What's your own accent like?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Inspired by the " Cockneys" thread.
Yesterday I was chatting to an Estonian Journalist pal of mine( who has never actually been to the UK), and he was telling me how he'd been in a restaurant, and overheard some tourist types, and immediately knew they were Scousers, like, ' cos their accents sounded just like mine. It was then I had to tell him that I'm not actually from Liverpool ( although I *am* from Merseyside), and he seemed quite put out by this, as he'd just sort of assumed that was where I'm from. My pronunciation of some words does have a birrova Scouse tinge to it ( for example, I pronounce the word " school" with the full Scouse " skewl" pronunciation, which actually made a couple of colleagues with Posho Southern English accents which they liked doing ( you could tell) burst out laughing when they heard it, benicknaming me " Scouse Lisa" ( which was a bit confusing, as this was a good few years before I'd even registered on here), but  a Scouser I'm certainly, not my accents more a hybrid of semi- Scouse and Lancastrian, the lovely town I'm from being equidistant from Manchester and Liverpool
Having typed out that load of old bollocks, it occurs to me that we may well have had this thread before, but that doesnae stop me from posing the question : " What's *your* accent like, then?"


Also, I've put this in the wrong forum. Bah.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I live in Loughborough, close to Leicester, so it's the luff-bra, les-tah accent, though I don't (dun't) think mine is that broad.

[Retinend]

Steve Coogan, I hope.

A "posh"-sounding northern accent, if someone doesn't like me. I usually revert to strong northern on words like "bu'uh" for "butter", or when I'm just talking to myself around the flat: "this is reet mucky here" in the kitchen, ""what a nobhead" in front of the TV, and so on.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Is there a Liecester accent as such? I know a few people from Leicester, and been there a few times, but the Leicester accent doesnae seem all that distinctive. Sort of a mild  version of Brummie?

[Ferris]

A mess, cheers for asking.

[Retinend]

Is there a Liecester accent as such? I know a few people from Leicester, and been there a few times, but the Leicester accent doesnae seem all that distinctive. Sort of a mild  version of Brummie?

I know the accent fairly well: it has this slightly "babyish" sounding vowel at the end of words ending "er" or "ey", so that e.g. "enter" / "Britney" or e.g. "baker", "funny" actually rhyme.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Deleted

[Bigfella]

Born in Glasgow.  Since I was a toddler have lived in East Kilbride, a big town just outside the city.  More proud of being a Glaswegian than being a Scot.  Not sure why! I like the subversive nature of broad Glaswegian, it's like deliberate mispronounciation: 'want' rhymes with 'can't', 'bread' becomes 'breid', the letter 't' is often softly grunted when it follows a vowel.  More to do with Scots language than Gaelic, I believe.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Grew up in Essex, but it was in the posh bit (northwest) so I've just got generic middle class southerner one. It's not quite as posh as it used to sound as I did deliberately try to make it a bit rougher so as not to be bullied by the rough Essex lads at school (didn't work)

[Dex Sawash]

Mine's one of the ones that her off killing eve can do but you can tell she doesn't enjoy it

[Attila]

Paint-stripping, small birds falling dead from the sky, gratingly mid-Atlantic. A mix of East-Bawlmer redneck and Philadelphia (grew up in northern Delaware).

I embrace it, especially when people wince at my pronunciation of certain words such as 'shower', 'window', 'water', 'wash/Washington', and 'piano.' When I really crank it up, Mr Attila can't understand me.

Lena Lamont in Singin' in the Rain -- that's me, only maybe not quite so shrill.

_{shour, winda, wudder, warsh, and peeyanna.}

[The Bumlord]

Rather embarrassed to say it depends who I'm talking to.

[touchingcloth]

Sorry to break it to you, but Scouse and Merseyside are the same thing.

[Inspector Norse]

I have a general broad middle class northern accent with the odd transatlantic touch, as a result of a middle-class upbringing in the Manchester suburbs and West Yorkshire before moving abroad as an adult and getting used to softening my accent for the benefit of foreigners. My brother was only 4 when we moved to Yorkshire and has a proper burr but the rest of the family is more non-specifically northern: my dad grew up in Oldham and his family had very identifiable accents, but for some reason he's managed to smooth his down.

I definitely do the thing where my accent gets stronger when I return home.

[canadagoose]

Is nobody going to provide recordings? That would be interesting.

I honestly think my accent has gone a bit funny since lockdown. Sometimes it becomes more broad Borders and sometimes more broad Edinburgh. It really depends who I'm talking to.

[Keebleman]

I'm from Caerphilly and while my accent is definitely Valleys-lite - neither of my parents had a Welsh accent - when I worked in London almost everyone pegged me as a Taff as soon as they heard me utter so much as a syllable.  (An exception was the lady who said, "What a lovely Irish accent!")

Last year I did a voiceover for a firm of ambulance-chasing lawyers and afterwards was told the client had said she thought I sounded like Richard Burton.  I was pleased but then thought, hang on, perhaps she just thinks I sound like some pissed old twat from Port Talbot.

[mothman]

Vaguely RP, I guess. An unholy mashup of Freddie Mercury and James Blunt.

[studpuppet]

Is there a Liecester accent as such? I know a few people from Leicester, and been there a few times, but the Leicester accent doesnae seem all that distinctive. Sort of a mild  version of Brummie?

My mum lived in Leicester when she was very young, but although she was South East RP all the way, she'd occasionally say words like 'birry' instead of 'bury', and 'tong' instead of 'tongue'.

Mine's cut-glass BBC basically a mish-mash of North-North-West London and Herts. It's the kind of accent people put on when they think they're doing cockney - you'd probably call it Estuary although that encompasses more accents than mine.
I'm not usually accent-ist, but go ten miles east of where I grew up and the accent suddenly has all the worst traits of cockney and Essex, and it sounds fucking appalling. It's weird, but go in any other direction and it doesn't sound that awful. Even further into Essex is more bearable because it isn't as London-influenced.

I wonder if it's like that in other regions - do Scouse and Wirral accents not get on (or with other Lancashire accents) for example? I'd love it if Oxfordshire people took the piss out of people from, say, Swindon because they sound 'yokel'.

[The Lurker]

I've been asked a few times if I'm a Geordie. I'm not. Maybe my accent is though, I don't hear it myself.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Fucking annoying posh/West country mess, horrible nasal voice, just the worst sounding cunt in the entire world.

[buttgammon]

Generic northern substrate with a few proper Wrexham flourishes (especially when I'm drunk) plus a hint of Salopian burr and more recently, some Dublin sounding vowels too.

Despite this whole mess, people who know the Marches can always trace my accent to that part of the world, though they normally think I'm from the English side. I once taught a student from Shrewsbury who collared me at the end of a tutorial and asked me where I was originally from, because she could immediately identify the accent as coming from the area and assumed I was from Shropshire too (I'm not).

[canadagoose]

with a few proper Wrexham flourishes (especially when I'm drunk)

What does that sound like? I'm intrigued.

[purlieu]

I live in Loughborough, close to Leicester, so it's the luff-bra, les-tah accent, though I don't (dun't) think mine is that broad.

I know the accent fairly well: it has this slightly "babyish" sounding vowel at the end of words ending "er" or "ey", so that e.g. "enter" / "Britney" or e.g. "baker", "funny" actually rhyme.

Oh yes, definitely an accent there, but it's not as broad (or generally well known) as things like brummie, scouse and so on. But it's distinctive. Lestah, in't instead of ain't, buz instead of bus, dahn tahn instead of down town.
I'm from Inkleh but somehow managed to grow up without the Leicestershire accent whatsoever, despite both my parents having it. The only concession I think I make is 'dee' in weekdays, ie Sat'dee, Sundee. Oh, and haf instead of half, that's probably one, but I seem to have lost that over the years. But otherwise I have a strangely neutral accent that nobody can ever place.

[Mr Banlon]

Working class West London accent with a touch of MLE. Non-Londoners would call it 'cockney', but it's not as glottalized or 'H' dropping as proper cockney.

[The Culture Bunker]

I've been asked a few times if I'm a Geordie. I'm not. Maybe my accent is though, I don't hear it myself.

I'm from West Cumbria and I get that a lot from anyone south of Morecambe Bay. When I left home at 18 and went to uni down in Surrey, I had to quickly learn to tone it down both in terms of my accent and the speed at which I talk. I suppose these days to most people I talk to, I'd say I have a fairly generic Cumbrian/North East accent that I've noticed Sting uses when he wants to remind us he's a Geordie, but on the rare occasions I visit home (or "gan yam" as we'd say), I do tend to slip back into old ways.

[Egyptian Feast]

Wherever I've lived, some people have mistaken my accent for Australian, New Zealand, American (Phoenix, apparently), or South African but I'm from Donegal. I have proof. Some of these confused folks have been from Donegal themselves, so I dunno where I got my accent from. I reckon I sound Irish, but maybe not quite from around my way.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Some of the people I deal with in the South at work have told me I sound like Sean Bean, but I think they just mean I sound like I'm a male from Sheffield.

[Bernice]

South Liverpool Beatlesy Scouse that's been chewed too long and comes out as formless mush. Southerners hate him for this one weird trick! (The trick is bad diction)

[flotemysost]

generic middle class southerner one

Same - both parents are Londoners, grew up in a not very diverse suburb of south London. Few subtle estuary-isms like dropping "g"s and "t"s here and there and I say "noo" and rather than "nyoo", stuff like that, but posh-ish otherwise I guess. Fucking loathe listening to myself, but a work friend once told me that I had a lovely calming voice and I should read audiobooks, which was very flattering.

[bgmnts]

No idea. Shitty south wales with the americanised tinges lkke everywhere else?

Accent can vary between county Borough, even towns, round here but there it generally gets more generic, melodic welshtbe further west and north you go, Cardiff and Newport excluded, one being basically England and the other being a gutter.