Regional accents, can other people place you?

[cojak]

I'm just hopeless at accents. My mum was from Belfast and my dad from rural Devon, but I didn't manage to pick up either.

My brother-in-law has amused himself for 20 years trying to teach me the Nottingham accent and everyone still hoots and replies 'what?' When I talk about buses.

If I let myself dribble I can almost mimic them..

[darmstadt]

I live on the edge of an area called the Odenwald and its practically impossible to tell where someone comes from as nearly each village has its own dialect, plus they all inbreed!

Having lived here for nearly 25 years and having learnt French before English and then Portugese then Afrikaans, my dialect seems to shoot all over the place depending upon whom I am talking to. Sometimes its horrible Thames Estuary (having spent a few years living in Essex, actually born there) to a rather classless, a bit BBC-ish, Home Counties English through to an English as spoken by an Englishman who hasn't lived there for years, i.e. weird. The worst is that when in the UK or speaking to British people, I forget English words and only know the German which is embarrasing...

[Scrag Meister]

Not sure about now, but in my early childhood I moved from Brighton to Hertfordshire to Devon.

When I went to Uni, the first person I met in my halls said, oh you're from Devon, even though I never realised I had an accent.

[cojak]

Record yourself and replay.

You never sound like you then

[sasguru]

I speak RP, which is dying out so much now, people do a double take when I speak and ask me to repeat myself. The whole country is turning into a bunch of farking plebby chavs.

[redgiant]

Heh, yes, Canadians can get quite grumpy when you get that wrong.

I usually get them to say 'about' ... that is a good way to find out if they are a septic or not

My accent used to change depending on where I was living (Holland, Jo'berg and Cheltenham) but over time I have just got this posh (accoding to GF redgiant whos from Leicester) generic south eastern one.

[psychocandy]

Having not lived in the Valleys for 20+ years my mates back home think I'm posh now but if I work anywhere outside Wales they think I'm the biggest sheepshagger they've ever heard.

Can't win mun :-)

[aussielong]

I usually get them to say 'about' ... that is a good way to find out if they are a septic or not
e.

True. Canadian "about" sounds like its pronounced with a Lancashire accent.

[EternalOptimist]

I tork propper like. not like youse woolie-backs

[Dallas]

am a well posh cosmopolitan londoner

until i speak to my mum on the phone, then am back to northern