American perceptions of British accents

[Particles the Greek]

Just wondering, for those of you in the USA: what features of an accent of English would you recognise as typically British? What if anything do you make of strong regional accents, like Scouse, Geordie, Pitmatic, Weegie, Brummie, Cockney, and so on?

[2+3 clusivity]

I think most Americans are not aware of *regional* British accents. But there is a certain British accent that is used in a lot of radio and TV ads here, maybe that is RP? I am not sure.

[clawgrip]

I'd say that probably the perception of British accents results in two types: posh and not posh. What defines them exactly, I'm not sure. People who talk like the queen and people who talk like the movie Snatch.

[Drydic]

Just wondering, for those of you in the USA: what features of an accent of English would you recognise as typically British? What if anything do you make of strong regional accents, like Scouse, Geordie, Pitmatic, Weegie, Brummie, Cockney, and so on?

They all merge into 'weirdo British dialect which is not posh, Scottish or Irish' except very occasionally Cockney. And all the rest are mistaken for Cockney.

[Xephyr]

I think most Americans are not aware of *regional* British accents.

Americans are aware, but have basically zero ability to distinguish them by their location. It's not that we can't hear different accents and their differences-- we can-- but we have next to zero real impression of where British characters on tv and film are from in Britain. So when a character who's from, say, east England (does that have a distinctive accent? I don't even know!) shows up, we don't even know that he's from east England, and so we don't know to associate his dialect with east England. So no pattern ever emerges. Partly this is probably because to an American, all of England seems the same: it's an extremely tiny place, which as far as I can tell has the same geology and climate all over. It's a bit like asking someone who isn't from there to distinguish between a Northern Oregon vs. a Southern Oregon accent (i.e., it's less a matter of whether they sound different, it's more a matter of: if they did, would you even know?)

I have an extremely vague idea of what Cockney is, no idea what Scouse and Geordie are, and have never even heard of Pitmatic, Weegie, and Brummie. Maybe some Yankee will show up that is really good at hearing Britlects, but for the vast majority of people here what I've said is true.

[Salmoneus]

And even that represents progress! I caught a snatch of an old Colombo the other day - or a new Colombo, rather, since it was one of the later ones, from the nineties - and it reminded me of that godawful US invention, the 'British accent'. By which I mean characters who are meant to be British, and as a result speak in an accent that's modern RP, old RP (like the Queen), Estuary, and possibly slightly Scottish, all at the same time, and yet also with a strong GA twang. The "I say, cor bloimey goovnerrr, wa(t) wa(t)" accent.

Anyway, I have to sympathise with Cev here. The combination of very distinctive accents from very close-together places with mass population movement makes it very difficult even for me as an Englishman to judge where people are from, unless it's one of the broadest and most famous accents. Add in levelling effects and it's sometimes impossible, beyond "he sounds like so-and-so" and then looking up where "so-and-so" comes from. I think this is changing, though - the 'big' accents are spreading and a lot of the little local accents are dying out, so I find it easier to place people my generation than people my parents' generation, in general (in terms of identifying the accent and its origin - although you also get fewer 'pure' accents these days, I think).

[Rhetorica]

Canadian here. I've been watching trashy BBC panel shows for a few years and experience has led me to be able to distinguish the following English accents: Really Northern (e.g. Ross Noble), Just Plain Northern (e.g. Johnny Vegas), Southern (e.g. Sue Perkins), and of course Cockney and RP. Monty Python tells me that everyone from Yorkshire is supposed to sound like a bemused gorilla, but I don't put much faith in that. And I suppose everyone from Liverpool sounds like John Lennon, at least in secret.

[Astraios]

Anyway, I have to sympathise with Cev here. The combination of very distinctive accents from very close-together places with mass population movement makes it very difficult even for me as an Englishman to judge where people are from, unless it's one of the broadest and most famous accents. Add in levelling effects and it's sometimes impossible, beyond "he sounds like so-and-so" and then looking up where "so-and-so" comes from. I think this is changing, though - the 'big' accents are spreading and a lot of the little local accents are dying out, so I find it easier to place people my generation than people my parents' generation, in general (in terms of identifying the accent and its origin - although you also get fewer 'pure' accents these days, I think).

Is that a southern thing? I still find it pretty easy to tell where people are from.

EDIT: Anyone from the North, that is. Anything southeast of Brummie is just all one big lump of rah.

[Radius Solis]

Xephyr is correct that we mostly have no way to get a handle one what the differences are or where they're from.

But I think it's fair to characterize them, together, as forming an overall British accent. I don't know what features unite them, but there's clearly something - because British-ness is instantly obvious from the first word or two, while differences between individual accents tend to take a much more thorough listen to clearly tell apart. It comes through even in a foreign language! If I hear people non-natively speaking e.g. German, it's obvious which among them are British just by how their German sounds.

It's really hard to tell what features form that characteristic British-ness. But I suspect prosody may be high on the list.

[ObsequiousNewt]

Anyway, I have to sympathise with Cev here. The combination of very distinctive accents from very close-together places with mass population movement makes it very difficult even for me as an Englishman to judge where people are from, unless it's one of the broadest and most famous accents. Add in levelling effects and it's sometimes impossible, beyond "he sounds like so-and-so" and then looking up where "so-and-so" comes from. I think this is changing, though - the 'big' accents are spreading and a lot of the little local accents are dying out, so I find it easier to place people my generation than people my parents' generation, in general (in terms of identifying the accent and its origin - although you also get fewer 'pure' accents these days, I think).

Is that a southern thing? I still find it pretty easy to tell where people are from.

EDIT: Anyone from the North, that is. Anything southeast of Brummie is just all one big lump of rah.

Lots of planets have a north!

[ol bofosh]

Being an Englishman, I organise English accents like this:
Posh, General SE (Estuary), Cockney, West Country/Rural South, Yorkshire/Lancashire (sorry), Scouser, Brummey, Urban Essex, Geordie, Mancunian, and possibly Bristol (rhotic Estuary)... that's what I can more of less identify.

@Rhetorica: John Lennon has quite a "soft" scouse accent. Try Cilla Black, Brookside or the scouser sketch from the Fast Show...

As for the US... well, New York cabbie (Italian type), black American, Hispanic, Texas, Lousiana and "American" (can hear it as US, but no clue as to where)... well, that's more or less about it.

Anything southeast of Brummie is just all one big lump of rah.

Lol, tis true. I would have prefered something distinctive, like my grandad's Scottish accent. At least I don't sound posh... much.

[KathTheDragon]

FWIW, 'posh' doesn't really exist. People don't really talk that way any more, unless they're ancient. However, I have known people to label any speech that uses 'fancy' (read: not uneducated) words as posh, or that is moderately close to RP (in other words, me on both counts).

[Salmoneus]

Of course people still talk posh. The posh accents may not be exactly the same as they used to be, but they still exist. 'Posh' to me most often means SSBE that's near the RP end of the spectrum, but there are also genuine upper class accents still around. Plus sloane of course, which I started out upper class and is still probably 'posh', even though it's spread massively and sometimes you can even hear elements of it in working class female speech.

ol bofosh: what's Urban Essex? I would think they spoke Estuary.
I probably couldn't identify Bristolian. I can tell Lancashire from Yorkshire, if they're strong enough, and I'm also away of how Cumbrian sounds, though I couldn't reliably distinguish it from Lancashire or Yorkshire.
For some reason, I'm not good at spotting Manc, which I can get mixed up with mild Scouse, and I can only reliably spot strong Brummie, and I can't distinguish true Brummie from everything else from around there. I might be able to identify some Leeds accents if I heard them, though I can't think of them in my mind at the moment. I hope I'd be able to distinguish West Country from southeast rural, though you very rarely hear southeast rural anymore, and I might be able to work out east anglian through a process of elimination. I've no idea about the northeastern accents, other than a generic 'geordie'.

----------

Cev/Rhetorica: scouse is the easiest one to learn to recognise, because it turns coda (sometimes even non-coda) /k/ into an affricate or fricative (sometimes lightly, sometimes very strongly). Also, it fronts /A/, /U/, and /u/ quite strongly, and I think the first element in /oU/ as well.

----

Radius: you sure that what they've got in common isn't just that they're all British, and that because you know they're British you hear them as British? Additionally, if there is a real thing you're hearing, it may just be an absence rather than a presence - eg absence of the father-bother merger and absence of alveolar flapping (along with absence of any overt Indian, etc, features).
Also, do you mean British or English - that is, does that apply to Welsh, Ulster and the Scottish accents as well?

[vec]

I think lots of Americans basically think all British is posh and have no sense that there are trashier less posh dialects.

[Rhetorica]

Cev/Rhetorica: scouse is the easiest one to learn to recognise, because it turns coda (sometimes even non-coda) /k/ into an affricate or fricative (sometimes lightly, sometimes very strongly). Also, it fronts /A/, /U/, and /u/ quite strongly, and I think the first element in /oU/ as well.

Right, I recall now; it sounds inexplicably like the speaker is on the verge of crying at all times. Like Johnny Vegas but not Lee Mack? (Both natives of Lancashire.)

[linguoboy]

Xephyr is correct that we mostly have no way to get a handle one what the differences are or where they're from.

When your exposure is so limited and haphazardl, it can be difficult to determine what's regiolect and what's idiolect. Watching Red Dwarf as children, it was obvious that Craig Charles spoke markedly differently to the rest of the cast. But he also acted differently to the rest of the cast as well and, not having any other contemporary models for Scouse (which has changed a bit from the days of the Beatles), we just accepted that that's Lister for yah: he's a slob, he likes to eat something called "vindaloo", and he talks with a lilt.

[Radius Solis]

Radius: you sure that what they've got in common isn't just that they're all British, and that because you know they're British you hear them as British? Additionally, if there is a real thing you're hearing, it may just be an absence rather than a presence - eg absence of the father-bother merger and absence of alveolar flapping (along with absence of any overt Indian, etc, features).
Also, do you mean British or English - that is, does that apply to Welsh, Ulster and the Scottish accents as well?

On the first point, yes, I am certain. When you see people on television and the rather rare actual British person in real life, you generally have no idea where they're from - they don't come with nametags that say "Hi! I'm from Leeds!". No, I just hear that accent again. It's not that I don't know that there are many different accents in Britain, but my daily-life experience is that Britishness is immediately identifiable in the speech of anyone even if I know nothing else whatsoever about them.

On the second point, I considered that, and absence rather than presence may indeed be a major contributor. I suspect it is not the whole story, but I have heard Australian speakers - a minority of them - who give me a false positive on Britishness, so this is definitely a possibility.

On the last point, I do not know for sure. I can tell you that Scottish English is the only variant of British that I can quickly identify as something of its own, and but that it still definitely and powerfully registers as 'British' to me. I do not know that I have ever heard a Welsh or Ulster accent.

[ol bofosh]

ol bofosh: what's Urban Essex? I would think they spoke Estuary.

Jade Goody.

It is Estuary in the narrowest, "purest" sense. In the broadest sense the whole SE is full of Estuary "varieties" (not that I can distinguish between them, apart from Essex, horrible Essex accent; give me a scouser or a brummy any day of the week).

I suspect it is not the whole story, but I have heard Australian speakers - a minority of them - who give me a false positive on Britishness, so this is definitely a possibility.

Me too. There's times I hear something like RP, but then I hear a "twang" that doesn't exist in RP. It's very subtle. I think it has to do with /l/.

On the last point, I do not know for sure. I can tell you that Scottish English is the only variant of British that I can quickly identify as something of its own, and but that it still definitely and powerfully registers as 'British' to me. I do not know that I have ever heard a Welsh or Ulster accent.

Ulster definitely has it's own accent. Wales usually does (yackyda, oh my giddy aunty, as one Welshman used to say to me), but sometimes I doubt it. A few weeks ago I met someone from "North Wales" but with an RP accent. Couldn't tell regions in Wales, nor Scotland for that matter (Glasgow tends to stick out, and Edinburgh doesn't seem to have an accent; the other week I met someone with a rhotic SE England-ish accent who came from Edinburgh).

I say the RP accent should be extinguished. It's like sand, it gets everywhere.

[sangi39]

I can tell Lancashire from Yorkshire, if they're strong enough, and I'm also away of how Cumbrian sounds, though I couldn't reliably distinguish it from Lancashire or Yorkshire.

My dad's from Cumbria, but due to someone not being able to tell a Cumbrian accent from a Geordie accent everyone ended up calling him "Geordie". He's from Whitehaven I can kind of understand that they sound similar-ish, but Cumbrian always sounds almost like a slightly "lancashirised" or "scousified" Geordie, kind of... It's got the whole /bu:k lu:k ku:k/ for "book, look, cook" thing going on, and the monophthongisation of /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ typical of much of the North, but after that I couldn't reliably say what makes Cumbrian accents distinct, just that they are. For example, my brother, with his Yorkshire accent, does not sound the same as my dad.

[Nortaneous]

I think lots of Americans basically think all British is posh and have no sense that there are trashier less posh dialects.

No, no, we all know that some people in Britain go pip pip pɑss the crumpets, others go och I've a stoat oop me kilt, and then there are the ones who go ill bash ye fookin ead in I sware on me mum.

[sangi39]

If anyone's been watching Agents of SHIELD, Simmons in episode 6 displays her slight northernness. She's generally got a pretty "posh" accent, most of the time it's pretty RP, but she pronounced the <ou> in "double" as [ʊ]/ As far as I'm aware, this is the actual accent of the actress who plays her, but I could be wrong (checking her role in Hollyoaks, it's the same). I thought she was from the south until she said "double", then I was just like "NORTHERN!"

[gmalivuk]

Xephyr is correct that we mostly have no way to get a handle one what the differences are or where they're from.

But I think it's fair to characterize them, together, as forming an overall British accent. I don't know what features unite them, but there's clearly something - because British-ness is instantly obvious from the first word or two, while differences between individual accents tend to take a much more thorough listen to clearly tell apart. It comes through even in a foreign language! If I hear people non-natively speaking e.g. German, it's obvious which among them are British just by how their German sounds.

It's really hard to tell what features form that characteristic British-ness. But I suspect prosody may be high on the list.

I don't know about British, but lack of rhoticity or t-flapping definitely play a big part for me in identifying specifically English accents.

If I heard a rhotic English accent, I suspect I might initially mistake it for Scottish, and non-rhotic accents with t-flapping make me think southern hemisphere.

[zompist]

When I watched Monty Python as a lad, all the accents sounded the same. I was rather surprised on a more recent re-watching to realize that they played with regional accents quite a bit. Mind you, I still don't know what most of them were exactly. Their impression of an American accent was fascinating.

Unlike linguoboy, I felt a continuity between Lister and the Beatles.

I guess my naive classification of British accents would be:

RP = all those great British actors
Cockney = cheeky, grease-stained street urchins
Rural = all the forelock-touching laborers
Lister and the Beatles
Scots
Irish

My rule of thumb for the last two is that if I can pretty much understand it (e.g. The Commitments), it's Irish, and if I can't, it's Scots.

[dhok]

I can tell the difference between "upper-class" and "lower-class" English accents, and the lack of a ʊ-ʌ distinction, which I suppose I would pin to Manchester or Birmingham. I would probably recognize a rhotic English accent if I heard it, but I don't hear them very much and wouldn't be able to place one (doesn't Cornwall have a rhotic accent)?

[linguoboy]

(doesn't Cornwall have a rhotic accent)?

You're thinking of West Country. It extends into Cornwall, but there are so many non-locals there (chiefly from SE England, but also elsewhere) that most of the speakers you'll hear will be non-rhotic.

(Actually, West Country accents seem to be declining even in the West Country. It's so stereotypically hick that more socially-mobile types try to rid themselves of it at the first opportunity.)