What do you sound like ?

Accentless apparently as I have been born and bred in the South East and spent most of my life here. So, long 'a's for bath, laugh, etc. 'Up' is up, not 'oop' and so on. I am sure I sound 'foreign' to Northeners!

DH also born and bred in SE, but lived for 20 years in Lancs. There he was called 'Southern Dave'. Now he is back South he is referred to as 'Northern Dave'.

I have a west of Scotland accent. I didn't realise how Scottish I sounded until I went on a course in France with a colleague. Everyone said that when listening to the two of us conversing, they couldn't understand a word we were saying, as we talked so fast.

very slight Derbyshire accent I think. I hate the fact that my voice is high pitched.

I am told I sound like an Essex Girl!!! Was born in London and moved to Harlow in Essex when i was two. Stayed there until i was about 11 or 12 then we moved to several different areas, but apparently i still have the Essex accent.

Still very Essex although I haven't lived there for 47 years.

West Country (Zummerzet) accent. I always remember, back in the 60's, how we all laughed when we realised how our accents sounded when we made tapes to send to family in Australia.

Still slightly Geordie, thouh I haven't lived there for ages. I've still got the Geordie vowels, and the intonation, which helps when speaking french. My friend here comes from Devon, and when she speaks french to the locals they can't understand her.

Rather northern and more so if I catch a phone message I have made.
I think my voice sounds strong as people say I don't sound my age on the phone, unlike the H of a friend of mine who sounds really old and doddery and in fact is 6ft 2ins and built like a brick wall.

Posh southerner, unless I'm getting out of the car then similar to a wounded animal

A bit Northern and rather nasal. We have lived in Cornwall since the 1970s and I'm thought posh when we go back north.

Essex (or Essix as we say it!), but in an old fashioned Cockney type way not the modern TOWIE.

Where on earth does this "oop" North thing come from? I am a born and bred Geordie (and proud of it) with a genuine Geordie accent (think Sarah Milllican without the swearing) I have never ever heard anyone saying "oop North" it's simply " up North"


There's no "r" in bath, or laugh or castle etc. I hate to hear plummy accents saying "N..you..car....sell" horrible.

I beg to differ gillybob, the "r" is clearly heard in Bath and castle! It's "h" and "t" that are missing......and "th" is pronounced f...

Where I come from there is absolutely no R in bath or castle Pittcity the word is not "Bar...th" or "car...stle"

I have a northern accent, mostly Cumbrian with a bit of Geordie thrown in for good measure. Once, on holiday in Blackpool as children, my sisters and I were asked if we were Welsh or Scottish, as the lady who was asking couldn't make us out.

No such thing as 'accentless'! I was interested to hear that even in sign language there is regional variation. We all give away something of our origins and personality when we speak.

Born and bred in the West Riding but at age 8 we went to live in the Wirral so to fit in, I absorbed some of that accent and then on return to Yorkshire at age 16 some more of that.

Have lived in South Beds. and now Hampshire for the last 15 years so I think I have a mixed accent. Northern friends and relations think I sound posh, southern friends think I sound northern. I do find myself adjusting my accent depending who I am talking to.

DH has remained a resolute Yorkshireman and I sometimes have to translate for friends and neighbours in the south who can't always understand him. He is quite broad Yorkshire!

I am in a U3A play reading group and I make a point of using my flat midland vowels unless I am supposed to be someone posh.
I feel uncomfortable with saying "parth" and "barth" etc.
We should be proud of local accents.
My Dgs' are in Yorkshire and they were certainly saying "stuck" with an "u" sound as in "put". ( which is near impossible to describe in writing. )

I spent my first 8 yrs in the East Midlands. I then lived for 10 yrs in Bristol from when I was eight, but did not pick up much of a Bristolian accent, however I was thought of as sounding posh!
As long as a regional accent is generally intelligible does it matter? (I do find some accents grate on my ears.)

Slightly posh [Bar..th, grar..ss] with an unmistakable colonial French accent.
My children were appalled when, at primary school, they were asked if their mother was "foreign". They were equally surprised when I said I was! But explained that since I was bilingual from birth, in the colonies, both my French and my English are heavily accented. Oddly enough my siblings and I all have different accents though we were brought up together.
I am learning Spanish and have been told that I have an excellent Castilian accent. Understand that!

I really carn't see wot's wrong with Barth and carstle.

I'm with you gillybob; Northerners say "up North", Southerners say "op Nawth"
I was born in Lancashire and pronounced book and cook as boo-k and coo-k, not buck and cuck, bus not bos, bath not barth (or barf). At 5 I moved to Cornwall and was mocked for my pronunciation of these words, and soon dropped the boo-k and coo-k, but not the short vowels. I picked up the more received pronunciation of my teachers, rather than that of my Cornish school mates. I moved back to the North at 14, but by this time I think that television had broadened people's acceptance of differing accents, and I was assumed to have arrived from somewhere slightly posh; Cheshire, maybe.

I'm perpetually frustrated that actors cannot tell one "country" accent from another. If a programme is set in the countryside it's almost always a kind of general West Country accent, even if it's set in Norfolk or Kent. Or a "North Country" mix, so that on first hearing you have no idea whether it's on the east or west of the country!
When I first started to teach in London the children asked if I was a foreigner!

Gillybob how do you pronounce master?

Many Southerners think "oop North" starts at the Wash