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> a British accent

Hmm.... Scottish, Welsh, Irish (Nor'n) or English? If English, North or South? If North, which city? Brummie? Scouse? If South, London? Cockney or Multicultural London English [0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English




Need to increase your granularity a bit. I live in Wexford Town, Ireland, and the other day I was chatting to a person that told me their old schoolmates from Castlebridge are making fun of their accent changing since moving from their hometown.

Castlebridge is 10 minutes away by car. Madness!


Yeah, totally agree. Here's a useful link for non-Brits, that goes into a bit more detail:

https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/

Also, we have yet to define precisely define what is meant by 'British'. This probably needs a "20 falsehoods people believe about..."-type article.


When people outside the British isles (esp. Americans) say "British accent", they almost invariably mean (British) English, and usually the "received pronunciation" accent that British media generally uses.

They do not mean Irish or Scottish accents; if they did, they would have said exactly that, because those accents are quite different from standard (British) English accents. So different, in fact, that even Americans can readily tell the difference, when they frequently have some trouble telling English and Australian accents apart.

Also, to most English speakers, "English accent" doesn't make much sense, because "English" is the language. It sounds like saying a German speaker, speaking German, has a "German accent". Saying "British accent" differentiates the language (English, spoken by people worldwide) from the accent (which refers to one part of one country that uses that language).




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