Do you have a strong local accent?

[nicecuppateainthemorning]

I do! If I hear it on a recording I am surprised at how strong it is. When I did a voice message to a family member I did it about ten times but couldn’t disguise it!

I don’t mind the accent but it isn’t particularly attractive.

I spoke to an old friend recently after many years and she had such a lovely voice/accent and we are from the same area.

Do you have a strong local accent and how do you feel about it?

I have a robust London accent and can switch to what was once called a telephone voice 😆

I don't think I really have. Possibly vaguely northern, even though I'm from ne Wales. I do feel like I've lost any accent I once had over the last 25 years though. All the edges have been smoothed off in work and by working work people from various places. Some kids think I sound posh- which would have pleased my mum no end! She used to despair.

According to dictation software, and a friend i hadn't seen for about 20 years, I have a West Midlands accent, but I'm not conscious of it myself.

One DD has a definite local accent. The other went to uni in London and now lives and works in Oxford. She's RP.

Strong Lancastrian accent and love it. You can take the girl out of Lancashire and move her to NZ, but you absolutely cannot take Lancashire out of the girl.

It is part of me and I would never try to lose it😁

It depends what you mean by strong. I grew up in Edinburgh and have a generic Scottish accent. You could definitely tell I am Scottish when you hear me speak. But I have no trouble being understood.

I grew up in a rural Southern area and the locals sound like they are extras in Hot Fuzz. My Mother grew up in Oxshott and London and my Father was born overseas. We were forbidden to sound like the locals and were corrected if there was a hint of the local burr, so I have a very neutral Southern accent, I have been described as well spoken often.

No, probably because we moved around a lot in my childhood. It's sort of a generic southern English accent, although when I get very very drunk I think the Fenny accent and slang of where I spent most of my teenage years creeps in.

My kids have really strong Manchester accents and I love hearing them talk.

I am Cumbrian and would say I do sound Cumbrian. The town I'm from has a totally different accent from the Cumbrian one, in fact there are numerous accents across Cumbria depending on where you live, some of them are truly awful and instantly recognisable. Flood sounds like flud, great sounds like grate, laugh sounds like laff. Northerners are still judged but I am proud of my northern accent. A French waiter once asked me where I was from, when I said UK he was surprised as we didn't sound like it. He then pointed to a very noisy group and I recognised their accents as definitely Essex, my point being, my accent is obviously noticeable.

No. Mine was drummed out of me in my teens. I miss it. I sound rather affectedly posh if I hear my voice recorded. Friends from home still have that beautiful lilt. I miss my original accent but it sounds very artificial if I try to get it back.

What I find weird is family members who moved to Scotland as adults and now have genuine Scots accents. They don't sound put on, to me. But they got them in their thirties.

SUCH a beautiful accent. DH is from Lancashire and his voice was the first thing about him that I loved.

Yes I'm from Cornwall and have a strong Cornish accent but I don't speak in the Cornish language. My Grandmother could speak the lingo and I did start to learn it but didn't persevere

No…people find it hard to recognise where I’m from by my accent. I grew up in the North but lived all of my adult life in various places in the South, East and West. I have long vowel sounds now so most people think I’m from the South somewhere. Some words and expressions pop back if I’m visiting family up North though.

My two DC have often been told they speak ‘nicely’ or have ‘posh’ accents but that’s largely because we corrected their pronunciation when they were little (no ‘f’ for ‘th’ and no dropped hs).

I’m a linguist so I wonder if my changing of accent over the years is down to the fact I’m used to subconsciously always listening to whether I’m pronouncing something correctly. It’s years since I spoke foreign languages regularly but the training is always with you. I wonder if I naturally adapt to what I’m hearing around me.

I like my Somerset accent very much and love hearing it on other people. It sounds like the land here all soft, gentle and rolling.

Mine is so strong that once or twice a year when I'm in other places I hear people go 'ohhh arrr' when they think I'm out of earshot.

Accents are definitely changing though. My grandfather spoke in such a strong, precisely local accent using local words too. I don't know anyone now who speaks as he did.

Yup, I'm a Geordie and sound like one. I think we sound awful on tape.

Not strong or very local but definitely southern (though with one northern feature that people might spot). I had someone assume recently that I’m local when I’m not (brought up SE, but now SW). I work for a large org for a long time with a lot of people who’ve moved for work so I think a lot of us have lost more distinctive accents and settled on something more neutral. That said, the very local accent here isn’t SW as people might assume - we’re on the edge of the region and the accent is more generically posh than anything else.

@CountryGirlInTheCity the person I know with the most changeable accent is a linguist.

I have a strong local accent to the Yorkshire area I live in. I am also very firmly middle class and have a professional job which involves speaking to people from all over the world.

It often confuses people as they assume because of my accent I must be working class. I am really proud of my accent and of the area I live in. I love to hear all kinds of accents and it makes me sad to hear people who have lost their accents, or who have actively worked to get rid of them.

Dorset. Some people have taken the piss (including at school, where they had the same accent, so that was weird.) Some have assumed I am thick. It's probably less than when I was at school - when I was 18, I needed an interpreter between me and someone who was thick Brummie, though to be fair, there was also alcohol involved. I do try to avoid dialect words when speaking to those whose first language isn't English though.

I love all the regional accents. Born, raised and worked in Kent all my life, I've had the privilege of working with people from many parts of the UK. It fascinates me how just a few miles can make a difference (I'm looking at you, Newcastle and Sunderland 😁).
Personally, I grew up in an area where there's a twist on the SE London accent, but my mum was very rigid about pronunciation at home. I can still switch between dropped h's and t's and speaking 'properly', or posh as it was called if I did it at school!

My Dd get told she has a posh Scottish accent, as does her bf.
Neither are, they just both grew up with English Mums.

I love a Geordie accent.

My early years were spent in Essex, with parents originally from North London. We then moved to Hertfordshire with my dad's work, and I have now lived in rural Bedfordshire for a long time, so I don't think I have much of an accent other than generic 'northern Home Counties' if there is such a thing.

I can, however, listen to local accents round here and work out which village people are from! I can also spot a 'Tottenham' accent a mile off. 😂

I didn't think I did but a couple of summers ago we were on holiday and I got chatting to another mum at the bus stop outside the caravan park and she was able to pinpoint exactly what region of Scotland I'm from just from a couple of sentences. DH moved to this region and some of the local colloquialisms I grew up with still confuse him.

I've lived so many places that my accent is all over the place. Me too.

I speak Welsh and English. Me too. Some fairly local people can locate my accent to the village I'm from.

Non-Welsh speakers don't even realise I'm Welsh and come out with crap like 'You don't sound like you're from Cardiff!'
(I think I've been to Cardiff three times in my entire life and I'm not even from South Wales - so it's a bit like telling someone from Exeter that don't sound like they're from Birmingham.)

Some people have guessed my accent to be fairly local to the nearest English city to where I'm from, but they've been from that city.

No. I was born and bred in Cheshire so have what I’d call a ‘very mild’ northern accent. I live further north now and get called posh 🤣 having lived north of Manchester now for over 15 years though I do think I sound more northern than I used to.