• Pirasp@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    78
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Let’s be real here, we usually just stick all of them in a blender and pour ourselves one glass of perfectly mixed accent juice

    • tordarus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      This! My English accent is so all over the place, I can’t even spot the differences if I hear them. I can’t tell, If someone is British, American, Australian etc because I mix them up so much myself

      • Amends1782@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m quite found of accents myself, like that SS officer in the bar scene from Inglorious Basterds lol, would love to have a conversation and dissect it

  • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    ·
    1 year ago

    I lived in South Korea for a while and I met a South Korean young lady who had learned English from an Australian teacher. This Korean girl had the most beautiful Australian accent with a hint of Korean. She was very talkative, Asian people get excited when they meet english-speakers so they can practice speaking English with us. So she talked a lot. It was a beautiful culture medley.

  • Turious@leaf.dance
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    1 year ago

    I have a buddy who learned English as a second language early in life and he has a fluent Irish accent. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that one.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m Canadian in Ontario and the first five years of my life, all I spoke or heard was my cultural language Ojibway-Cree. I went to school where I learned English but continued to only mostly speak my language.

      Then I spent an awkward period as a teenager speaking English with a Native accent … a classic TV stereotypical Native accent and it was horrible. It took me about a decade to get over that phase, now I speak English as boringly as any Canadian. Not bad eh?

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Have you seen Reservation Dogs? I’ve heard that Willie Jack has a Canadian Native accent, is that the case?

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I once took a short trip through the south of Germany near Nuremberg … we were just on a random trip not knowing what we were doing in a rental car. We stopped at a gas station to get gas and got some help from an attendant, a young German teenager who spoke some English.

        He talked to us in the weirdest accent I ever heard … a combination of English with a German accent and a touch of southern Texan or southern American. He had grown up learning English from army personnel from the American US base nearby.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ironically, US English is in many ways more traditional than UK English. The US uses many words and phrases that used to be common to both continents but later changed in the UK.

      US did try to de-French most spellings with mixed success.

      • kamen@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, but there’s still the tendency to simplify things (e.g. “color” vs “colour”) and the ever shortening of phrases as if it’s difficult to say the whole thing (“macaroni and cheese”).

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Changing spellings to match pronunciation should happen more often, to ne honest. And I don’t think UK or Australian English get to throw any stones about shortening words and phrases, the US isn’t calling anything “spag bol”.

    • wkk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      By trying to get rid of it I accidentally took the German accent, not sure how that works

  • spudwart@spudwart.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    I know a 100% native english speaker, who randomly switches between british, australian, Scottish and American accents.

        • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about the psychology behind it tbh. I think it’s the combination of both because I come from europe as well

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I got mine originally from TV, as in my country everything is subtitled, so that means I ended up with an americanized accent (it isn’t really an “american” accent because there is no such things as an american accents but rather several).

    It was of course poluted by my own native language (portuguese, from Lisbon) accent.

    Then I went and lived in The Netherlands for almost a decade so my accent started adding dutch “effects” (like a “yes” that sounds more like “ya”, similar to the dutch “ja”).

    And after that I lived for over a decade in England, so my accent moved a lot towards the English RP accent. In fact I can either do my lazy accent (which is the mix of accents I have) or pull it towards a pretty decent English RP accent if needed for clarity.

    By this point I can actually do several English Language accents, though mostly only enough to deceive foreigners rather than locals - so, say, a Scottish accent that will deceive Americans but Brits can spot it as not really being any of the various Scottish accents - including the accents of foreign language speakers in English (i.e. how a french or italian will sounds speaking english or even the full-force portuguese accent when speaking english, which I don’t naturally have anymore).

    That said, IMHO it is very hard for somebody who grew up in a foreign country speaking a foreign language to fine tune their accent so that it sounds perfect to the ears of a local, and this is valid for all languages, not just English.

  • Damaskox@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think Finnish school teaches the American pronunciation.

    In my case; western games further hammered that down between my ears.

    • lugal@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Interesting. German schools teach British English. It’s with time that I was more and more influenced by American English but first and foremost I have a strong German accent

      • ADTJ@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        In the UK, schools largely teach European French/Spanish/etc.

        I wish more European countries would teach European (British) English.

          • Damdy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            You can teach whatever, the kids are still going to get way more exposure to American accents than British from tv and movies.

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it was British pronunciation considering that (at least when I was still in school) we also learned to write British English instead of American English.

      Later on in high school they said you could write either, but you had to stick to one or it would count as a mistake.

      • Damaskox@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        When were you in school?

        I think about the 2000-2011 time period (from 3rd grade to trade school).

        • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Around that same time. Searching online I didn’t find anything saying it’s either one but rather both with both being acceptable (but not mixing as mentioned). Seems to depend on the teacher with lot of the older (possibly now retired) teachers being more familiar and teaching British English, sometimes as the only “correct” one and younger (not particularly young now) generation of teachers being more familiar with American English and teaching primarily that.

          So, depends. Both are taught, there’s no unified policy for preference of one over another that I could find.

          • Damaskox@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Okay cool.
            There’s a chance that I had a British English teacher back in the secondary school…I don’t recall much, let alone speaking British myself.

            • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              At one point I had one of those teachers that thought British English was the only correct one. She was a real superfan of the British royal family and took sickdays or just made us watch with her if there was some televised event hah.