To wonder if Americans hear spoken English differently?

[LordLancington]

Obv, not meaning that they have different eardrums or something, but more whether they don't have the same contextual associations that we do.

Started wondering this after going down the YouTube rabbithole earlier, as I sometimes do when aimlessly browsing. I watched a couple of UK drill videos out of interest - not at all my cup of tea, but I was interested to see what all the controversy was about.

I was surprised by how many Americans were saying things "can't take this seriously. Talking about stabbing people, but using the Queen's English." Thing is, it was about as far from the Queen's English as I could imagine. Proper London accents with loads of urban slang, and for want of a better term I'd have said pretty 'chavvy'.

I've read before that in studies English people tend to associate the Birmingham accent, for example, with being not particularly bright, and the Scottish accent with being 'authoritative'. However, American people found the Brummy accent as 'melodic' or 'friendly' - something like that.

We are just far more familiar with American accents than they are with ours. We watch so much American film and TV that the language differences are familiar to us.

Accent wise, other than the obvious, there is far less variation in the US than here. To go one step further, there is far less here than in Germany, where they have proper dialects. - completely different spoken language.

I always think that Americans put British accents into two pots - very upper crust, old money Downton Abbey, or ‘Cor blimey O’Riley, luv a duck, gawd bless ‘er Majesty’ Cock-er-nee. Mainly because that’s what they see on film or TV. Anything in between either doesn’t exist or gets horribly mangled. (Think Daphne’s family and friends in Frasier, who come from no part of Manchester, the UK or even the planet that I recognise).

I was watching an American TV series which was set in the UK, and the narrator was an American woman doing an English accent which veered wildly between North and South. Because of this I didn't realise until the end that this person was meant to be one of the other characters but older. The actor playing her when she was younger was actually English and had a northern accent. But to an American the accents of both presumably just sounded "British"

I was in Disney with my dh (Posh English accent) myself, dsis and bil (Liverpudlian accents). Americans could certainly tell the difference in accents. They would not believe we were English and kept asking whereabouts in Ireland we were from.

I remember someone telling my Irish heritage mother that "Liverpool was Lancashire before the Irish came along" (my mum just replied with her very Irish maiden name) so I suppose you might think that a Liverpool accent was Irish, you can certainly tell where the Irish bits come into it but there is a Welsh influence too.

I always wonder where the Liverpool accent ends and the Mancunian or Lancashire accents begin. And it's also interesting how far it stretches across the north Welsh coast, too.

However, I have got to say that I think anyone who says they can't understand a northern accent is being wilfully stupid. For example, is Matt Baker really any more difficult to understand that (random southern example) Emily Maitlis?

When I first moved to the US 26 years ago, I heard everything as a kind of undifferentiated "American" accent, and it was really liberating because I had no idea about anyone's the social class the way that I did back in England the moment they opened their mouths (big generalisation, obviously). But now I can tell southern from northern, very local Appalachian from general southern etc etc, so presumably it's all to do with familiarity. Meanwhile, I often get the guess of Australian for my (very standard RP) own accent!

It is about familiarity and an attuned “ear”. When I lived in the US I was routinely asked if I was Australian which made me laugh because to my ear my accent is very different from an Australian accent.

But to be fair I sometimes struggle to tell a US accent from a Canadian one (though not a Northern US accent from a Southern US accent).

My theory as well is that because America is much bigger than the UK you have to travel further to hear a change in the accent: if you travel from London to Oxfordshire that’s about 60 miles but the accent is noticeably different: if you traveled 60 miles within the US there wouldn’t be as great a shift. Just a theory though,

I remember watching Billy Elliot on Broadway and when the usher noticed we were British told us that we'd have to let him know what we thought of the accents. Well. The show was pretty good but the accents verged from the Queen, to Cockney, to Kylie Minogue, with a touch of Dick Van Dyke and Sean Connery....sometimes within the same actor.

I deliberately avoided that usher on the exit just in case he asked and I wouldn't have been able to answer politely.

Same trip, so many times I just got completely blank stares asking for water, even when asking for a glass/bottle of it, which you think would give you some clue, until I gave up and said "wadder." I don't have a particularly strong accent, and nobody seemed to have any trouble understanding anything else I said, just "water!"

Mind you, I'm probably the same with Irish accents. I can vaguely hear there is a difference between different accents, but wouldn't necessarily be able to say "that's an inner city Dublin," "that's a posh Belfast" accent, etc. I suppose that's a mix of not having the "ear" and not knowing the cultural connotations.

Yes. I've travelled a lot in the West of the USA and was more often identified as Australian than English. Odd because I speak RP and an Aussie accent has a cockney undercurrent to my ears.

I've been watching a LOT of CNN recently. I'm fascinated by the vowels. Floor-ida. Hot is hut but worried is wore-id.

The Wire is brilliant, but better watched with subtitles.

I imagine we would find it hard to differentiate the subtleties of American accents, a colleague is from San Fran, his partner is from San Diego, to me their accents are completely different, when I first knew them their accents sounded the same.

My partner is Swedish, English people often think he is a well spoken Scot from around Edinburgh.

My accent is weird, its a mix of Balti, Nottinghamshire and North London.

I find lots of accents very difficult to understand, I worked with someone from Newcastle a few years ago and couldn’t understand him unless I could see his face while he was speaking.

As an American in Britain I don’t think it’s necessarily always due to a lack of understanding around the different accents, but rather a lack of understanding around the social context of the way in which people speak. Americans don’t have the same ideas around social class, so wouldn’t necessarily understand all the nuances around a Cockney accent and a PR accent. They both would both just be identified as strong British accents. And I think when you talk about thing like drill videos, I can’t imagine that many Americans would have any understanding of the urban black British experience, so regardless of what they hear they are limited in the meaning they can extract from it.

I live in the USA and my husband is an American who has never lived anywhere else. He can’t understand my family members from the north west of England and can’t understand people from Scotland on the TV or radio. I struggle with some American accents.

Many people here think everyone in the UK sounds the same just as many people in the UK can’t tell the difference between a Canadian and an American or think all Americans sound the same.

As a Londoner, I find it weird that people can't tell the difference between Stormzy and Prince William.

But when I was younger, I couldn't tell the difference between an Australian accent and a New Zealand accent. I can now. Same with telling a USA person apart from a Canadian.

When people are from the USA, I can hear if they're from New York or the Deep South, or California Valley Girls like you get in films, but apart from that I can't tell.

I find lots of accents very difficult to understand, I worked with someone from Newcastle a few years ago and couldn’t understand him unless I could see his face while he was speaking

I'm English and was working with a northern Irish woman who I'd never met before, both wearing masks, and I found it really difficult to understand her. I'm usually pretty good at understanding different accents to my own, but the mask was a definite barrier to that

I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't understand The Wire

I listen to a lot of podcasts and a lot of them are American so I've gotten to recognise the different accents. There's one I listen to Wine & Crime where they mention their Minnesota accents and now ever time I watch the news and hear about Minnesota (which is a lot at the moment) in my head I change it to Minesawtahh

I worked with someone from Newcastle a few years ago and couldn’t understand him unless I could see his face while he was speaking

When I was a kid my best friend's dad was a Geordie and I could never understans a word he said, I'm sure he thought I was simple he'd be reprating himself to me while I looked at him like haha

Do any of you ever see a show called The Wire? That blew me away - I could not understand a bloody word. Wild

Yes , we watched two episodes and were about to give up on it when we read a review that said put subtitles on to get yourself attuned, then after a few episode you'll get it. So true, this worked. We rewatched the first episode with subtitles which helped us to tune in after that it was fine.

Harmarsuperstar Haunting of Bly Manor by any chance? DCs and I had the exact same experience. Couldn't be scared, especially in the opening episode, as the straying accent was so funny.

I’m sure this isn’t helpful but I’m American and watch Coronation Street. After about two years if I was watching something else from the UK I’d say, “That sounds like Sarah; that sounds like Beth” etc. but it won’t be those actors so I guess I will be picking up the regional accents.

I am a West Coast Canadian. I can almost always hear an East Coast Canadian accent, especially from the Maritimes. Newfoundlanders sound almost Irish to me.

I can also usually detect an American accent, except apparently there is "West Coast" accent taking in the Pacific coast all the way to California.

I can hear but can't locate British accents. DH is British born and raised. He now gets told he has a more Canadian accent but to me he still sounds very English despite being in Canada for decades.

@dalrympy

We are just far more familiar with American accents than they are with ours. We watch so much American film and TV that the language differences are familiar to us.

Accent wise, other than the obvious, there is far less variation in the US than here. To go one step further, there is far less here than in Germany, where they have proper dialects. - completely different spoken language.

It's more complicated than that. As a PP says the distance you have to go to see a difference is often greater--but that depends on where. It seems that the earlier an area was settled the more distinctive the accent is and the more quickly it changes from place to place.

I have also noticed that American shows often have everyone speaking in a generic American accent regardless of where it takes place, which means that when non-Americans visit, they're surprised at the differences. One reason Americans can always recognise a New Yorker is that they actually use the accent on TV... sometimes. I don't think I had ever heard half the accents on the East Coast before moving here, and TV doesn't even compare to authentic white working class accents around NYC. (The Sopranos comes closest.)

DrDavid - Have you seen Fargo? It's set in Minnesota and I've been there - just to see the police station. They have a sing-song lilt which is said to come from the original Scandinavians who settled the state. One of the town's attractions is a Viking ship - right in the middle of the plains, thousands of miles from the sea.

Bill Bryson is good on how the original accents and vocabulary of the first settlers have survived and their links with the English spoken in the UK at the time.

My grandfather was a Scot. In the family, it's still 'mince and tatties' and the big turkey plate is 'the asset' - from assiette'. Lots of French words in Scottish dialect. My grandmother was a Londoner, with a nice line in rhyming slang. When she talked about plates, as in 'Oh me plates!', she'd be referring to her feet.

@HeirloomTomato

In my experience, Americans can’t distinguish well between an upper class British ‘queens English’ accent and a more working class accent. I knew a guy at work with a Cockney accent that would cut butter - old school London like Michael Caine - and an American colleague described it as ‘posh’ which cracked me up. They really don’t hear social class the way British people do. Partly because there are so many gradations of class in British accents anyway whereas class in the US isn’t so tightly connected to accent in the same way.

I've noticed this having moved from London to Northern England. To many northerners it seems that any southern accent is regarded as posh, even if it very definitely isn't. And I guess it goes the other way too: I think many southerners read any northern accent as being working class.

It seems that the earlier an area was settled the more distinctive the accent is and the more quickly it changes from place to place.

I think there is a lot of truth to this. I grew up in coastal Georgia, where the accent retains some non-rhotic features. Go 60 miles inland and it's almost 100 percent rhotic.