Accented
by wjw on June 22, 2014
Those of you who intend to go to the London worldcon, or anyone else planning to visit Britain, might pay particular attention here.
It has always struck me as unfair that the inhabitants of the United Kingdom spend their entire lives learning to speak charming and distinct dialects, only to have ignorant North Americans lump them all together as “a British accent.”
Here’s Siobhan Thompson to help you sort one from the other.
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Living in the UK – which, as you point out, is an ‘accent-rich’ country – I’ve often wondered why we sound different from each other. In spite of vastly increased travel and communications, someone from Yorkshire still sounds different from someone from Surrey, and a Welsh person sounds different from an East Anglian; and we all sound different from a North American such as yourself, Walter. And in spite of living in Manchester for 42 years I still seem to stubbornly retain the accent of my native Peterborough. It’s all rather odd and unfathomable if you start to think about it. What specific ‘wiring’ in the brain deals with accents, I wonder?
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