To ask what accent your kids have?

One kid has lived in the UK, California and Costa Rica. The other has only lived in California and Costa Rica. Both parents are British. Our kids sound sort of British/sort of US. When they are at home with us, they have stronger British accents. When they are with their friends, their accents are closer to US accents. They sound like local Costa Ricans when they speak Spanish. They both have British senses of humour though!

You also need to take into account that not everyone on here is from the UK.
Very little chance of finding someone with an RP accent where I live, or with a GCSE for that matter 😁

I said something along the lines of "modified RP", because I don't know how else to describe it. I'm not even totally sure what an RP accent is—is it how the King talks, or an old-school BBC newsreader voice? Because those are very different from each other.

Where I'm from, my accent was considered sort-of posh, but when I went to university and encountered actual posh people, from That London, they thought I was Welsh.

A lot of people now have quite diluted regional accents, because people are growing up with so many audio sources beyond their local area. At the same time, actors and broadcasters are not trained to use RP anymore, because it's fine to have a regional accent and be on the telly / stage.

It's very rare to encounter younger people who speak in a "clean" RP, probably because speaking "correctly" isn't a thing most people care about anymore.

Actually, there has been a lot of discussion of RP but I am not sure that that many posters have described their accent as purely RP, although some have used it as one of multiple descriptors eg RP with some Wigan vowels. It would be interesting to count up how many have described their accent as purely RP but not interesting enough that I can be bothered to do it 😂

I would expect there to be more MN users with RP accents than 3% because the MN demographic is slightly skewed, it doesn’t represent the general population. I also wouldn’t expect any thread to be representative of the general population because there are multiple factors that will influence who will choose to post. It is not a random selection of the population. I mean I’m pretty sure if I posted a question about interpreting statistics, nearly all the posters would get it right. A bit like how 99% of MNer’s DC get 12 9s at GCSE and 1% fail pretty much everything that may be a slight exaggeration. It doesn’t mean that those posters aren’t telling the truth, it’s just that those that choose to post are more likely to be those whose DC have done well or need advice because their DC haven’t made their grades.

And the odds realistically when 3% of the population have a RP accent?

People (sadly in my opinion) want to claim they have a RP accent because they seem regional accents as less desirable.
It’s the same as their perceived ‘neutral’ accent. Their accents may not be as strong but they absolutely still have an accent.

It is statistically feasible though. There are 249 posts on the thread, so that is a sample size <249 as some posters have posted more than once. That’s a tiny sample size. The sample isn’t random as people are self selecting whether they post or not.

I am sure she has had some voice training. If she sounds more clipped, it may be that the people she spends time with sound like that.

I also expect that William and Harry have toned down their RP a bit. Don’t some people say that William is a bit mockney?

Compare her to Pippa.
Her accent is far more pinched.

Anyway Kate Middleton a bit of a red herring as she has had lessons in speaking.

The point is the number of posters claiming to have a RP accent is not statistically feasible.

Why must that mean it was deliberately acquired? Her speaking voice, rather than when she is public speaking, doesn’t sound particularly “posh” to me. She just sounds like every other girl who went to Marlborough or somewhere similar to me 🤷‍♀️

North London - I've been equally told I sound 'cockney' and 'posh' and used to think I sounded the latter but TBH I sound pretty standard North London.

DH is public school educated and sounds quite 'posh', kids, especially oldest, sound fairly 'posh', their cousins who live down the road sound more North London. Can only ascribe this to the fact mine went to a Jewish primary and their cousins went to somewhere more mixed so mine absorbed a much more generically middle class accent from their peers that's stuck with them even at a much more mixed secondary (which we wanted them to go to rather than Jewish secondary so they had a wider social experience).

It’s reportedly posher than William and Harry’ do very much a deliberately acquired accent.

I’m sure she has had public speaking coaching but her accent is pretty much like every ex public school girl/boy 🤷‍♀️

I'm Scottish and my partner is from the south east, which is where we live. Before going to nursery she said a couple of words with a Scottish twang but that is now long gone and she has a proper South East accent, absolutely no hint of a Scottish accent at all. So I'm teaching her all the Scottish words for things to make up for it haha

My parents were both from the north-west but I grew up elsewhere. I now have a "neutral" accent with northern vowels. DH is from the south.

Our son has a southern accent with southern vowels. When he's been on sports trips with people from other parts of the country they think he's posh ;)

A while ago I found a website where you said how you pronounce certain things. On the basis of that it said I could be from Cheshire or (the Scouse bit of) North Wales which is probably about right. It said my son could be from anywhere from Canterbury to Bournemouth :) which is also fair. DH didn't do it.

Mine fitted in with the masses at school (as I had to do) in Sarf London and then took the bits I inherited from my Grandmother - that come out mostly when I'm exceedingly pissed off - to sound incredibly posh by the time they finished university.

I suppose they heard me code switching throughout their childhood and followed suit.

Therefore, the number of people posting who claim to speak like Kate Middleton is nothing short of delusional.

She speaks with a posher accent than William or Harry. It is a deliberately acquired accent.

Accents have changed quite a lot over the last century. I think the Princess of Wales speaks with modern RP. I doubt that many people speak the way that QEII used to back in the 50s. So it depends whether the PoW speaks with a “normal” posh accent or whether you would say it is RP?

Quite a few posters on MN live in countries that are not the UK.

Realistically, the only way to know for sure would be to get all the poster who claim to have RP to record their voices. But they won’t - so one can believe them or not.

Speaking with RP does not automatically make one rich.

Maybe they are thinking a ‘normal’ posh accent is RP?

That is simply not true. It is probably more accurate to say that MN attracts aspirational posters.

Have you missed the threads from the numerous posters who are living in poverty and from paycheck to paycheck?

Apart from that statistically the population in the UK alone is 68.3 million and MN has nine million users and 700K per month. It does not correspond with the number of posters on this thread who claim to have a RP accent.

In fairness, MN is not exactly representative of the UK population as a whole.

Because approx 3% of the population speak with a RP accent yet it seems they are all on this thread 🤣

Why does that sound unbelievable?

All the posters saying they have RP accents, 🤣

Okayyyyy