Has anyone ever gotten where your accent is from wrong?

[PunnyBeaker]

Been told I am from Birmingham , really from Coventry

I am from Ayrshire but live in London and people usually think I am Irish - I don't know why as I don't sound remotely Irish. I think a lot of people down here don't understand accents!

Yes lots mostly in America. Scottish but they often confused us for being Irish 🤷🏻‍♀️

Throughout my life, I’ve had variations of “that accent cost a lot of money”.

I suppose it did cost the tax-payer a fair amount as I had years of speech therapy - but I don’t think that’s what they mean! I went to a bog-standard comprehensive. My brother and sister have Gloucestershire accents. My accent is pure RP.

Yep, same. Scouser here, pretty unmistakable.

To a Londoner that's good enough 😀

Yam towe right bab. Bostin.

Got asked what part of Lancashire I’m from.

I have a weird hybrid of North East Wales and Sussex, as I live in north Wales and originate from Sussex.

I did find that funny tbh

I'm American (living in the UK) and I used to make this mistake all the time when I first arrived. Now I listen more closely before deciding!

I got asked where in Australia I was from. Born and bred in Dudley, West Mids

That’s Black Country, not Brum 😆

No. Unmistakably Cockney

On occasion I've slightly muddled up West Manchester and East LIverpool.

Also North East accents can trick ... you have Wearsiders, Mackems and Geordies. I had a boss for 2 years who everyone called a Geordie ... he said trying to explain he was from South Shields meant nothing.

I know that.

Now.

Only one person ever guessed anywhere near right - he had an ex from 40 miles away from my hometown.

I moved 200 odd miles away when I was 18. Mind you, people I met in my hometown thought I was from somewhere else too, maybe because my grandma spoke RP and we lived in the Midlands. I read years ago about a researcher who was brilliant at pinning down accents and I still wonder what she'd make of mine.

I grew up in the north/midlands, most people can detect a twang but can’t usually place it unless they are from there themselves.

DH and our DS’s got asked if they were from Australia when in New York a few years ago (all southern England)

When I was at Uni, a guy from Northern Ireland (cat'lick) said there was a distinct difference in protestant and catholic accents in Northern Ireland.

I didn't want to believe it; but he insisted it was "a thing".

I'm from Northern Ireland. People not from Ireland are unfamiliar with this accent and tend to guess Scottish or American.

Scottish and told I'm from West Country frequently.

People think I’m a cockney, and I do sound like a cockney (when I hear myself on recordings) and I hate it. I didn’t think I had an accent all!!! Originally from Surrey and my mum is still there and has no accent compared to me, how????

I’ve been in the East Midlands for well over 20 years as well.

In America years ago everyone thought I was Australian. After a few months of being there I started to struggle to tell the difference too!

No, for most people an accent from the Merseyside area is unmistakable, even if they can't be more specific than that. That said, I was a bit taken aback once when a man in Cumbria - who had no idea where I was from before I opened my mouth - correctly identified the particular part of Merseyside that I come from (not Liverpool). I was impressed!

Some Londoners assume I'm Australian. I'm from the East Midlands! (I work in London)

Tho my brother says I sound like a Londoner 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I have a Masters in Voice from the Central School of Speech and Drama.

At a gathering last week, I managed to identify a Welsh person (she had had HEAVILY disguised the Welsh sounds under a thick veil of the “poshest” RP). But I got the accent of another lady wrong. I guessed Northern Irish (where I’m from). She’s Scottish (tho has a Northern Irish husband).

I guess that means, setting the two off against eachother, the accent gods award me 0 points.

Yeah, I'm Glasgow too but with non Scots parents and previous English and Scottish homes. I think people are very confused when Glaswegians don't sound like Rab C Nesbitt.

I, too, would love to let the accent guy loose on me.

Visiting the States with my Irish friend, we stayed with some of her extended family for a few days. At the end of the stay they were surprised to learn I wasn’t Irish too - apparently my standard middle-class southern English accent sounded identical to her Cork one to them! They said they couldn’t hear the difference.

I’m from Northumberland and often have my accent mistaken for Welsh. One colleague couldn’t be dissuaded and insisted I must be from Anglesey (why?), another fellow Welsh person asked if I was going back home to the motherland at Christmas, and the guard on a train to Swansea commented he was surprised I was getting off at Bristol and not going all the way “back home to the valleys’.