What accent do you speak in?

[grumpyoldwoman]

Somerset. Broad Somerset according to ''foreign'' friends

 

[accountantpete]

South Cheshire which is a cross between Northern and North Midland without the Wirrally edge that west Cheshire folk seem to have.

My mother is buried next to another local known to his family and all the locals as Jock - he married a girl from Watford in the 50's and her family thought that his accent was Scottish - hence the nickname which stuck.

 

[Tim Hall]

I speak Surrey I guess, having been born and brought up there.

I was working with some lads from Teeside once. One of them thought I was from Australia...

 

[Firestorm]

Mid Essex, thars not Estuary Essex or the rural burr of the north of the county

not that any one outside the home counties think its anything other than London....

 

[shouldbeinbed]

Bit nondescript as I moved about a bit when I was younger, with a slight midlandsy twang that is far more apparent if playing back a recording of my voice.

I spent my teenage years in the North East, in the times before it became the cosmopolitan metropolis it is today, where I was often accused if being a cockney, AKA anyone that didn't speak like a gutteral Ant and Dec.

 

[Dayvo]

I was on jury service in Chelmsford (11 miles north east of Brentwood - my home town). The rest of the jury were from deep Essex, north and east of Chelmsford and they all thought I was a Londoner.

Bumpkins, eh!

 

[s7ephanie]

Souff London

 

[mickle]

My parents were Scottish (Glasgow and Edinburgh). I moved between England and Scotland a lot as a kid and have lived all over the shop since, including London, Bristol, Hereford, mid Wales, Malawi, New York, Los Angeles and now Yorkshire. My actual accent is mostly RP with a hint of Herefordian. I love accents and enjoy mimicking them, and so I have the unfortunate habit of adopting the accent of the person I'm talking to. Often people think I'm taking the piss!

 

[gbb]

[QUOTE 4240377, member: 259"]Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire, but I tend to tone it down a bit when speaking to outcomers as they wouldn't understand a word of what I was saying otherwise. My kids speak RP, which is a bit odd, considering.[/QUOTE]
Nottingham for me despite not having lived there for 30 odd years. I know mine has softened a lot but I also know it comes back as soon as I go back there.

Thing is, accents are going out. TV has done for 'em, after the best efforts of the wireless. In a couple of generations they'll be all but gone. Go back to the time of Wuthering Heights (the early 19th century) and people sounded very different:

“‘It’s noan Nelly!’ answered Joseph. ‘I sudn’t shift for Nelly—nasty ill nowt as shoo is. Thank God! Shoo cannot stale t’ sowl o’ nob’dy! Shoo wer niver soa handsome, but what a body mud look at her ’bout winking. It’s yon flaysome, graceless quean, that’s witched our lad, wi’ her bold een and her forrard ways—till—Nay! it fair brusts my heart! He’s forgotten all I’ve done for him, and made on him, and goan and riven up a whole row o’ t’ grandest currant-trees i’ t’ garden!”

'een' as a plural for 'eye' goes back to Chaucer...but if it's not gone already, it soon will be.

Not so sure they are on the way out, depends if you're still living in the area you were raised. Again, re visiting Nottingham, I'm immediately struck how strong their accents are...and how much mine has softened.

Worryingly, I'm starting to pick up some Fen talk....now that IS a worry.

 

[classic33]

Broad Yorkshire(West Riding).

Sometimes with an East Coast West Coast(Ireland) thrown in.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Surely you alter your accent to suit where you live?


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZnoP4sUV90


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dovfYaQoPoY


And they say footballers are thick!

 

[vickster]

Probably much like the OP

 

[subaqua]

Wiganese .....

a very difficult foreign language to comprehend

Mainly cos the pie muffles everything.

Me I have a scouse Welsh accent . It is not a proper Chester accent like me dad . And it's not potteries like Buckley . The more piddled I get the more Welsh I sound

 

[screenman]

Proppa inglish mate.

 

[Pale Rider]

Accents are very much in the mind of the individual listener since we all take our own accent as a neutral starting point.

The UK is also all but unique in having so many different regional accents, and also in equating accents to class and social status.

In America, Bill Clinton speaks the same way as his dustman, sorry, refuse collector.

Australia is reckoned to have only three or four regional accents.

Taking where I live as a comparison. there are several accents I can detect in different parts of Sunderland, people from South Tyneside speak differently to those from North Tyneside, and there are several accents in Newcastle/Gateshead.

All within about 20 miles.

That pattern will be repeated across the country.