British Accent....

[RevolvingPivot]

Just watching the woman in the house across from....

I've seen it said on tv where people say British Accent or they are British.

Obviously Britain covers
Wales Welsh
England English
Northern Ireland Irish
Scotland Scottish

Or am I being thick???

I've workd in the US and most Americans would struggle to find Great Britain on a map. The number of ppl I met who thought Europe was a country was depressing.

I don't get the issue either. When they say "British" they just mean the most common one which would be the English accent you hear in most TV / Films etc. They'd probably call a Scottish accent a Scottish accent and an Irish accent an Irish one.

We do the same when we say an American accent - we're probably thinking of the most common which would probably be Californian. And we'd probably notice if it was a Southern one and call it that, or a New York type one and call it that, but anything else is pot luck.

All this "Bristol sounds different from Leeds" is a bit silly if you're not used to either accent. Being from Scotland I can spot the difference between Dunfermline and Edinburgh and Whitburn a mile away, but I wouldn't expect anyone not from here to be able to when we both (on the whole) follow the same set of rules in the way we pronounce stuff and the words we use. Same goes for Southern England - the differences are really not that huge. Think about how your average English person says Train or Girl compared to your average Scot lol.
Traaaayne vs Train.
Girl vs GiRuul.
The subtle regional variations don't really matter than much compared to the "national" ones.

British, American, Irish, Spanish, Scottish, Australian, Canadian etc just mean the bog standard most common, and that's completely fine.

Ime brush accents on US tv or films are London / Estuary English but quite mild or they would need subtitles as otherwise wouldn't be understood. We can understand American accents better as they are so prolific on tv.
When I lived in the US I and DH (Scottish, English) were often mistaken for Australians - I think it was because a lot of Australians were there.

People outside the UK have absolutely no idea about different regional accents. And why should they?

‘British accent’ just means generic English accent.

As has been said - we all refer to an ‘American accent’, even though there are loads of regional ones, that are indistinguishable to someone without a native ear or who has spent time there.

I worked for an American company for a while. One dude (who didn’t own a passport and hadn’t been outside the US) thought me (a Kiwi) and a Scottish girl both sounded exactly like the Queen. 😂🤣

Americans say British instead of English a lot, e.g. they call English Breakfast Tea British Breakfast Tea.

Even within the UK it's hard to fully distinguish accents you're not used to. I've lived in a few places around England and can easily pick out Bristol, Devon, Lancashire and estuary. I found the Warhorse film jarring because all the accents in the family were different - like they'd just gone "rural England", that will do.

Then I moved to Scotland and I can only just pick the difference between West and East coast, before it was all filed under "Scottish" with no idea where, although I could probably tell there was a difference I didn't know where the accent was from.

I have the stereotypical "usually the bad guy in American films" posh southern English accent...

@NatashaBedwouldbenice

I would describe myself as British though if asked (although it does depend on context), or 'from the UK' (which I suppose at least knocks out Northern Ireland from the possibles).

Huh?

Does it? I must have missed the legislation. Along with everyone else in Northern Ireland who holds British Citizenship. Which is, immigrants aside, almost all of them.

@themental

I don't get the issue either. When they say "British" they just mean the most common one which would be the English accent you hear in most TV / Films etc. They'd probably call a Scottish accent a Scottish accent and an Irish accent an Irish one.

We do the same when we say an American accent - we're probably thinking of the most common which would probably be Californian. And we'd probably notice if it was a Southern one and call it that, or a New York type one and call it that, but anything else is pot luck.

All this "Bristol sounds different from Leeds" is a bit silly if you're not used to either accent. Being from Scotland I can spot the difference between Dunfermline and Edinburgh and Whitburn a mile away, but I wouldn't expect anyone not from here to be able to when we both (on the whole) follow the same set of rules in the way we pronounce stuff and the words we use. Same goes for Southern England - the differences are really not that huge. Think about how your average English person says Train or Girl compared to your average Scot lol.
Traaaayne vs Train.
Girl vs GiRuul.
The subtle regional variations don't really matter than much compared to the "national" ones.

British, American, Irish, Spanish, Scottish, Australian, Canadian etc just mean the bog standard most common, and that's completely fine.

Exactly. It's just a distinction between British English and US English which are general terms for the English spoken in those places. Pp is correct that "Britain" doesn't cover NI, but "British" does. No big deal.

“worked for an American company for a while. One dude (who didn’t own a passport and hadn’t been outside the US) thought me (a Kiwi) and a Scottish girl both sounded exactly like the Queen. 😂🤣”

Only 10% of US citizens have a passport and just don’t travel the way we do. They are also very pro Ireland and would not distinguish North from South, they would see Scotland as separate from England.

@PAFMO I'm not sure why you directed your comment to me

[quote NatashaBedwouldbenice]@PAFMO I'm not sure why you directed your comment to me [/quote]
Because you didn't seem to think that Northern Ireland was in the UK.
"'from the UK' (which I suppose at least knocks out Northern Ireland from the possibles)."
Others pointed out your geographical and legislative mistake as well. Perhaps you could do a humphy face at them too? Though I wouldn't, given how silly you made yourself look with what you said.

I was questioning the person that insinuated that. You can see that I quote them and ask, "huh?". I'm not the one who looks silly here.

When I was growing up in Canada, I thought of a lot different British accents in terms of television shows and pop culture.

Wallace and Grommit
Ray Winestone
Coronation Street
The Queen

and so on. In some cases I had a sense of what region they came from but in others not so much.

@Crazykatie

“worked for an American company for a while. One dude (who didn’t own a passport and hadn’t been outside the US) thought me (a Kiwi) and a Scottish girl both sounded exactly like the Queen. 😂🤣”

Only 10% of US citizens have a passport and just don’t travel the way we do. They are also very pro Ireland and would not distinguish North from South, they would see Scotland as separate from England.

Americans don't have long stretches of holidays like we do. It's a long way tto another country - takes 3/4 hours plane ride to get to the other side of the US. It's not like us jumping into a plane to Amsterdam. And they do travel - Miiiilles by road around the states. They also fly round the states a lot - smaller local planes are more like buses with people jmping on and off for work, no luggage. Big country with it's own oceans, mountains, lakes , deserts. Less need to travel abroad.

Less need to travel abroad. I take on board all of your other comments, but this one is baffling. Surely Americans feel the same desire to experience other cultures as we do?

American say this to mean English accent (probably any English accent), but I don't think they could place a Scottish accent in the same category, could they? Not sure about Welsh.

I always think it sounds stupid.

I know there are lots of American accents but they are all... American accents. Scottish is so different to anything English. It's as different as American.

@NatashaBedwouldbenice

Less need to travel abroad. I take on board all of your other comments, but this one is baffling. Surely Americans feel the same desire to experience other cultures as we do?

They don’t seem to want to experience other cultures the way we do, at least not in proportion to the population, their own culture is different to ours, much more conservative and insular, in my view.

I suppose we are guilty of it too. What’s an American accent? Is it Boston? Texas? New York? California? I would say ‘he has an American accent’ even though I’m aware of some of the different accents and know it’s not just one homogeneous lump. I think it’s just an easy way of describing it.

@stormstormgoaway

American say this to mean English accent (probably any English accent), but I don't think they could place a Scottish accent in the same category, could they? Not sure about Welsh.

I always think it sounds stupid.

I know there are lots of American accents but they are all... American accents. Scottish is so different to anything English. It's as different as American.

I know there are lots of American accents but they are all... American accents. Scottish is so different to anything English. It's as different as American.

Ahh but is it to an American? An American I know can’t tell the difference between many of the different accents in Britain. They mixed up some very obvious ones to me. I can’t remember which but one was they mixed Scottish with one and I thought it was weird as they sounded nothing alike. She could tell the Welsh accent was different but couldn’t distinguish it from some either. You have to realise the sounds are foreign to them. It’d be like asking us to distinguish Boston from New York or American from Canadian.

I know there are lots of American accents but they are all... American accents. Scottish is so different to anything English. It's as different as American.

It’s really not different to many Americans, especially Americans who haven’t traveled. As I said upthread, an American colleagues thought me (Kiwi) and a Scottish colleague both sounded like the Queen.

Believe me, neither of us sound like the Queen!

But their ear just isn’t attuned to the differences.

Before I spent time in the UK, I though there were basically two English accents - RP and everyone else. I didn’t even realise the accents on Coronation Street and Eastenders were different. All I knew was, they weren’t ‘posh’.

And you lot do realise that you also can’t even tell whole country’s accents apart - I used to get asked if I was Australian all the time. And the same happens to Canadians in the UK.

So you can hardly blame Americans for not discerning regional accents.

It's not true that only 10% of Americans have a passport. The figure is actually closer to 40% and that number does not include people whose passports have expired. Also as a previous poster pointed out, we have a vast country, and it is possible to travel to a place whose culture (and accent) is very different from your home state and hometown without ever leaving the US.

The idea that all American accents sound the same is crazy. Listen to, say, JFK, Snoop Dog, Dr John, and Dolly Parton. They sound completely different. It's no different than an American who thinks that all British accents sound the same.

There are class based accents there as well, though people don't always think of them that way.

Plus there is a very large Spanish speaking population in the US. If you add Canada there are at least three distinct French accents. And people who speak First Nations languages have various accents too (though this is less common than it used to be.) In fact I was watching a tv show filmed near my home last year, and one of the actors was meant to be from the local First Nations community - it was completely clear to me as soon as he opened his mouth that he was from further west.

It is so meaningless yeh, annoying expression.

I think they mean english though.

With American accents I can definitely tell they are different to each other but have a very limited grasp of "where" that accent would attach to beyond generic south, west, east. I can hear that two East coast accents are different to each other but not know to which state/city they belonged. Hence "American" .

Likewise in French I recognise Paris and Marseille (thanks to Taxi films) and could recognise that other accents are different to each other but not attach them to say Bordeaux, Toulouse, Grenoble, Lille or wherever...