How not to speak with a British accent...

[Neil]

How to speak with an Bristsh accent.... And how not to......

[clanglee]

[SymphonicX]

This accent thing is quite a contentious thing between us brits and the americans....the other day I was reading an imdb board to an english movie and someone had the real adacity to say something like "I hate the british accent, they think they're "oh so fancy"."....I mean....wtf?? Brits seem to take a lot of flak for our accents... Now if we're gonna talk hard accents to replicate - South African.....that's VERY hard to do for anyone.... "they have an ATM raaaight by the doer!"

[Neil]

This accent thing is quite a contentious thing between us brits and the americans....the other day I was reading an imdb board to an english movie and someone had the real adacity to say something like "I hate the british accent, they think they're "oh so fancy"."....I mean....wtf?? Brits seem to take a lot of flak for our accents... Now if we're gonna talk hard accents to replicate - South African.....that's VERY hard to do for anyone.... "they have an ATM raaaight by the doer!" Well, what exactly is a British accent? Cornish? Scottish? Irish? Norfolk? Bucks? I mean even across London the accent can change?

[SymphonicX]

Hampshire is an traditional English accent - a sort of middle class "must pronounce everything perfectly" type of accent...you know like newsreaders who say "issue" while really annunciating the "issssss" But then of course there's Cornish, etc etc as you say - I guess from some perspectives an English accent is whatever Harry Potter is saying next.

[Tricky]

I think the rest of the world expects us to speak like 1950's news readers, but our regional accents are massively different from each other, I've got a Yorkshire accent, and I think I sound quite common to be fair, but my Mancunian & Teesside friends have completely different accents and they take the piss out of mine! Then you get scousers & cockneys... The worst British accent around though is that one that london "gangsta rappers" all talk with, you know the Dizzee rascal one? I hate that with a passion, they sound like complete mongs!

[SymphonicX]

yez blud, it was boom-ting blud u get me? i swear down man that bitch was tight. --------- That's an invented accent by the "youth" to sort of imitate a gangsta rap sort of thing from America....it was just starting to come through in the mid nineties and now it's evolved into it's own language. I hate it, but I do get quite a fair kick out of imitating it for fun.... I'm a cockney.....yep...born and raised only a few miles from the bow bells - East London, let's farkin' ave it. My family are proper cockneys, I've lost the accent since living out here for 10 years, in West London and surrounded by middle class people - my family constantly mis-pronounce basic words and have phrases they use over and over like "I turned 'round and said, he turned 'round and said" christ.

[MinionZombie]

"I have isssssues with the dissssused tissssues" - wasn't that a line from Shooting Stars? This video reminded me of it. And since when to Brits say "ah-GAIN"? We say "ah-ghen" like most others. And it's not "gar-ishhhh" - it's "gar-ridge". Love the second video at the end ... "get out". There are some atrocious accents in Britain - like than tanned-out-of-her-mind '29 year old' woman on Big Brother at the moment ... it's really harsh and just kills your mind. Then you've got the Bristol accent, which is less harsh, but no less strong - there's a lot of Bristol-related accents around where I live, and even after living here for so long I still can't figure out some of what people say. Yeah, that 'wankster rappah' type dialect that skinny white teenagers use is abominable. You aren't black, you aren't from the ghetto, you're a scrawny white kid called Dave. As for the 'traditional British accent', I've got no beef with it - strangely some people get all pissed off at it, or don't find it acceptable - like on TV news, now we've got to have regional accents everywhere - really? Why? With 'traditional British' everyone understands it, and heck, let's be honest, some regional accents are just grinding to hear. Then there are different deliveries of a particular accent - Glasgow for instance. You can get that really hard, almost violent 'Glasgow handshake' delivery of Glaswegian, and then you can have the much softer and kinder delivery. I remember seeing a film on BBC2 a while ago and it was subtitled ... it took me a good minute to realise it was still English language, but in an intensely thick Scottish accent (Glaswegian if I remember correctly) - I'm pleased to say I could understand a good 50% of it just fine. Of course, another thing is the words used - sidewalk/pavement - trunk/boot - hood/bonnet - elevator/lift ... etc. Returning to the Scots again, there are some real oddball differences like "You've been to get your messages" - which is "You've been to get your shopping". I always love hearing a comedy British accent - like Smith and Mosier do on SModcast from time-to-time (see the Harry Potter "Stark Toon" animations on YouTube ) - if it's just slagging us off though (as someone mentioned about a comment on IMDb) then they can fuck off and look at their own accents first. You know what really annoys me from America - teenage/20-something females who have that drawn-out delivery of words that's accompanied by a kind of whiny-throat sound ... the sort of dimwits who appear on The Hills and My Super Sweet 16 - that sort of delivery. It drives me up the fucking wall ... another good example is ... 'Whitney' I think the character's name is, in American Pie 1 - the chick who almost shags Stiffler, but he drinks that jizzy beer instead. THAT is the accent/delivery that winds me up ... Obama should totally outlaw that.

[shootemindehead]

I think the rest of the world expects us to speak like 1950's news readers, but our regional accents are massively different from each other, I've got a Yorkshire accent, and I think I sound quite common to be fair, but my Mancunian & Teesside friends have completely different accents and they take the piss out of mine! Then you get scousers & cockneys... The worst British accent around though is that one that london "gangsta rappers" all talk with, you know the Dizzee rascal one? I hate that with a passion, they sound like complete mongs! "Innit" Feckin hate that nonsense too.

[SymphonicX]

Are you talking about a raised inflection MZ? ie: aussies do it a lot - they ask everything as though it's a question? Like, I'm really tired today? I find a lot of whiny american girls do that but it's been adopted by Brits too, mostly it's a youth trait I think...either way it's something that gets my goat too... I think I saw the prog with the subtitled scottish guy but can't remember for the life of it what it was... I remember we had a plumber/decorator in our house as a kid - I shit you not his real name was Mr Leak - and he was very thick with a scottish accent, he said to me one day (I was about 11) "hows the birdie" or something to that effect...I looked at him like he was insane until I was told that means "what's the time" - wtf?

[shootemindehead]

Returning to the Scots again, there are some real oddball differences like "You've been to get your messages" - which is "You've been to get your shopping". That's very Irish too. Well, old fashioned Irish. Don't hear it said much any more.

[SymphonicX]

"Innit" Feckin hate that nonsense too. no no no "innit" is cockney derivative and doesn't belong to the youth "blud" culture!!! we were saying innit since the mid 80s innit... it's just been bastardised by them

[shootemindehead]

I remember we had a plumber/decorator in our house as a kid - I shit you not his real name was Mr Leak - and he was very thick with a scottish accent, he said to me one day (I was about 11) "hows the birdie" or something to that effect...I looked at him like he was insane until I was told that means "what's the time" - wtf? Doing "Bird" is slang for doing time in prison. So, "How's to birdie", is How's the time, or what's the time. ---------- Post added at 12:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:06 PM ---------- no no no "innit" is cockney derivative and doesn't belong to the youth "blud" culture!!! we were saying innit since the mid 80s innit... it's just been bastardised by them Oh, I know. But I just hate the way it's used now.

[MinionZombie]

Symph - nah, I don't mean the raised inflection - although that does annoy me. Have a look at the scene I mentioned in American Pie, and that girl - that's the style voice used so often with American teenage/20-something females that just drives me up the wall.

[bassman]

For some reason I know a lot of americans that seem to have fun trying to duplicate your accents. Just about all of them end up sounding like a moron instead.