Thick Accents in Customer Service

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Agree. That is one thing I Iove about accents though, accents themselves don't discriminate! I generally find it easier to understand someone from, say, India or Pakistan, speaking English as their 2nd language, than I do someone from maybe Dundee or Caernarfon.

That's surprising. Class identity and division have always been more prevalent in the UK than in most other developed countries, including the USA, and accents have often been seen as a key indicator. Having a Northern English accent, for example, is often associated with the working-classes, whereas Received Pronunciation (more common in the South of England) is associated with the affluent. However, another Southern accent - Cockney - is seen as working-class, and certain Northern accents are seen as being 'posh'. The West Country accent is commonly linked to the agricultural sector.

There is also the additional issue that the UK isn't really a single nation but a union of four nations (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), each of which have distinctive accents. Many people overseas, I feel, forget or are unaware of this, and believe that the UK consists entirely of England.

Thick accents can be troublesome, but haven't caused me any major trouble in my language. What I don't like is people coming to this country to work in customer service yet not bothering to learn the local language! Sure, I speak English, but my spelling's bad since there aren't any places to practice. Plus, they often speak it poorly or have really strong accents.

Oh right, I mean - differences of accent between England and Scotland are easier to spot. Differences between Manchester and London a bit more difficult.

I guess for me too I've got my head in the music and I'm quite often hearing various artists being interviewed (lots of famous drum n bass producers and dj's from all over - ie. Goldie, Loxy, Sabre, DBridge, Spectrasoul, etc. on one hand, the whole Manchester hip hop and rnb thing that's been coming up with The Mouse Outfit, Children of Zeus, Layfullstop, IAMDDB, etc.), I can tell there's a working class way of pronunciation but it still seems like it's in a much tighter cluster than what we have in the US.

I mean it would be interesting to hear from someone in the England or Scotland what it sounds like to hear a southern accent, or the African American accent, a Latino or Asian American accent, and see if it sounds as compressed against the average American accent. It could be that my ears are just that tuned to American English but for example when I listen to someone from England , either with my eyes close or on a radio interview (without knowing who they are) I can't tell ethnicity unless they have another accent competing with their English accent. Over here, even for second or third generation, ethnicity often jumps right out.

That type of speech is comprehensible at least. I always associated that accent with the arrogant. Is it taught and cultivated, or is it really in the breeding?

Lol, so is the Cathy Newman 'So what you're saying is...' accent?

I remember Gordon White saying that her interviewing style wasn't just her, that London's just full of big egos and that it's kinda like it's own news and business version of Hollywood in the sense of pretense.

Well, there are degrees of RP. I speak with quite a "low" RP that is quite standard across the middle-class south. I can fairly easily slip into either "working southern" or a slightly "higher" RP.

There are some people who grow up speaking like that. I imagine both David Cameron and Theresa May speak in their natural accents. I know Boris Johnson does. The royals, likewise.

It is sometimes "My Fair Lady"'d but rarely due to arrogance as such. Working class accents have historically been quite looked down on in middle-class professions, most notably acting. The likes of Tom Baker and David Harewood had to "lose" their accents in order to get on in life. Listen to an interview with Tom Baker and then one with Wayne Rooney, with maybe a Paul McCartney interview in the middle - they're all from Liverpool and probably sounded very similar as teenagers, but Baker has lost his accent, McCartney has moderated it, and Rooney doesn't have to because he's a footballer (although he does continue to face prejudice for it).

Or if you're watching Game of Thrones - yes, that's really what Emilia Clarke and Natalie Dormer would sound like. Peter Dinklage and Nicholaj Coster-Waldau (sp) are obviously trained. Then the northerners mostly speak in their own accents. Frankly the Starks do not make sense as a family - Williams and Turner have southern accents (both distinct from each other - Williams has a bit of a West country twang and in early series she's clearly faking a high RP, while Turner is from Northamptonshire which has a fairly distinct accent of its own), Bean is from Sheffield and very clearly sounds like it, Farley is Northern Irish, Madden is from Scotland, and only Harrington drops his natural London accent but ends up sounding Mancunian. You could maybe explain Farley because she joined the family by marriage but her sister speaks with a soft Scottish accent and her brother and uncle in high RP...

This is hilarious to me. I can't differentiate American accents. I can tell what kind of accent is Southern, but that's about it.

London accent.


Manchester accent (Mark Owen being interviewed) bonus other accents. Geordie, from Newcastle, (Matt Baker), Welsh (Alex Jones)

My favourite British and American accents in one interview:



Peter Hitchens (RP proper, not the horrible estuary version of it everyone my age, even northerners, speaks with).

Eric Metaxas ("educated" American - I can't pinpoint the region).

Excuse me, us Northerners can speak with quite understandable accents too you know. My family are all definately Northern, but still rather understandable.

I can't stand the oldy-worldy fake news reader accents of the past. I have no issues with the One Show with their Geordie and Welsh accents. I can understand them perfectly well. Though, if you dropped me in the middle of Newcastle I might not be able to understand everyone who talked to me.

Different accents in the USA?

https://youtu.be/Z4Y4keqTV6w

@Walrus, Yes, I've noted in many rock musicians, when they speak, thick accents appear to moderate over time. I'm also curious, can't British differentiate between the dialect of the New England Kennedy's vs. the Texas Bush's. Surely New York accents are easily distinguishable. New Yorkers don't sound 'posh' but they exude rudeness and arrogance.

I think most can hear the different accents. New England in particular is one that is hard to miss.

Yes, most of us could separate a Texan from a Californian or New Yorker. If they had a thick New York (Bernie Sanders) or Boston accent then we could probably pick that out, but we might not be able to tell the difference between someone from the West Coast and someone with a more generic East Coast accent, or even a Canadian accent. I think a common experience for Canadians in the UK is to be accused of being American. New Zealanders and South Africans might also be accused of being Australian.

I love different accents and dialects,but can understand the difficulty in understanding someone with a really thick one.
Older people seems to have the most trouble.An elderly friend would get so frustrated he would just hang up.
A few people had trouble with mine,always someone from West Coast or the New England area.
I’ve had to laugh when I’ve seen some of the shows filmed in the South that were captioned.
I watch a lot of Brit tv and never had much trouble with the different dialects.The more you watch the easier it is.
Sometimes the misunderstanding can be quite comical.I had a doctor from Peru and he asked if there were burrs around my house.I thought it was weird he would inquire about cockle burrs and replied yes, lots of them.Especially in the garden. He looked horrified, then I realized he meant bears.

I have an online friend from Brooklyn who is Jamaican. For about a year, we spoke for hours a day on the phone. It took me a month or so to sort out her dialect. We drifted apart, then started speaking again about five years after our last conversation. I was back and square one and having a real difficulty in understanding her.

On a side note, it's interesting how some people's accent will acclimate to wherever they move, while other's won't. My friend's best friend and business partner was also Jamaican. But her accent had become more Americanized after living in the U.S. for more than five years, while my friend's didn't.