Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with english and accent

Is this an accent or am I hearing things?

toftflin — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:48:56 -0800

These two YouTube videos, Video 1 and Video 2, contain men speaking English with a similar accent. Is this an accent? Can anyone identify it? Both the speakers appear to be from Canada, possibly Vancouver, British Columbia specifically. Assuming they aren't related, is this an accent or just a case of similar sounding voices?

Standard American pronunciation training

lite — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 05:48:11 -0800

Hello, I'm a French student preparing for English interviews and in my last mock session my interviewer talked about my accent that could put me at a disadvantage. I can't afford and don't have the time to see a speech therapist so I'm looking for books with audio tracks that are aimed at mastering the standard American accent. Do you know or know somebody that had had great results with a particular book? Thank you!

Learning a neutral accent and DIY speech therapy

mecran01 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:35:22 -0800

I teach for a living but have a lot of linguistic baggage that I'd like to get rid of. Specifically, I have some weird pronunciation/accent issues and would like to speak "General American" or newscaster English. Is this something I can do on my own? What resources should I use? Super bonus level up points: I also have a slight lisp that I would like to get rid of. I don't notice it until I hear a recording of myself. I also have the front teeth that resemble bugs bunny. Does something like this require a professional therapist?

I thank you in advance for your kind advice.

Pronounce "The One Sun Shone Down on the Brown Ground," Please

erst — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:39:17 -0800

Linguistics-filter: What sort of English accent makes "brown," "sun," and "shone" all be pronounced with a similar vowel sound? I am listening to an audiobook read by a man with what I assume is a British English accent. I've noticed that his pronunciation makes these words sound almost like they rhyme. Roughly, they almost sound like "brun," "sun," and "shun," although I'm sure if he read the sentence "The sun shone on the brown dirt" I would be able to hear the difference in pronunciation.

Other notes: He almost rolls his Rs sometimes at the beginning of a word (as in "The shot rrrang out"), and to my American ears, he has a very "proper-sounding" manner of speaking. He also sounds like an older man -- he has what I would call a "grandfatherly" voice.

I know there are a lot of different British English accents, just as there are a lot of different American English accents. What accent might this man have?

Accents across the pond.

curious nu — Sun, 06 May 2012 12:10:27 -0800

Have there been any American actors that have been cast as primary characters on British shows and use a British accent? Basically the opposite setup of e.g. Hugh Laurie/House, Jason Isaacs/Awake, Damian Lewis/Life.

That's a funny accent you have there...

Biru — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:29:47 -0800

Is there a term in linguistics for the residual accent a non-native speaker has when speaking English? I learned Arabic in a small classroom environment with other English speakers from across the country. Some had strong regional accents (in English) which then also transferred over to them speaking in Arabic (Arabic with a Geordie/Liverpudlian accent!) which made me cringe to hear it. However, I got thinking about it and thought "I can nearly always identify a non native E flush speaker just by the sound of their accent." People from India/Pakistan being the obvious examples. Then I got to thinking... you could have a Russian, a German, a Pakistani and a Korean all learn English from the exact same source materials and yet they'd all still have an identifiable sound. This sound is also common amongst others of their respective nationalities (Germans sound like Germans and so on). So, finally getting to my question, is there a reason/name for this phenomenon? Where can I read more about it?

Divided by a common language

adamrice — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:23:47 -0800

A question for native speakers of UK English: With formal writing, can you readily distinguish between US and UK English? If you were reading something that supposedly targeted a UK audience and an Americanism cropped up, would you find that distracting? To clarify, I'm not talking about obviously American sayings like "big hat, no cattle" (although it would be interesting to know how jarring that sort of thing is also) I'm talking subtler grammatical differences, like the word "gotten," which, as I understand it, has disappeared in the UK. If there are features of writing that conspicuously mark a writer as American, what are they?

Do Brits sound American?

Biru — Sat, 08 May 2010 16:47:50 -0800

How do British Actors playing Americans sound to Americans? House (Hugh Laurie) is the most obvious example, but there are many British Actors who have played Americans and consequently have tried to adopt an accent. I wondered how this sounded to you American chaps, as I know of no American yet who has played a Brit and yet not been instantly recognisable to British ears as foreign.

Indian English Speakers with Shifting Western Accent

Non Prosequitur — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:04:40 -0800

Is it a widespread behavior for multilingual speakers of english to get a more anglicized accent when talking to a native speaker? I don't mean just common code-switching (someone getting a drawl in Kansas, or someone going 'you understand' vs. 'you feel me' in different contexts.) But people going from like, Indian english to completely westernized english (in accents, not necessarily in diction or dialect) without making a conscious decision to do so. This is besides people 'faking' an accent because of class issues related to these things.

you say barrack i say barack

sammich — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:12:48 -0800

Why do some British news reporters insist on pronouncing Barack Obama's first name like "barrack"? They hear it correctly from Americans all the time. I would understand if it's something in their accent that makes it hard for them to pronounce Barack correctly but it's not. At least half the time I hear British reporters say it correctly.
And is there a correlation with this as to why people prefer to say "Iraq" i-rack or ee-rock?

How to speak with a transatlantic accent?

invitapriore — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:28:24 -0800

How can I learn to speak with a Transatlantic accent? I've searched for various websites and paid resources that might allow me to pick this up, but I've been thus far foiled. Any tips?

Help me find accent reduction classes in New York

falameufilho — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:51:12 -0800

Looking for accent reduction classes/coaches in New York City. Can you recommend anyone? Though I think I have a pretty good english for a foreigner, since I arrived in the US I noticed that there's room for improvement - I have been misunderstood many times on silly situations and I think that improving my accent would correct that and also act as a confidence boost.

However, doing a little search on the internet, I got the impression that this is one of those segments that, like speed reading and memory improvement, is filled with crooks trying to sell you their brand of snake oil.

Have you, or anyone you know, done any kind of accent reduction in English? If so, can you recommend anyone in the New York area?

What are some of the best tools available for mastering the Received Pronunciation accent?

scarylarry — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:31:11 -0800

What books/courses/web tutorials would you recommend to help me learn the Received Pronunciation (BBC) English accent? I am an American, and I grew up in and around Los Angeles, so I have a slight 'valley' Californian accent. I'm interested in mastering an RP accent, just as a hobby. (Though when I lived in England, I sometimes fantasized about using a British accent to avoid the instant judgment I received in shops and pubs....)

I'm willing to put the time and practice into this that I know it requires. Are there any very good tutorials out there? I'd love to find something that both represented the phonemes visually and offered audio accompaniment.

Thanks.

AccentFilter: What makes a New England accent recognizable?

gregb1007 — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:30:30 -0800

AccentFilter: What makes a New England accent recognizable? Having lived in the New England (i.e Boston area.) since my childhood, I've probably acquired some local speech quirks. However, I thought that my accent was pretty much standard American since I don't have the Boston habit of leaving out the R in many words. (In fact, I don't believe I have anything resembling what people think of as a Boston accent.) One time though, an Internet chatter, pegged me down as someone from the Northeast by the way I spoke. Since then, I've wondered whether there is some pronunciation features that make New Englanders stand out to people from other parts of the US. (BTW: I mean New Englanders who don't drop their Rs and think that they speak a very standard, non-local American English.)

A Yank is bloody confused 'ere.

Gordion Knott — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:53:53 -0800

Been watching early episodes of The Office (UK version). The lead character, a vain, self-important white-collar middle manager, speaks with a Cockney accent. This Yank is damn confused. Yeah, I know that The Office is situated in a bedtown on the outskirts of London, hence the Londonspeak. But even so, I would have thought that David, the main character, would speak in a slightly more upperclass dialect. He seems to drop h's and swallow consonants with aplomb, though perhaps not to the extent of a true, born-and-bred Cockney speaker.

Even more confusing to my Yank mentality, none of the characters speak in "posh" British English. After watching Monty Python, in which John Cleese, when playing MPs or even mid-level bureaucrats, invariably spoke with a posh accent, I'm stymied.

Has the outlook on posh accents changed since the filming of Python (and Fawlty Towers) in the seventies? At the same time, have Cockney accents and other regional accents gained greater acceptance? What's the state of British English as a register of class these days?

Why is Heidi Klum's English accent better than Henry Kissinger's?

airguitar — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 06:02:04 -0800

Why is Heidi Klum's English accent better than Henry Kissinger's?

How does British English read to Americans?

MiguelCardoso — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 15:25:57 -0800

A writer's question: how does British English read (and internally, silently sound) to Americans? [More inside.] When you read or hear something obviously "Anglo" do you enjoy it as something exotic, "quaint", funny, precious or cute but are still aware of the distance to the point of it preventing the desirable immersion in the narrative, i.e. forgetting about the way it's written? Or doesn't it matter? I suppose MetaFilter posts by the British contingent are a good example.

In other words, is an American editor necessary to "translate"/adapt, even if slightly, what was written in British English, in order to make the text flow for American readers? Thank you beforehand for any opinions on this matter.

[Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and others are more used to British English and (I assume) find it easier to make the necessary unconscious alterations. Hence my directing the question to U.S. members.]