Accent

I was fine and had a good time. My parents were overseas and I accepted that I had to go. I was a very much loved child so did not feel rejected. However saw many of my pals really unhappy... mostly those who could have been day girls but whose parents chose their social life over their child! On our walk to church on Sunday some girls walked past their homes and some girls from nearby villages whos neighbours were day girls.

farnorth I was really dissapointed! I am totally unmusical and would have benefitted hugely from learning an instrument.

I have a Wearside accent, think Denise Robertson God rest her soul. She and I were brought up and lived within a few miles of each other.

Slight cockney.

Slight Brummie though some can't hear it. I drop into north London when I'm there.
I also do the echoing the accent of the person I'm speaking to thing, like Gagagran.

Mine is known as Estuary English. The accents from around the Thames Estuary have blended over time.
I slip into an East London, not quite Cockney (Mum was born in sight of Bow Bells)
easily. DS has lived most of his life on the Essex/Suffolk border and so has a Colchester twang.
It has been interesting going to GN meetups and trying to place the accent as they don't always fit the place.

Mine is a mix of the areas I have lived from Estuary English to Somerset via Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Buckinghamshire, oops forgot Wiltshire. Must be very odd to hear. DBH hails from Wales, people now often think he is South African.

I'm 100% Cardiff and my wife is Welsh Valleys. As Anniebach pointed out, Wales has many different accents and we do tend to be aware of these small differences. When we were in Florida a few years ago we were asked several times whether we were Australian!

I have a Cumbrian accent. It's completely different from Geordie, or Lancashire. We were on holiday once in Blackpool as children. Two ladies staying in the guest house asked if we were Scottish or Welsh as they couldn't make it out! We were rather taken aback by this and replied that we were English. They looked very puzzled.

Generally, I don't agree that being at a private school affects the way we speak. People speak like their families speak, the first words they hear as infants. I worked at two boarding schools and went to two. As I remember, there was a good variety of ways of speaking, and we just accepted that's how it is. It depended on the way your family spoke and where you came from. It didn't matter. This was in the 1950s and 1960s and I accept things might have changed.

I hate the word 'posh'! To me it means 'affected'. It seems to be fashionable to label a narrow stratum of society 'posh' simply because of the way they speak, ignoring any other, more important, qualities they might exhibit!

I agree that elocution lessons for children can blur the situation, and are a pity; the exception possibly would be for children who have some condition that prevents clear speech, who would be helped.

Have you noticed how "posh"people often speak slowly and enunciate their words? Is it to make themselves sound more important?

Or they, like everyone else, might just be speaking the way they heard families speak...unless of course it is Mrs Bucket

Lefthanded, Australian? that gave me the giggles .

So who in the public eye could be regarded as posh?

I still have a Scots accent after 45 years in England, though my sons can't 'hear' it. When I hear myself on my answering service, I sound far more Scots than I think I do. It's not an accent that comes from an identifiable locality. Born and brought up in Ayrshire I was discouraged by my parents from speaking with the local accent which admittedly is not the most attractive. My granny, born and brought up in Leicester, lived most of her adult life in Scotland and never lost her Leicestershire accent.

Anniebach Jacob Rees-Mogg?

I have what is known as "Received Pronunciation" - (BBC talk!) ..... Sometimes called 'Oxford English' - in other words - no accent at all!

I was born in North London but grew up in West Suffolk. The accent there was not as strong as East Suffolk and certainly not as strong as Norfolk. Despite having lived abroad for 40+ years I think I still have it. Not too posh, but not exactly Estuary or Cockney.

Here in Germany there are very many regional accents and no one is really looked down upon for having one. Many top politicians come from Bavaria or Swabia and have very distinctive accents. The big engineering companies (Daimler, Porsche, Siemens) are based in those areas, and the big chemical companies (BASF, Bayer, Boehringer, Hoechst) are based in areas such as the Palatinate and Hesse and are definitely not considered less worthy even if the CEO's have a regional accent.

I remember when I was learning German that it was thought that Hanover had the "correct" accent - that is the one that is taught to foreigners. You couldn't really reach German in a Bavariian or Fresian accent in foreign schools.

Having said that, many comedians cash in on their dialect and can say absolutely anything and have people rolling in the aisles, provided they are not in their home town, where they then have to tell real jokes, because the audience talks like them!

I think any voice with an accent or better still a dialect is really sexy in any language. Do they have surveys done in the UK where the various accents are graded by sexiness?

When DD did her German O level oral exam the examiner later commented to the German teacher that one of the pupils had a Hamburg accent. The teacher knew who he was talking about because DD spent time in Hamburg with my sister and BIL. Now DD lives in Brussels her French is more Belgian than it used to be.

I have a Birmingham accent. It has been described by some as the worst accent in the UK I rather like it. People confuse the Birmingham accent with the Black Country accent which is broader and more pronounced - quite different from the 'Brummie' one.

BBbevan, Rees Mog , when he was standing in one election he was accompanied by his Nanny, and I do not mean grandmother , I read that being posh means people who are not snobs because they have nothing to resent , the middle classes are listed as not posh because they are snobs

I was in Essex for a large chunk of my childhood and my mother moved heaven and earth to make sure I did not speak with an Essex accent - elocution lessons and the whole caboodle. As a result I hate to hear recordings of my speech as I sound like the blooming queen mother!

For those who say they have no accent at all....everyone has an accent. Returning to Pygmalion, Professor Higgins was able to place people's place of birth, parentage,class, education and life experience from listening to the various vowel traces as they speak. An exaggeration perhaps! To we regional accent speakers, RP is easily identifiable as a particular way of speaking, although not perhaps from one area.

I have a softened Belfast accent. It indicates where I come from, but also my 'class'. People from N Ireland will recognise that it is different from the Ulster Scots accent mentioned previously. It is also the result of my mother's English parentage as all that side of my family were from Cheshire and Yorkshire so I was brought up having to make myself understood.

We do speak very quickly in N. Ireland though.

Has anyone noticed that RP speakers tend to have difficulty understanding regional accents? I wonder why that would be.

I've still got a slight Geordie accent (which helps when speaking french.)
One of my uncles was a sheep farmer in the Scottish Borders - he died not long ago aged 99! We stayed with them often, and I noticed he had a broad Northumbrian accent when chatting to the local shepherds. But when he was with the "hoi poloi" of the area he sounded very cultured. His farm belonged to the Duke of Northumberland, I was with him once when we met the Duke.
Yonks ago, I was only a young teenager.

Thanks pittcity I have just discovered mine is Estuary English rather than Kentish. I'd not come across the term but as I've lived in sight of the Thames Estuary all my life I guess that's what I am.