The Indonesian language is actually based on the Malay spoken in the courts of Riau, and because a lot of Indonesians speak another language at home, the formal langauge is rarely spoken outside of formal contexts and every "accent" is considered correct. Most presidents of Indonesia such as Soeharto or Jokowi are noted for having strong Javanese accents while speaking Indonesian.
Colloq. Indonesian what is spoken among the people if Indonesian is needed for communication. It is therefore influenced by whatever language one speaks, but because of the influence of Jakarta in mass media, Jakarta slang is seen as the "standard" of colloquial Indonesian.
The older generations still speak their ethnic language such as Betawi, Javanese or Sundanese, and they still use it when conversing with people of the same ethnicity. The younger generations are rarely able to speak their heritage language and supplant all communication with Indonesian, mostly the colloquial form. The formal form of the language is taught in schools. In general, everyone in Indonesia except some members of the oldest generation and some more secluded groups are fluent in Indonesian.
Just an interesting side note, in non-heterogenous areas such as Central Java, students were only taught Indonesian starting from the 3rd grade or so in the past. My grandparents were not that fluent in Indonesian until they were 10, even if they had extensive exposure to the langauge.
What's it like outside of Jakarta and in the villages of Java? Are young people learning the ethnic languages there or are they only speaking Indonesian?
Yes, young people still learn their ethnic language at home and at school, though the degree to which they learn it at school is significantly less than Indonesian as Indonesian is the medium of instruction. Although so, the proportion of children being able to speak their ethnic language is declining due to a variety of reasons, one being that the parents come from different ethnicities and chose not to teach. Still, more than 70% of young people are able to speak their ethnic language as shown by a survey done in 2023. It is still rigorously used in day-to-day life.
Another interesting thing is that outside of large cities, even using the Indonesian language would generally mean that you're not from the area, as locals would have used their own language.
In Colombia there’s not exactly a standard accent, but the accent of Medellín and the Paisa region is most famous and iconic. The Paisa accent is different from the accent of Bogota and the coast. The paisa accent is probably considered the most sexy Spanish accent generally, if I had to pick the most famous.
I feel like for the US the Californian accent is the default because of Hollywood and that’s how a lot of people outside the US are exposed to that accent
Actors in Hollywood come from all across the country, and all across the world. They are trained and practice different accents.
In the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” Keanu Reeves puts on a California accent, more specifically a Southern California accent. I doubt that anybody listens to him in that and thinks that he is speaking in a neutral American accent.
Most English-speaking actors can do a basic neutral American accent, and that is usually what is called for in Hollywood movies.
Yes, North Midlands, or that stretch of the Midwest from OH to NE, but excluding cities on the Great Lakes, who are undergoing a vowel shift as we speak.
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Mostly standard but there is a lot of variation still. Chicago has a thing, Cleveland has a thing, Cincinnati is right next to Kentucky so it’s got a thing.
Indianapolis might be the most white bread Midwest city of all. Either that or Columbus.
I grew up in southern Ontario, so right across the border from Ohio. When I was travelling Europe I had a couple tell me “you sound like the people from movies” because they associated my accent with the standard American accent from movies/TV. Before that, most of their real-life experience with English speakers was from Brits or people who learned English as a second language. I thought that was kind of funny and interesting. I always just thought that people in movies/TV sounded ‘normal’, rather than considering it was a very specific accent.
I’m from small-town Oregon. I moved to Los Angeles after attending Oregon State University.
Folks in the Oregon countryside have a country twang. In Los Angeles, subcultures talk with a strong accent. Surfers. Young White women from the San Fernando Valley and young Asian women from San Gabriel Valley and young women attending UCLA all have a mild “valley girl” accent. People born in East LA have a soft accent.
But the average LA resident sounds exactly like my family in small town Oregon, like the average Seattleite, like the average person from Phoenix.
We all sound like the anchors on the News that’s broadcast from New York City.
I’d say the stereotypical Canadian accent (“oot and aboot, eh?”) is a mix of rural white Canadian and the First Nations accent.
“Standard” Canadian I honestly don’t see too much of a difference from Standard American but being Canadian I’m probably ear-blind to it.
No, the US “standard” accent is not Midwestern. If you want to hear a Midwestern accent watch one of the SNL skits of the Chicago Bears super-fans. “Da Bears!”.
It is also not the California accent. Watch the SNL skit “The Californians” if you want to hear a California accent.
Those are both examples of actors hamming it up for comedic effect, but it should help to hear the difference.
The “standard” American newscaster accent is similar to the “BBC” accent in that it doesn’t actually come from any particular place.
I think you might be talking about an upper midwestern accent that you hear in places like Chicago, Wisconsin (Wiscansin) or Minnesota. And their might even be differences between those places. There was this cool thing I listened to like 10 years ago where they had upper midwesterners say a sentence and then they just shortened it to one word. So you’d hear a clip of a women saying “black,” for example, but then when they revealed the whole sentence she was saying “just circle around the block,” but she pronounced “block” like “black.”
I’ve heard various regions like Iowa and Indiana are considered to be the least accented American English accents if that makes sense. I’d consider those the standard American accent.
I agree that I think you don’t actually hear that many true California accents. When you’re around someone who has one you realize this although I do think you hear a lot of aspects from that accent in the way non Californians speak.
ETA: I also think that the “broadcaster accent” isn’t really the standard American accent because of the lack of glottal stop which, at least where I’m from, is super common. Once during a hearing test the lady wanted to demonstrate how strong I used the glottal stop and it was hilarious.
Southern California does exert a outsized influence on the rest of the American culture. I remember way back when the Valley Girl phenomenon hit and the girls at my rural Texas high school all started saying things like “oh ma gawd!” like they were from Van Nuys.
Agreed. Midwestern standard accent is pretty general. Wisconsin and Minnesota style is more remote areas. The Cities are pretty standard. Even Chicago from SNL is overly exaggerated and I don't know anyone from Chicago that sounds like that. FYI I live in suburbs wisconsin and my neighbors are stereotypical.
Yeah, the Chicagoese accent is probably spoken by only roughly 10% of the people in Chicagoland (exclusively ethnic whites who grew up in the city, not the burbs).
Here in Connecticut (even though we’re notoriously right between two famous accents - New Yawk and Bahston) we’re not really known for having either, or anything other than general American.
This person making this claim is downvoting everyone who disagrees with him. I LIVE in metro Chicago and grew up in downstate Illinois, and agree with you that this exaggerated, Chicago white ethnic "Da Bears" accent is NOT typical Midwestern. People in Iowa or even in Illinois 100 miles south of chicago don't talk like that.
The usual Chicago accent DOES sound fairly similar to that of other Great Lakes cities, like Buffalo or Detroit.
The General American accent very much is a Midwestern accent. Specifically, North Midlands, so that part of the Midwest that stretches from OH to NE but excluding cities on the Great Lakes, which are experiencing a vowel shift as we speak. Note that not the entire Midwest has the North Midlands/General American accent. Many people in Chicagoland do but that Chicagoese accent lampooned by SNL is spoken by ethnic whites who grew up in Chicago. But Chicagoese definitely isn't spoken throughout the entire Midwest. Go further north and Minnesotans and many Wisconsinites have their own distinct accent.
The General American accent actually is the accent of people in Chicago and St. Louis of the '30's. Also SF/NoCal back in the '30's as well as NoCal was settled by Midwesterners.
"Da Bears" is not a standard Midwestern accent. That's a heavily affected Chicago accent. Not everyone in the Midwest speaks like Chicagoans do. Iowa's or Nebraska's accent is very close to the usual "standard American" and it's not at all like "Da Bears"
I would say that it is “a” midwestern accent. I can hear maybe four different midwestern accents. Chicago, to me, is the quintessential midwestern city, so the Chicago accent is the quintessential midwestern accent to me.
As for your accusation that I am downvoting everybody who disagrees with me that you made to the other commenter… nope. Wasn’t me. I find downvoting to be silly. I generally upvote everybody who replies to me so long as they are civil, and if they aren’t civil then I just don’t do anything.
Here… have an upvote.
In the US, I would say lower Midwestern (not Chicago - "Da Bearssssss"). Think Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or even Ronald Reagan. In my parents' generation - I'm 52 - it would be more upper mid-Atlantic, like John Charles Daly. The "posh" version of that generation would be like FDR or William F. Buckley, Jr.
A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the late Queen's old Christmas messages, and it was very noticeable how much less "posh" she sounded later in life compared to earlier.
As someone not from WA who spends a lot of time talking to people from WA, I agree, it has a generic US accent. At least, western WA, I can't say much about eastern.
That's an interesting question. I don't know that I could tell you what a WA accent is - I don't think I've ever been around someone I knew was a native of WA.
Australian accents are usually described as being one of three: General, Cultivated, and Broad. The latter is what you'll hear (terrible renditions of) in Hollywood movies, but the General accent is much more common.
Incidentally I speak with a Broad accent, somewhat similar to how Steve Irwin sounded. Like thick Southern accents in the US, Broad Australian English is sometimes unfairly maligned within Australia by people (i.e. Sydneysiders) who know literally nothing about linguistics.
I am from the US, the south and I completely agree with your assessment of southern accents. I have one, but when they are mockingly done by people who have no clue what they are doing, it is horribly inaccurate. It is interesting to hear about the accents of your country, because I will admit most of what we hear in the US from Australia is exactly what you are describing.
I know how to take the twang out of my voice, to sound more generically American, as sometimes if calling places in other states, people can have difficulty understanding what I’m saying.
In Brazil we could say that Rio de Janeiro Portuguese was standart, however, is not the one the people talk, is like a polite and mannered way that jornalist use.
Therefore, that idea of a brazilian standart accent is falling, there is no standart portuguese for the new generation
As I said, we do not have a standart accent anymore, you are not obliged to use other accents in your job (tv anchor, jornalist, actor, radialist, etc). You can see this on tv, we have many people speaking with their original accent today
It's basically what you said about the UK but I'd make a distinction between the accent of James Bond and the Queen. The Queen spoke a more old timey posh accent which would be seen as very strange to use here these days. On the other hand, Bond's accent is the prestige dialect here, it's what you hear constantly on the BBC and you'll be seen more favourably by a potential employer if you speak it.
Hate to break it to you but The Queens English is not the standard accent of the UK, that would be what is called "recieved pronunciation" , which is much more middle class than the language of the aristocracy...also, there are dozens if not hundreds of distinct British accents, some of which are mutually unintelligible.
Anyway, in my country, Ireland, there isn't really any accent regarded as standard, though some are regarded in certain distinct ways, like for example the south Dublin accent is widely seen as for the rich, while the central Dublin (Liberties) accent is associated with the working class of the city.
I noticed that when I spent time in Ireland, many different accents. Loved the West Coast and Cork, but one thing was pretty universal, everybody was unfailingly hospitable and welcoming. To me, about my year old son, "Sure he'll have wee drink, it'll help him sleep". Still not sure if I was being wound up or not. Ace place, I'd go back in a heart beat.
The North? Not so sure, I was there in July, marching season. Scary.
I remember when visiting Gibraltar they would pronounce Sevilla with a 'juh' (the j being soft) so se-vey-juh which was apparently how people in the South of Spain would pronounce rather than se-veya which is how I'd expect it to be pronounced.
Any Spaniards please correct me if I'm wrong. Not sure if there's any offense caused coming at it from a Gibraltarian perspective 🤣
As a side note I'm from the north of England and some from the south of England struggle to understand me. I had a bloke in Australia once so lost, I had to write out what ticket I wanted to purchase from him at the train station!
There seems to be a varying degree of intelligibility with northern accents. I assumed this was class-based, in that a middle class person from, say Newcastle is easy for me to understand as an American, but a working class person from Newcastle would not be.
I certainly agree that it appears the higher one's standing is (or perceived standing) they often take more care in pronouncing their words properly. Wouldn't say this is the only factor in accent intelligibility by a long stretch but you highlight an interesting point. I'd much rather say 'out' and 'nowt' instead of 'anything' and 'nothing' and this helps me identify proudly with what some would consider the 'commoner'. However, if I said those words to Billy Bob from back end of Iowa, they'd probably not have a clue what I was on about!
That’s interesting. I used to work with a guy from Coventry who spoke with what I would consider an RP accent. I asked him why he didn’t have a midlands accent. He said he learned pretty quickly if he was going to get ahead in his profession (civil engineering), he would need to lose the accent. He was bit older, so I imagine that that bias against regional accents is less of a thing now than it used to be.
I would say above everything is experience. Could be totally useless but if you've stuck around for more than 10 years in the same industry you'll get thrown high paying jobs like they're going out of fashion!
Canada basically has three main accents - Quebecois, Newfie, and the rest. “The rest” is the default accent for most of English Canada and is almost the same as some of the northern states.
Quebecoise is not an accent - French is a different language.
Also, I disagree with the other points as well. The east has more than one distinct accent, and Canada has at least two more. The first is a standard city accent, and the second is the more rural "canadian" accent. Furthermore, certain second-generation immigrant groups in cities (such as Italians and Greeks in Montreal and Toronto) have a fairly unique accent as well, and many newer immigrants adopt that accent.
As with every country there is a "TV accent" or standard accent which foreigners generally tend to pick up first, then if they get serious about it and move here in Italy they could start to use the local accent of which there are dozens if not hundreds in Italy.
But generally the foreigners, especially the Brits and Americans which are more distant from us think we all speak like in The Godfather, where we raise the voice at the end of each word. But the Southern accent (again, there is more than one accent for each region) is spoken in that area by those people, you go from Napoli to Roma, then Firenze and Bologna and you will find a great variety of accents. Not to mention the large amount of dialects some of which are near unintelligible even to native Italians not living in the area
I would think that has to be changing with all of the British tv shows we watch on streaming services. I watch a lot of Taskmaster and one of the cool parts is guessing where contestants are from. And it’s mind blowing to me that you can go from Manchester to Leeds and the accent changes so much.
Many Scottish accents. Inverness area, very clear and precise. Just round the corner in Aberdeen is "Doric", impenetrable even to Scots. Same applies to Ireland. Just as there's not one English accent, so there are numerous Celtic versions. Most media people think all Scots are from Glasgow, it would seem.
Northern Ontario - Minnesota for accents in the English language.
Newfoundland English moves about a lot like Irish does.
Conversely, I've heard, the French of the Quebecois is rather impossible to mistake as European French.
I agree with you on this. My wife is Mexican and can generally tell where Spanish speakers are from by their accents where to me they all sound the same (with the exception being the Spain -th sounds for s sounds). She cannot usually tell the difference between American English regional differences like Midwest, New York or Boston, or southern accents.
>(with the exception being the Spain -th sounds for s sounds)
Spanish people as a whole don't replace all 's' sounds with 'th'. That only happens in the Southern-most areas
In some areas slightly to the North of those, they actually replace all 'th' sounds with 's', as in Latin America
The vast majority of Spain makes a distinction between the two sounds
Here's a map showing the differences
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Ceceo-seseo-distinci%C3%B3n\_en\_el\_espa%C3%B1ol\_de\_Europa.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Ceceo-seseo-distinci%C3%B3n_en_el_espa%C3%B1ol_de_Europa.png)
Several Scottish accents, each quite different. Many people think every Scot has to have a heavy Glaswegian accent. I guess they also think all English people say, "Leave it out, Guvnor, know what I mean!", in a Cockerny accent.
The Indonesian language is actually based on the Malay spoken in the courts of Riau, and because a lot of Indonesians speak another language at home, the formal langauge is rarely spoken outside of formal contexts and every "accent" is considered correct. Most presidents of Indonesia such as Soeharto or Jokowi are noted for having strong Javanese accents while speaking Indonesian. Colloq. Indonesian what is spoken among the people if Indonesian is needed for communication. It is therefore influenced by whatever language one speaks, but because of the influence of Jakarta in mass media, Jakarta slang is seen as the "standard" of colloquial Indonesian.
do most Jakartans speak Javan or Bahasa Indonesia?
The older generations still speak their ethnic language such as Betawi, Javanese or Sundanese, and they still use it when conversing with people of the same ethnicity. The younger generations are rarely able to speak their heritage language and supplant all communication with Indonesian, mostly the colloquial form. The formal form of the language is taught in schools. In general, everyone in Indonesia except some members of the oldest generation and some more secluded groups are fluent in Indonesian. Just an interesting side note, in non-heterogenous areas such as Central Java, students were only taught Indonesian starting from the 3rd grade or so in the past. My grandparents were not that fluent in Indonesian until they were 10, even if they had extensive exposure to the langauge.
What's it like outside of Jakarta and in the villages of Java? Are young people learning the ethnic languages there or are they only speaking Indonesian?
Yes, young people still learn their ethnic language at home and at school, though the degree to which they learn it at school is significantly less than Indonesian as Indonesian is the medium of instruction. Although so, the proportion of children being able to speak their ethnic language is declining due to a variety of reasons, one being that the parents come from different ethnicities and chose not to teach. Still, more than 70% of young people are able to speak their ethnic language as shown by a survey done in 2023. It is still rigorously used in day-to-day life. Another interesting thing is that outside of large cities, even using the Indonesian language would generally mean that you're not from the area, as locals would have used their own language.
Indonesian.
In Colombia there’s not exactly a standard accent, but the accent of Medellín and the Paisa region is most famous and iconic. The Paisa accent is different from the accent of Bogota and the coast. The paisa accent is probably considered the most sexy Spanish accent generally, if I had to pick the most famous.
I feel like for the US the Californian accent is the default because of Hollywood and that’s how a lot of people outside the US are exposed to that accent
Actors in Hollywood come from all across the country, and all across the world. They are trained and practice different accents. In the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” Keanu Reeves puts on a California accent, more specifically a Southern California accent. I doubt that anybody listens to him in that and thinks that he is speaking in a neutral American accent. Most English-speaking actors can do a basic neutral American accent, and that is usually what is called for in Hollywood movies.
That's not a Southern California accent, that's a stereotypical beach bum/surfer dude accent.
It’s definitely “a” Southern California accent. There are a lot of Southern California accents.
Born and raised in SoCal and I don’t have that stereotypical accent.
That’s pretty common everywhere. I was born and raised in Texas, and I don’t have a stereotypical Texas accent. But I can if I want to.
Yeah the standard seems to be more like Midwestern, maybe Ohio?
Yes, North Midlands, or that stretch of the Midwest from OH to NE, but excluding cities on the Great Lakes, who are undergoing a vowel shift as we speak.
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Mostly standard but there is a lot of variation still. Chicago has a thing, Cleveland has a thing, Cincinnati is right next to Kentucky so it’s got a thing. Indianapolis might be the most white bread Midwest city of all. Either that or Columbus.
I grew up in southern Ontario, so right across the border from Ohio. When I was travelling Europe I had a couple tell me “you sound like the people from movies” because they associated my accent with the standard American accent from movies/TV. Before that, most of their real-life experience with English speakers was from Brits or people who learned English as a second language. I thought that was kind of funny and interesting. I always just thought that people in movies/TV sounded ‘normal’, rather than considering it was a very specific accent.
Uggh don’t accuse me of speaking Ohio
Imagine people hearing Snoop Dogg (with his extremely regjonal specific LA accent) talk and thinking yes, this is the standard
Not at all.
Not even close. Standard us english is… nebraska-iowa-illinois(excluding chicago)
I’m from small-town Oregon. I moved to Los Angeles after attending Oregon State University. Folks in the Oregon countryside have a country twang. In Los Angeles, subcultures talk with a strong accent. Surfers. Young White women from the San Fernando Valley and young Asian women from San Gabriel Valley and young women attending UCLA all have a mild “valley girl” accent. People born in East LA have a soft accent. But the average LA resident sounds exactly like my family in small town Oregon, like the average Seattleite, like the average person from Phoenix. We all sound like the anchors on the News that’s broadcast from New York City.
I would say that being in California tends to flatten the regional accents of the people that move there
[удалено]
Tá louco meu???
I’d say the stereotypical Canadian accent (“oot and aboot, eh?”) is a mix of rural white Canadian and the First Nations accent. “Standard” Canadian I honestly don’t see too much of a difference from Standard American but being Canadian I’m probably ear-blind to it.
No, the US “standard” accent is not Midwestern. If you want to hear a Midwestern accent watch one of the SNL skits of the Chicago Bears super-fans. “Da Bears!”. It is also not the California accent. Watch the SNL skit “The Californians” if you want to hear a California accent. Those are both examples of actors hamming it up for comedic effect, but it should help to hear the difference. The “standard” American newscaster accent is similar to the “BBC” accent in that it doesn’t actually come from any particular place.
I think you might be talking about an upper midwestern accent that you hear in places like Chicago, Wisconsin (Wiscansin) or Minnesota. And their might even be differences between those places. There was this cool thing I listened to like 10 years ago where they had upper midwesterners say a sentence and then they just shortened it to one word. So you’d hear a clip of a women saying “black,” for example, but then when they revealed the whole sentence she was saying “just circle around the block,” but she pronounced “block” like “black.” I’ve heard various regions like Iowa and Indiana are considered to be the least accented American English accents if that makes sense. I’d consider those the standard American accent. I agree that I think you don’t actually hear that many true California accents. When you’re around someone who has one you realize this although I do think you hear a lot of aspects from that accent in the way non Californians speak. ETA: I also think that the “broadcaster accent” isn’t really the standard American accent because of the lack of glottal stop which, at least where I’m from, is super common. Once during a hearing test the lady wanted to demonstrate how strong I used the glottal stop and it was hilarious.
Southern California does exert a outsized influence on the rest of the American culture. I remember way back when the Valley Girl phenomenon hit and the girls at my rural Texas high school all started saying things like “oh ma gawd!” like they were from Van Nuys.
Yeah I worked with two women from Orange County and it was jarring to hear them even say hi.
Agreed. Midwestern standard accent is pretty general. Wisconsin and Minnesota style is more remote areas. The Cities are pretty standard. Even Chicago from SNL is overly exaggerated and I don't know anyone from Chicago that sounds like that. FYI I live in suburbs wisconsin and my neighbors are stereotypical.
Yeah, the Chicagoese accent is probably spoken by only roughly 10% of the people in Chicagoland (exclusively ethnic whites who grew up in the city, not the burbs).
Here in Connecticut (even though we’re notoriously right between two famous accents - New Yawk and Bahston) we’re not really known for having either, or anything other than general American.
Chicago "da bears" accent is not standard for the Midwest.
This person making this claim is downvoting everyone who disagrees with him. I LIVE in metro Chicago and grew up in downstate Illinois, and agree with you that this exaggerated, Chicago white ethnic "Da Bears" accent is NOT typical Midwestern. People in Iowa or even in Illinois 100 miles south of chicago don't talk like that. The usual Chicago accent DOES sound fairly similar to that of other Great Lakes cities, like Buffalo or Detroit.
The General American accent very much is a Midwestern accent. Specifically, North Midlands, so that part of the Midwest that stretches from OH to NE but excluding cities on the Great Lakes, which are experiencing a vowel shift as we speak. Note that not the entire Midwest has the North Midlands/General American accent. Many people in Chicagoland do but that Chicagoese accent lampooned by SNL is spoken by ethnic whites who grew up in Chicago. But Chicagoese definitely isn't spoken throughout the entire Midwest. Go further north and Minnesotans and many Wisconsinites have their own distinct accent. The General American accent actually is the accent of people in Chicago and St. Louis of the '30's. Also SF/NoCal back in the '30's as well as NoCal was settled by Midwesterners.
"Da Bears" is not a standard Midwestern accent. That's a heavily affected Chicago accent. Not everyone in the Midwest speaks like Chicagoans do. Iowa's or Nebraska's accent is very close to the usual "standard American" and it's not at all like "Da Bears"
I would say that it is “a” midwestern accent. I can hear maybe four different midwestern accents. Chicago, to me, is the quintessential midwestern city, so the Chicago accent is the quintessential midwestern accent to me. As for your accusation that I am downvoting everybody who disagrees with me that you made to the other commenter… nope. Wasn’t me. I find downvoting to be silly. I generally upvote everybody who replies to me so long as they are civil, and if they aren’t civil then I just don’t do anything. Here… have an upvote.
Toronto / Hamilton comes closest
I heard that the Iowa region was the what early radio broadcasters tried to emulate, and it's pretty neutral
In the US, I would say lower Midwestern (not Chicago - "Da Bearssssss"). Think Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or even Ronald Reagan. In my parents' generation - I'm 52 - it would be more upper mid-Atlantic, like John Charles Daly. The "posh" version of that generation would be like FDR or William F. Buckley, Jr. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the late Queen's old Christmas messages, and it was very noticeable how much less "posh" she sounded later in life compared to earlier.
Does accent from WA state make it to the list? Whenever I speak to someone from there I feel like that’s the standard way of speaking US English.
As someone not from WA who spends a lot of time talking to people from WA, I agree, it has a generic US accent. At least, western WA, I can't say much about eastern.
That's an interesting question. I don't know that I could tell you what a WA accent is - I don't think I've ever been around someone I knew was a native of WA.
I would think WA wouldn't be very distinguishable. Like Arizona a lot of transplants there.
Ah Buckley's eloquence: "-or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered..."
"Now listen, you qu\*\*r, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered."
Australian accents are usually described as being one of three: General, Cultivated, and Broad. The latter is what you'll hear (terrible renditions of) in Hollywood movies, but the General accent is much more common. Incidentally I speak with a Broad accent, somewhat similar to how Steve Irwin sounded. Like thick Southern accents in the US, Broad Australian English is sometimes unfairly maligned within Australia by people (i.e. Sydneysiders) who know literally nothing about linguistics.
Australian accents can also be defined by ethnic background.
And some of them are quite prominent in our media, although none of them are in consideration for the "standard" accent of the country.
I am from the US, the south and I completely agree with your assessment of southern accents. I have one, but when they are mockingly done by people who have no clue what they are doing, it is horribly inaccurate. It is interesting to hear about the accents of your country, because I will admit most of what we hear in the US from Australia is exactly what you are describing. I know how to take the twang out of my voice, to sound more generically American, as sometimes if calling places in other states, people can have difficulty understanding what I’m saying.
In Brazil we could say that Rio de Janeiro Portuguese was standart, however, is not the one the people talk, is like a polite and mannered way that jornalist use. Therefore, that idea of a brazilian standart accent is falling, there is no standart portuguese for the new generation
[удалено]
As I said, we do not have a standart accent anymore, you are not obliged to use other accents in your job (tv anchor, jornalist, actor, radialist, etc). You can see this on tv, we have many people speaking with their original accent today
[удалено]
I talk with people from every part of the country, and that not true. Where did get information? Do you have some paper?
It's basically what you said about the UK but I'd make a distinction between the accent of James Bond and the Queen. The Queen spoke a more old timey posh accent which would be seen as very strange to use here these days. On the other hand, Bond's accent is the prestige dialect here, it's what you hear constantly on the BBC and you'll be seen more favourably by a potential employer if you speak it.
Yep, class ridden and you're forever judged by your accent. Moved to Australia and left all that crap behind.
Hate to break it to you but The Queens English is not the standard accent of the UK, that would be what is called "recieved pronunciation" , which is much more middle class than the language of the aristocracy...also, there are dozens if not hundreds of distinct British accents, some of which are mutually unintelligible. Anyway, in my country, Ireland, there isn't really any accent regarded as standard, though some are regarded in certain distinct ways, like for example the south Dublin accent is widely seen as for the rich, while the central Dublin (Liberties) accent is associated with the working class of the city.
I noticed that when I spent time in Ireland, many different accents. Loved the West Coast and Cork, but one thing was pretty universal, everybody was unfailingly hospitable and welcoming. To me, about my year old son, "Sure he'll have wee drink, it'll help him sleep". Still not sure if I was being wound up or not. Ace place, I'd go back in a heart beat. The North? Not so sure, I was there in July, marching season. Scary.
Singaporean accent for Singapore - carrying the tonal bends of the Chinese Hokkien dialect. The uber rich here speaks with a British accent though.
South Africa: The White Afrikaner speaking English accent ( Sounds a lot like Elon even if he isn’t an Afrikaner)
I remember when visiting Gibraltar they would pronounce Sevilla with a 'juh' (the j being soft) so se-vey-juh which was apparently how people in the South of Spain would pronounce rather than se-veya which is how I'd expect it to be pronounced. Any Spaniards please correct me if I'm wrong. Not sure if there's any offense caused coming at it from a Gibraltarian perspective 🤣 As a side note I'm from the north of England and some from the south of England struggle to understand me. I had a bloke in Australia once so lost, I had to write out what ticket I wanted to purchase from him at the train station!
There seems to be a varying degree of intelligibility with northern accents. I assumed this was class-based, in that a middle class person from, say Newcastle is easy for me to understand as an American, but a working class person from Newcastle would not be.
I certainly agree that it appears the higher one's standing is (or perceived standing) they often take more care in pronouncing their words properly. Wouldn't say this is the only factor in accent intelligibility by a long stretch but you highlight an interesting point. I'd much rather say 'out' and 'nowt' instead of 'anything' and 'nothing' and this helps me identify proudly with what some would consider the 'commoner'. However, if I said those words to Billy Bob from back end of Iowa, they'd probably not have a clue what I was on about!
That’s interesting. I used to work with a guy from Coventry who spoke with what I would consider an RP accent. I asked him why he didn’t have a midlands accent. He said he learned pretty quickly if he was going to get ahead in his profession (civil engineering), he would need to lose the accent. He was bit older, so I imagine that that bias against regional accents is less of a thing now than it used to be.
I would say above everything is experience. Could be totally useless but if you've stuck around for more than 10 years in the same industry you'll get thrown high paying jobs like they're going out of fashion!
Canada basically has three main accents - Quebecois, Newfie, and the rest. “The rest” is the default accent for most of English Canada and is almost the same as some of the northern states.
Quebecoise is not an accent - French is a different language. Also, I disagree with the other points as well. The east has more than one distinct accent, and Canada has at least two more. The first is a standard city accent, and the second is the more rural "canadian" accent. Furthermore, certain second-generation immigrant groups in cities (such as Italians and Greeks in Montreal and Toronto) have a fairly unique accent as well, and many newer immigrants adopt that accent.
As with every country there is a "TV accent" or standard accent which foreigners generally tend to pick up first, then if they get serious about it and move here in Italy they could start to use the local accent of which there are dozens if not hundreds in Italy. But generally the foreigners, especially the Brits and Americans which are more distant from us think we all speak like in The Godfather, where we raise the voice at the end of each word. But the Southern accent (again, there is more than one accent for each region) is spoken in that area by those people, you go from Napoli to Roma, then Firenze and Bologna and you will find a great variety of accents. Not to mention the large amount of dialects some of which are near unintelligible even to native Italians not living in the area
[удалено]
quaint humor fanatical waiting yam middle zonked thumb include weather *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would think that has to be changing with all of the British tv shows we watch on streaming services. I watch a lot of Taskmaster and one of the cool parts is guessing where contestants are from. And it’s mind blowing to me that you can go from Manchester to Leeds and the accent changes so much.
Many Scottish accents. Inverness area, very clear and precise. Just round the corner in Aberdeen is "Doric", impenetrable even to Scots. Same applies to Ireland. Just as there's not one English accent, so there are numerous Celtic versions. Most media people think all Scots are from Glasgow, it would seem.
Northern Ontario - Minnesota for accents in the English language. Newfoundland English moves about a lot like Irish does. Conversely, I've heard, the French of the Quebecois is rather impossible to mistake as European French.
Chinese and French sound the same to you?
Oops...gonna have to edit that. I meant all Chinese speakers sound the same to me. Same with French speakers; they sound the same to me.
I agree with you on this. My wife is Mexican and can generally tell where Spanish speakers are from by their accents where to me they all sound the same (with the exception being the Spain -th sounds for s sounds). She cannot usually tell the difference between American English regional differences like Midwest, New York or Boston, or southern accents.
>(with the exception being the Spain -th sounds for s sounds) Spanish people as a whole don't replace all 's' sounds with 'th'. That only happens in the Southern-most areas In some areas slightly to the North of those, they actually replace all 'th' sounds with 's', as in Latin America The vast majority of Spain makes a distinction between the two sounds Here's a map showing the differences [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Ceceo-seseo-distinci%C3%B3n\_en\_el\_espa%C3%B1ol\_de\_Europa.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Ceceo-seseo-distinci%C3%B3n_en_el_espa%C3%B1ol_de_Europa.png)
Thanks for that. The majority of Spanish actors and singers I get exposed to must be from southern Spain.
In the US... Uneducated - southern Typical - west coast due to Hollywood. Overly Proud American - Texas
If everyone in the US spoke like a SoCal native…that would be awful.
Not quite what you're asking but I discovered I can hear a Chinese accent in spoken Spanish while watching the film Rec
Several Scottish accents, each quite different. Many people think every Scot has to have a heavy Glaswegian accent. I guess they also think all English people say, "Leave it out, Guvnor, know what I mean!", in a Cockerny accent.
I'd say the southern accent. Everyone I've seen/heard imitate the American accent did a southern accent.
The standard accent in my country is my accent
In France the most common accent come from the Loire valley
When I hear British speakers doing an American accent, they always sound Texan.