Have a question about British accent.

Welcome to English Forums, chococat!

I'd get that eyebrow seen to, Tragically. These things can turn nasty...

MrP

well i ve been reading your posts here.....and I got a bit confused with some comentaries here. I am from Brazil and I ve been studying English Phonology which I found a great subject. I agree with someone who pointed out that there are lots of accents in USA and in Britain. But I have to say is that there are differences even from person to person namely two londoners talking to each other would produce variations in the sounds and the prosody of the words and senteces the say. this is due to many factors that i wont list here. And there is also the intraperson variations. On the issue of actors faking accents....well depending on the movie it could influence the pronunciation of the actors, for example a comedy with americans representing british. the actors of course will use stereotypes. On the issue of the bands well unless you talking some specific bands i dont see any band from UK singing General American pronunciation. Well I ve never hear to a single song sung by Liam and Noel Gallaher (Oasis), Morissey (The smiths), Cris Martin (Coldplay), Thom Yorke (Radiohead) Ian Machulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen), and surprisingly even Bono Vox definitely doesn't sound american to my ears.

Well some person has commented on Racism......he/she said that ppl call racists those one who love differences among races. I agree with that but with some resevation....regarding that the mankind descends from the same root we cannot say that there are different races in humanity...because it contradicts the very definition of the word "race". Ok considering the semantical evolution of the word "race" the problem is not the cellebration of the differences among those so-called Races but looking down on the different races with a "superior" feeling. And language is the most effective tool to do so. this very topic contains a lot of prejudice implicit since language is a matter of prestige. because together with the considerations about the differences between the accents it also implicit and present at the back of mind of many of us the following question: "which accent is better?"

My God! Are you wearing ear muffs? Have you ever lived outside America?

If you are British, your use of English does not reflect it. Please make more of an effort to uphold the standards of the language!

Hello there! I just discovered the forum and thought I'd join the discussion thread.
One of my big pasttimes is imitating accents (other than my own of course). I'm just an American from Central NJ with a good ear.

I think the American accent by itself is kind of bland. By listening to me, you can't really tell where I'm from unless you listen very closely. I don't have a drawl or a twang or anything and Westerners pick up that I'm from the Northeast but other than that it's difficult to tell. If anything, sometimes I have a slightly musical lilt to my American English speech that sometimes spills over into my accent imitations or when I speak Spanish or Russian. Many people from New Jersey saw "warder" instead of "water" and I happen to be one of them. There are a few little nuances here and there but I think many people from different the US have adopted a Connecticut School of Broadcasting style of speech (like the newscasters). It's not unlike the British version of RP (Received pronunciation.) I think regional accents are slowly disappearing.

Anyway, I have imitated all kinds of foreign accents including RP British, Cockney, varying degrees of Irish and a little bit Scottish. I think learning different accents is also a subconscious process in which you allow yourself to change your speech temporarily.
Is there a way that we can hear each other to determine how good or how bad we sound?
My idea is that we exchange wav files or something.

Please reply! Thanks!