...or valley if you're in England or cwm if you're in Wales>>

.......or dale (Norse) in Northern England
Rick Johnson   Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:37 am GMT
Actually, come to think of it a "cwm" is a "corrie" (Scottish) or a Cirque (French). It's a glacial feature, a sort of archair shaped hollow cut into the mountain side- I knew A'level geography would come in handy at some point! Two corries together form an arete such as Striding Edge in the Lake District........it's all coming back to me now, just 10 years too late.
Travis   Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:34 pm GMT
>><<way down the glen...or valley if you're in England or cwm if you're in Wales>>

.......or dale (Norse) in Northern England<<

Sort of on a sidetrack, there is this suburb of Milwaukee (which I'm not from but am from a suburb of) named Glendale, which, when you think of it, is quite redundant namingwise from an etymological standpoint. But then, "Glendale" is a very generic and boring suburb name, that I don't care much for anyways.
Travis   Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:49 pm GMT
>>OK you asked....I met several American girls at uni..the first I'd ever met to chat with. They all seemed to speak exactly the same way although if I remember correctly they came from different parts of the USA. To me their accents were the same but you no doubt would think differently. Lovely looking girls... but the accents? .... not so attractive really...they spoke at about 100 miles an hour and sort of swallowed some of their words...tended to be a wee bit harsh**....and it's true what they say about "Oh! My Gaaahd" . It's universal it seems and a standard response to practically every situation however trivial. LOL<<

I do have to say that, at least here, we do elide consonants and generally cliticize and thus glue together our words *a lot*, and a good number of words may vary between formal and informal speech due to such elision such as "probably" (/"prAli/ -> ["pr\_0A:.5i] instead of /"prAb@bli/ -> ["pr\_0A:.b@.b5i]), "problem" (/"prAbm=/ -> ["pr\_0A:.bm=] instead of /"prAbl@m/ -> ["pr\_0A:.b5@~m]), "recognize" (/"rEk@naIz/ -> ["r\E.k@~.naIz] instead of /"rEk@gnaIz/ -> ["r\E.k@g.naIz]), and just about anything ending in a vowel plus /st/ in formal speech (as such /st/ tends to be realized as just [s]). As for the talking at about 100 miles per hour part, that is quite true for informal speech here (I find formal speech to be painfully slow in pace myself, and generally to require too much concentrating on speaking itself rather than on *what* one is trying to say).

But then, at least we only flap our /t/s, except word-finally, where they may be glottal stopped, unlike the speakers of a certain set of dialects that shall not be named, who glottal stop'em everywhere. ;)