Accents

I can understand any accent that's thrown at me. I don't mind them at all.

Although close to Liverpool I haven't got their accent, probably adopted the Cheshire one with just a hint of Lancashire in the odd vowel. We can't hear ourselves speak

I can remember after staying with relatives in Keighley,North Yorks. I spoke very far back like the relatives did and at 10 years of age when returning home kids used to laugh at me speaking. I never knew why at the time.

Hmmm. Which sort of Welsh accent? I knew the minute I wrote that I would be in trouble! I think I am talking about the one that some people love. There is a particular lilt to it that either is very pleasing to some people but which I find grating. The stresses sound wrong to my ears.

If the program was based in Glasgow, I would expect the accent to be Glaswegian. But that can vary from totally incomprehensible to the only very light. On a national tv program, I would expect it to not to go more extreme than almost universally comprehensible.

DD used to be a television subtitler. She was trained to subtitle news and current affairs programmes where she had to listen and then speak the words into a computer. Her first time on live, she got the Ulster local news. No problem with the news reader, but then there was an interview with a farmer with a really intense local accent, who in the Ulster fashion hardly moved his lips as he spoke, so lip reading was impossible. She said she had to admit defeat and the farmer's words went out without subtitles.

I'm hopeless at pinpointing accents, I either don't even notice or if I do, I rarely know where it's from.

Accents change, though. I grew up in Kent but moved away in my 20's. When we go back now, we rarely hear anyone who sounds like us, or hear the accent of our youth, except in older family members who still have the old Kentish accent.

EllenVannin says we can’t hear ourselves speak. I have, often, on family videos or recordings. I think it can be quite a shock, because not many people sound as they think they do. My voice was rather lower and rather posher than I expected.

I have a Norfolk accent which I will never lose.

When I started to teach in a London the children would ask me which foreign country I came from. ?

Oh and I’m always really irritated when a programme is set in East Anglia and the actors speak with a West Country burr......

I had an aunt who came from Dorset and had the loveliest country accent. Also like to listen to a southern Ireland accent. If there is one accent I don't like it is probably the northern Irish which sounds a bit harsh to me, but on the whole I think it is the way some individuals speak rather than a whole region.

What does “ no accent” sound like?
Surely everyone has a regional variation of the English language.

Yes Grandma70s, in a video but I meant that we can't hear ourselves when speaking to others face to face as to how we sound to them.
Probably well-spoken is how I'd describe my speaking voice from past video family recordings, as opposed to " posh ".

I love all accents I think we’d be a very dull nation if we all spoke the 1950’s BBC English . Imo it’s progress that we’re not judged by our accent.

Not everyone has a regional accent. Received Pronunciation is the same all over the country.

Anniebach I agree re the 'Welsh' accent.
There is no such thing - it differs just as English accents do.
Some are a cross between Gloucestershire and Wales, between Cheshire and Wales, lilting, harsher city accents - all very different.
Mid-Wales and the English accents of native Welsh speakers are different again.

I wonder which particular Welsh accent were you thinking of, Lois?

I didn't think I had an accent until I heard myself on the answerphone!
So much for my elocution lessons at school.

Northern is lovely, sorry I can’t be more specific, I know the north is a big place

Dislike midlands and Essex

True Callistemon I lived for a while in Welshpool, Shropshire accent through the town.

Carms and Cards , counties next to Brecon and Radnor , accents so different to Mid Wales. Even South Wales has different accents and North Wales is so different too.

I have lived in Mid Wales since 1971, when I hear a recording of my voice , nothing like my daughters and grandchildren.

I blame that film ‘How Green Was My Valley’, only one Welsh actor, the rest were Americans ?

I was born in the East End and lived there until I was seven when we moved to Kent. In Kent I first went to a primary school and then when I was 11 I was sent to private school. Some of the parents of the other girls at the school were very nasty about my accent. Not to my face, but I heard them talking about my voice at picking up time. I was rarely asked to play or tea after school and I can't help feeling it was because of my accent. It is something I have never forgotten.

I love the gentle West Country accents but loathe Geordie, Lancashire, Mancunian and Birmingham ones. They sound so miserable and morose.

And Tom Jones, Anniebach! (Pontypridd

I used to travel by train from Newcastle to Carlisle. fascinating to hear the accents......Bardon Mill,Riding Mill, Haltwhistle the cusp before you hit Cumbria....

Do you ascribe characteristics to people with accents? I find Black Country accent and people warm, funny humorous.

I am happy to have an "Essix" accent having been born in East London and moving northward to the Suffolk border over the years. My accent adapts according to the situation, but I don't have a "phone voice" like some people I know. Think Hyacinth Bucket!

I like Welsh accents. These days I don't think accents hold you back unless you speak with such a strong one that people find it hard to understand you. I don't like to hear grammatically incorrect speech.

You can have an accent without speaking ungrammatically.

Yes Callistemon and I have to say Richard Burton, Pontrhydyfen , ?

Richard Burton! I could listen to him all day, beautiful voice.
I love the accent from Scotland`s West coast, but find Glasgow accents difficult. I love Welsh accents, but worry that when Welsh people speak Welsh in front of me that they`re not being very complimentary. I adore the Geordie and Scouse accents.

Richard Burton - just thought of his reading of Under Milk Wood and gone weak at the knees. Will now swap listening to this instead of watching Montalbano