Inspired by a conversation with my flute-sis

What are your favourite/least favourite accents in English? Why?

Off the top of my head - my obvious favourites are East European accents, and the softer Glaswegian accents.

Least favourite: Brummie, probably (though I don't mind Black Country so much)

How bout you?

If you're a non-native English speaker then feel free to say what are your favourite and least favourite accents of people speaking your mother tongue instead - or both!

My favourite UK Accent is 'Educated Yorkshire' (of course!), such as is spoken by Skylark and I, among others.

I also quite like 'Norfolk' and 'Devon/Corrrrnwall'

Im not so keen on Brummie

Yes, I quite like 'Educated Yorkshire'.

Don't like the accent where I live (not saying where!), or Brummie or Cockney.

[/quote]My favourite UK Accent is 'Educated Yorkshire' (of course!), such as is spoken by Skylark and I, among others. [quote]



Sorry - I've just hit the floor laughing - seeing the words Educated and Yorkshire together! Now if you'd said Educated Lancashire - you'd have been my best friend for life!

But now looked what you've done - started off yet another War of the Roses!

Not that a lot of people south of Watford can tell the difference between the two but they're always making fun of my Lancashire accent in Yorkshire even though I've lived here since - err - the War of the Roses I think..

Luckily I don't have an accent. On a pretty girl, I find the Tyneside accent quite becoming...

love posh Edinburgh

Geordie please.

And Yorkshire/Scouse/Sandgrounder cross breed. (That's me)

My mum's a complete sucker for Geordie accents - it's very funny

It's okay, I re-started it with Skylark some time ago .

Besides, us folk who speak 'educated Lancashire' know that should be 'Skylark and me' .



I bet she was chuffed when you went to Durham; was she disappointed when you came back and didn't call her mam?

Yayyy Teehee.

I love my accent. I can't usually hear it on myself (though I can sometimes). Listening to the farm lads...cracks me up every time. Geordie is very cool, Scottish very cool.

You gotta love the Irish accent!

I like the sound of a strong Cornish accent, not too fond of Irish, Liverpool is my least favourite by a long way, and my top choice is a good, educated Welsh accent.

Ha, that's mine.

I like BBC accents/RP...

West Country is the accent I like most.

Those I least like are, Liverpool, Manchester and Brummie, although I can do a good mickey take of a Brummie accent.

cockney

For those who don't like Brummies, all I can say is, you are missing out on the kindest, helpful, cheeriest and funniest people on God's Earth.
Beverley,
I am not a Brummie, but have lived amongst them for 27 years, and married one. What awful prejudice.

My friend married a Brummy- he's always had a "soft" accent if that makes sense. A lovely bloke too!

I think my favourite accent is probably Southern Irish.

Ahh so thats what it is. He sounds quite posh really

Uh-huh.







I heard once that Dublin and Inverness accents are considered an advantage for rally navigators, since they are the easiest to hear over the intercom of a rally car whose underside is being battered by gravel.

I suspect it may depend on exactly which bit of Dublin or Inverness they come from.

Yaay, Long live the War of the Roses!!!


(although I do have a certain fondness for the Bolton accent, but that's just a smokescreen in the opening salvo )

Ey up - a canny reply Skylark!
Nah then lass - let's not ave any larrakins abowt - tha knows the Red Rose is the bees knees - thy just ask any knee of any bee. Aye lass - bee ull tell 't thee.

Gowdfinch
(mmm - it's hard trying to write accent - the written English Language doesn't 'do' East Lancashire dipthong vowels, glotteral stops or accentuated 'r's !).

pps.
I adore West Country - such wonderful 'rrr's'

My favourite accent by a long way is the Welsh one and least favourite - Brummie, I'm afraid...

My favourite UK Accent is 'Educated Yorkshire' (of course!), such as is spoken by Skylark and I, among others.


Im the other way round as I am Keighley born but live in on the Wirral. As it happens I do two days a week at our office in Headingley where I can lapse into broad Yorkshire withour demur.

For an interesting accent try real fenland Cambridgshire - its a softer version of Norfolk. I can lapse into it when I'm speaking to a fenlander but normally have the slightly "posher" Educated Cambridge Accent.

However whenever I'm "up north" I end up lapsing into broad Huddersfield. The Yorkshire Accent has may versions Leeds is subtally different from Sheffield, and Huddersfield and Bradford. I spent three years there, and still have a slight twang!

Probably!


Don't know about anyone else, but I never said I didn't like Brummies - I have met some incredibly nice Brummies who I like very much. Hasn't yet made me like the accent.

Love Southern Irish

Hate Newark

W

Hmmm, I can't say there's an accent I dislike to be honest (my job involves studying them quite heavily, so I think I've come to love them all) - my favourites are by a long chalk Northumbrian (particularly from the centre of Morpeth and the surrounding costal region) and Gaidhlig accent spoken English (especially if it's island gaidhlig).

In French, I'm not overly keen on the Marseille acent, but rather love the Québecois accent - especially if those speaking it come from Montréal.

Accents and regional dialects are FAB! I get very cross with people who claim that we should all learn to speak standard English, (really, what's standard English then? Where is it spoken? By whom? and secondly, imagine deliberately destroying your roots... how horrid.)

AMEN!!!

I like most regional accents when they're not too strong, and dislike most when they're difficult to understand.

Favourite - probably Geordie, east-coast Scotland, Liverpool
Least favourite - definitely Essex/Kent

I grew up in Liverpool but have lived elsewhere for the last 20 years, 9 years in London. I now have a "generic Northern" accent. People can usually tell I'm from the north, but don't manage to place whereabouts.

Accents and regional dialects are FAB
Yes, they are, I love them all, some more than others. Welsh is great. I have difficulty understanding people frpom Glasgow on the phone Face to face is OK though. Standard English???? Probably the BBC news caster type thing. Not much character there though.
Beverley.

Woohoo! I love the Irish accent, I wish I had it! I hate it when you have the stereotyped Glasgow accent; when the teenagers add 'like' after every word in their sentence. If you've ever seen Still Game, and saw the teenagers in that, then you'd know what I meant!

I've always liked Irish accents, but I'm starting to like Scottish quite alot now.
Also rather fond of Yorkshire accents - my cousins live there and if I spend too long up there I start to lapse in to it
One of my friends moved down from Huddersfield in September and I love her accent, mostly because it sounds so different to everyone else and you can always tell it's her.
Another friend has a rather... urm... interesting accent - She is French and has only lived in this country for 3 years, but speaks pretty good English and has picked up most of our slang and ways of speaking, but still with the French influence as well

Nobody seems to be able to tell where i'm from (born in Sicily lived there until i was ten, lived for 5 years in London (Chelsea) and 3 in Derbyshire) i don't have a "foreign" accent at all now, people seem to think i'm from the south-east but aren't sure!

I don't like Liverpool or Scottish accents but apart from that i don't mind!

Amen to that! No character at all. Of course, my reply as a linguist when people say things like 'standard English is spoken in X place' is usually 'where in X place? Taxis? Restaurants? Shops? Council offices?' or 'standard English is spoken by X group of people' - 'which one of them, then?'...

It's like the heathen muck that people claim is English when they speak it for international business purposes - it's so stripped of culture, nuance, metaphor and colour that it might as well have a different name. I see the need for it to be cultureless of course, as an international tool, but I just get cross when people claim they can speak 'English' fluently... er, nope. You can butcher your way through a business meeting in a Parisian office saying things like 'Ze financial Bilan and ze results account are not in the good formatting'...

Let's start a 'Save our Dialects' club!

Who's in? Beverley? Floot? Petrat... Lottie, surely Lottie...

Count me in! (though I have a very boring accent )

Well I'm a very southern English girly these days and people who meet me from other parts of the country think I'm posh, which I'm really not. It's just going to college in Winchester and living in Hampshire that makes me that way.

When I get incredibly tired or I'm talking to my mum, I tend to lapse into my natural Scottish accent and I've been known to slip bits of Gaelic into conversation without noticing I'm doing it.

I want to join the Save our Dilects club.

Yeh man save these dialects now innit.

Haha Accents are really interesting...

Absolutely, now you just wait here and we'll call the nice men in the white coats...

*Rocks in the corner, muttering about tractors and manure*

My man in a white coat wants to join too.

What's that? The pigs are out?

Oh no!

You don't learn do you? It's COMBINE HARVESTERS

Whose pigs are these, whose pigs are these?
They are John Pott's, you can tell 'em by the spots,
and I found them in the vicarage garden....

Wooooo, we did that in choir as a round...it's great.

Fun ain't it?

We have a second verse based on local farmer/church member:

...they are Mark Goudling's, you can tell by what they're rolled in.......