What Do American Accents Sound Like To The British?

[jomei69]

I know there are some British people on Askville, so I want to hear your perspective! How do we sound?

[tai38]

American Accents I just got a get in touch with from a buyer this morning. She is now in Canada, but initially hails from Liverpool, England.  She thinks she sounds "Canadian" but I can undoubtedly hear the Liverpudlian in her voice, possessing spent some time there.   But anyway, she was so funny!  She kept stopping and saying "I could listen to your accent all day"  when I talked!  Now, I just have a fairly bland mid west voice, I consider, absolutely nothing particular, not particularly "sweet" sounding or anything--just plain old Michigan.  She even asked me to say certain words, to hear how they had been in my accent!  She loved it when I stated "Oregon" and believed there was a nice "lilt" when I said New Hampshire, despite the fact that I believed she stated it just like I did.      I can't say this lady is representative of the whole United Kingdom, but she definitely likes the standard "American accent"!     Poppet!'s Suggestions The American Accent Guide, Second Edition: A Full and Complete Course on the Pronunciation and Speaking Style of American English for Men and women of All Language Backgrounds / book and eight CDs Amazon List Cost: $99.00 Employed from: $55.95 Average Customer Rating: four.5 out of 5(based on 26 testimonials) American Accent Training : A Guide to Speaking and Pronouncing American English for Anybody Who Speaks English as a Second Language(Book and CD edition) Amazon List Price: $39.95 Employed from: $24.95 Average Customer Rating: 4.five out of five(based on 66 critiques) Poppet! 77 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please confirm your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.

[Vallen]

We've been conditioned by Hollywood to hear them in certain techniques. So, our perceptions are biased. In Hollywood, a male actor with an upper class British accent will be inevitably cast as either the villain, a individual of authority or somebody cold and distant.   A male with a reduce class accent will be either plucky and likable or conniving.   An upper class female accent will connote beauty and unattainability--sometimes aloofness and frigidity.   A reduce class female accent will connote sexual availability and a significantly much more relaxed, spontaneous outlook on the world.   Now in the course of my life, I've met a lot of Brits of both sexes. My experience is that the linguistic stereotypes hold small water in reality. Sources: The Hollywood History of the Planet   Snow_Leopard's Suggestions This is a really interesting book written by a fascinating author and man. The Hollywood History of the Planet Utilized from: $23.00 Typical Client Rating: five. out of 5(based on 1 testimonials) Snow_Leopard 77 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.

[MacDuff]

I?m not British myself, but you can hear examples of British actors doing bad American accents in various places.  They think it sounds American, so I?d say that?s what an American accent sounds like to them.  I find them quite hilarious. Examples off the top of my head:In the Monty Python "wink wink, nod nod" sketch, that?s supposed to be an American accent.  Really. Watch the movie Dead Again and hear Kenneth Branagh?s atrocious American accent. Eddie Izzard's American accent in Ocean's Thirteen. Ewan MacGregor in Down with Love... his accent is all over the place. When asked to do an American accent, a lot of Brits will give you some variant on a Texas twang. (Hugh Laurie?s American accent, on the other hand... it?s just not fair how brilliant he is.  Emma Thompson also does a bang-up American accent.)

[kienan]

It varies between reasonably bareable to bizarre & utterly annoying! Obviously the USA covers a massive area & there are no doubt a great number of regional dialects/accents that I have never heard: I can only comment from my own experience, which is limited to those Americans I hear on the TV & at the cinema. I have met the odd one or two, who are, generally, less annoying. My cousin is married to a girl from Indiana, & the son of my Grandma?s cousin is married to an American.   Generally speaking, folks here are happy enough to hear American voices in film & Tv: you can turn them off, but would find them difficult to be around all the time. I guess we would get used to it eventually though: like being forced to go to school or work ;)   There was an American girl at my school, she got teased so bad, she had to leave. Having a bizarre name like Chrystal didn?t help. The American accent seems to draw words out longer than they should be: that is what makes the words sound funny. A bizarre example is as follows: the description of a spring being sprung:   English: Boing! American: Boy-Oy-Oy-Oing!   This is an example of a word being rediculously drawn out.   I would say that it is as much the nature of the speaker & the way there words are presented, as anything, that determines how bearable the American voice is to the English ear.   Off the top of my head: the voice of actress Tiffany Grant is a good example of the American voice at it?s most unbearable. A bit like fingernails been drawn along a blackboard.   What puzzles everyone I have ever met is that: many of your ancestors originally left our country sounding just like us, so how has the American accent come about? The folks that left the UK for America would have been appalled to hear how much the English pronunciation has degenerated/evolved, had they lived to hear the language as it as it is now spoken! Another odd thing: is that the corruption was not just limited to a couple of states, or whatever, but has evolved to become the recognisable accent, in its? own right, of what most of us regard as a whole country: the United States!   Those accents that are closest to our own are the most bareable, but those Americans that try to emulate an English accent are just plain annoying! In my opinion, you should stick to what you were brought up with.   After all is said and done, it is not how you sound that matters, but what you say & the way you say it! METACRITIC 77 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.

[favian]

Obviously the USA covers a massive area & there are no doubt a great number of regional dialects/accents that I have never heard: I can only comment from my own experience, which is limited to those Americans I hear on the TV & at the cinema. I have met the odd one or two, who are, generally, less annoying. My cousin is married to a girl from Indiana, & the son of my Grandma?s cousin is married to an American.   Generally speaking, folks here are happy enough to hear American voices in film & Tv: you can turn them off, but would find them difficult to be around all the time. I guess we would get used to it eventually though: like being forced to go to school or work ;)   There was an American girl at my school, she got teased so bad, she had to leave. Having a bizarre name like Chrystal didn?t help. The American accent seems to draw words out longer than they should be: that is what makes the words sound funny. A bizarre example is as follows: the description of a spring being sprung:   English: Boing! American: Boy-Oy-Oy-Oing!   This is an example of a word being rediculously drawn out.   I would say that it is as much the nature of the speaker & the way there words are presented, as anything, that determines how bearable the American voice is to the English ear.   Off the top of my head: the voice of actress Tiffany Grant is a good example of the American voice at it?s most unbearable. A bit like fingernails been drawn along a blackboard.   What puzzles everyone I have ever met is that: many of your ancestors originally left our country sounding just like us, so how has the American accent come about? The folks that left the UK for America would have been appalled to hear how much the English pronunciation has degenerated/evolved, had they lived to hear the language as it as it is now spoken! Another odd thing: is that the corruption was not just limited to a couple of states, or whatever, but has evolved to become the recognisable accent, in its? own right, of what most of us regard as a whole country: the United States!   Those accents that are closest to our own are the most bareable, but those Americans that try to emulate an English accent are just plain annoying! In my opinion, you should stick to what you were brought up with.   After all is said and done, it is not how you sound that matters, but what you say & the way you say it!

[Taurean]

I just got a call from a customer this morning. She is now in Canada, but originally hails from Liverpool, England.  She thinks she sounds "Canadian" but I can definitely hear the Liverpudlian in her voice, having spent some time there.   But anyway, she was so funny!  She kept stopping and saying "I could listen to your accent all day"  when I talked!  Now, I just have a pretty bland mid west voice, I think, nothing special, not especially "sweet" sounding or anything--just plain old Michigan.  She even asked me to say certain words, to hear how they were in my accent!  She loved it when I said "Oregon" and thought there was a nice "lilt" when I said New Hampshire, although I thought she said it just like I did.      I can't say this woman is representative of the entire United Kingdom, but she definitely likes the typical "American accent"!  

[eardley]

In Hollywood, a male actor with an upper class British accent will be inevitably cast as either the villain, a person of authority or someone cold and distant.   A male with a lower class accent will be either plucky and likable or conniving.   An upper class female accent will connote beauty and unattainability--sometimes aloofness and frigidity.   A lower class female accent will connote sexual availability and a much more relaxed, spontaneous outlook on the world.   Now in the course of my life, I've met many Brits of both sexes. My experience is that the linguistic stereotypes hold little water in reality.

[Dunly]

First off I'd like to say this doesn't answer the question but it's a correction to what METACRITIC is wrong, and I felt very strongly that it needed to be said, so without further ado:?many of your ancestors originally left our country sounding just like us, so how has the American accent come about? The folks that left the UK for America would have been appalled to hear how much the English pronunciation has degenerated/evolved, had they lived to hear the language as it as it is now spoken! Another odd thing: is that the corruption was not just limited to a couple of states, or whatever, but has evolved to become the recognisable accent, in its? own right, of what most of us regard as a whole country: the United States!?First of all the English of the 17th century is nothing like that of today?s, whether UK or US. Both of these dialect groups evolved from the same 17th century dialect.However, there has been no corruption, as languages are not static, once they are, they?re dead, like Latin.But as a language is not static, always changing, speakers that get separated over vast distances develope their own peculiarities. So, no, Brits did not leave England sounding British and then started sounding American, this is a myth/misconception. What happened was this: there were some Brits that left England, some that stayed, the language as used in the UK and the US went their own paths.And quoting the book Made in America by Bill Bryson:Talking about adapting to a new world.Where they could, however, the first colonists stuck doggedly to the words of the Old World. They preserved words with the diligence of archivists. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of English terms that would perish from neglect in their homeland live on in America thanks to the essentially conservative nature of the early colonists.Fall for autumn is perhaps the best known. It was a relatively new word at the time of the Pilgrims -- its first use in England was recorded in 1545 -- but it remained in common use in England until the second half of the nineteenth century. Why did it die out there when it did is unknown. The list of words preserved in America is practically endless. Among them: cabin in the sense of a humble dwelling, bug for any kind of insect, hog for a pig, deck as in a pack of cards and jack for a knave within the deck, raise for rear(thou needst to raise thy children properly, let?s just add thou and ye back already, we already speak older English;)And skipping down:The first colonists also brought with them many regional terms, little known outside their private corners of Britain, which prospered on American soil and have since spread to the wider English-speaking world: drool, teeter, hub, swamp, squirt(as a term descriptive of a person), spool(for a thread), to wilt, catercornered, skedaddle(a northern British dialect word meaning to spill something noisy, like a bag of coal), ?And to strengthen the argument of no corruption:silly O.E.(old english) gesælig "happy"(related to sæl "happiness"), from W.Gmc. *sæligas(cf. O.N. sæll "happy," Goth. sels "good, kindhearted," O.S. salig, M.Du. salich, O.H.G. salig, Ger. selig "blessed, happy, blissful"), from PIE base *sel- "happy"(cf. L. solari "to comfort"). The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent"(c.1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable"(late 13c.), to "weak"(c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish"(1570s). Further tendency toward "stunned, dazed as by a blow"(1886) in knocked silly, etc. Silly season in journalism slang is from 1861(August and September, when newspapers compensate for a lack of hard news by filling up with trivial stories). Silly Putty trademark claims use from July 1949.address: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=silly&searchmode=nonethere you have it make what you will of it.   El_Castellano 29 months ago http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=silly&searchmode=none

[Jenny-lee]

We sound hilarious I?m not British myself, but you can hear examples of British actors doing bad American accents in various places.  They think it sounds American, so I?d say that?s what an American accent sounds like to them.  I find them quite hilarious. Examples off the top of my head:In the Monty Python "wink wink, nod nod" sketch, that?s supposed to be an American accent.  Really. Watch the movie Dead Again and hear Kenneth Branagh?s atrocious American accent. Eddie Izzard's American accent in Ocean's Thirteen. Ewan MacGregor in Down with Love... his accent is all over the place. When asked to do an American accent, a lot of Brits will give you some variant on a Texas twang. (Hugh Laurie?s American accent, on the other hand... it?s just not fair how brilliant he is.  Emma Thompson also does a bang-up American accent.) PamPerdue 77 months ago Please sign in to give a compliment. Please verify your account to give a compliment. Please sign in to send a message. Please verify your account to send a message.