Friday's Unscientific Poll

[nanila]

Poll #15552 Spoken English accents

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

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I believe I can distinguish hearing spoken English accents

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From very broad regional areas (e.g. North America, South America, Britain, Oceania)
14 (48.3%)

From broad regional areas (e.g. USA/Canada, Wales/Scotland/England/Ireland, Philippines/Japan/China/Malaysia, Australia/New Zealand)
17 (58.6%)

From specific regional areas (e.g. California/New York, Brummie/Cockney, Visayas/Luzon)
19 (65.5%)

From very specific neighbouring regional areas (e.g. NorCal/SoCal, Geordie/Mackem, apologies for lack of non-US/UK examples)
6 (20.7%)

Nope, can't
2 (6.9%)

I believe I can convincingly imitate accents from areas other than the one I was born in to a level of

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From very broad regional areas
6 (20.7%)

From broad regional areas
11 (37.9%)

From specific regional areas
5 (17.2%)

From very specific neighbouring regional areas
3 (10.3%)

Nope, can't
17 (58.6%)

Here I provide more detail about how well I can distinguish and/or imitate regional spoken English accents.

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When I started watching Orphan Black, I thought, "Wow, that's a really good 'Southern Hemispherical person who's moved to North America' accent."

And then in the next episode, it's explicitly mentioned that Sarah and Felix are originally from London.

Er. Sorry, no, that's not a London accent, let alone a British one. I've been in Britain long enough to be able to distinguish accents to a level of "specific regional areas". But I can't, say, tell a Brummie accent from a Black Country accent, and I most certainly would not attempt to imitate either. I can cosplay a decent "posh train announcement" or "BBC Radio 4 news" accent and that's my limit.

I certainly find listening to different accents and being able to identify them far easier than imitating them, and the rest of the show is very enjoyable, so I'm happy to pretend that Sarah and Felix's origins have simply been misidentified in canon. :P

Comments

[sfred]

Varies enormously!
I can distinguish accents from different parts of Yorkshire easily: I can tell Leeds from Sheffield (50 miles) and Bradford from Sutton-in-Craven (20 miles), let alone Hull, which is a different accent altogether.

I can distinguish Australia from NZ but not distinguish within those countries.

I couldn't tell Geordie from Mackem separately, but given an audio clip from each I could tell you what the differences are.
I can tell Nelson/Colne from Preston, but not from each other.

For imitating, I can do some and not others, depending on familiarity.

I do often find American actors doing British accents or vice versa annoying.

[quinara]

The accents on Orphan Black are a shame... But I can sort of put up with it with the usual fanwank that they moved when they were young and sometimes weird things happen in accent transitions. And it is a good show!

Otherwise, I don't have much of a chance these days to prove the skills I claim in my poll answer, but we moved around a lot when I was a child and I think of myself as someone who can blend in (though at some point I became hyper-conscious of even minor changes to how I'm talking and tend to resist them). I've never been well in practice of doing accents cold, but there was the time I realised that I must have learned to talk in Glasgow so decided to see if I could do a proper (middle class) Glaswegian accent and it went quite well. Not the moment I talked to anyone else. But I imagine that if Tatiana Maslany and Jordan Gavaris grew up in the same place they were born (and didn't have parents trying to teach them foreign languages etc - although I thought in Canada they would have had to learn French), then I'm not surprised it's tricky!

But I also think Sarah should absolutely have the skill at faking things that she's meant to have, so I just suspend my disbelief there too. :D

ETA: Although I should say that I've also got worse at identifying accents over the last few years. It's living in the nowhere/everywhere land of postgrad academia. All individuals without context.

[crystalpyramid]

Ran out of space in textbox...

I can *definitely* distinguish between e.g. my dad's family's Chicagoland accents and my mom's family's Central Illinois accents, and between e.g. Philly accents and New York accents, or NYC accents and upstate New York accents, and perhaps even Brooklyn/Bronx/Long Island accents, although I may be rusty on that front. I'm not sure if that counts as "specific" or "broad" level, though — Bronx and Long Island are probably more different than Detroit and Minneapolis, despite the latter being much farther apart geographically. (I'm not sure I could distinguish between Detroit and Minneapolis. Maybe. Minnesota is not just midwestern but actually special. I will get it mixed up with Canada though.) For regions where I don't have family from or haven't lived, I can't be nearly as specific.

[happydork]

Yes! I was *convinced* she was meant to be Australian!

[lark_ascends]

Can usually tell New York from other areas in the US, etc., and some accents within England.

Find it so fascinating as you and another commenter hearing them as Australian, because as an Australian (and sis agreed) we hear them as English! :-) But, as I commented before, you know more about British accents than I do.

[lark_ascends]

Had to comment: as an Australian, I don't get it. Sounded British of somesort to me and my sis! :-)

[liseuse]

Heh, yeah, I really like Orphan Black, and I am very impressed by Maslany's ability to vaguely imitate a wide range of accents and just wish the show hadn't mentioned that Sarah and Felix were originally from London. I'd be more able to accept their accents (though I think Gavaris is better at it) if I wasn't thinking 'well that doesn't sound very London, to me' even when my relative lack of ability to distinguish non-Northern accents is taken into account.

I'm good at distinguishing Yorkshire accents - Sheffield from Leeds, Bradford from Middlesbrough, and so on. I can also manage some Lancashire accents, but I have a better ear from 'where in Manchester is this person from?' because of having heard more Mancunian accents over the course of my life.

[recessional]

I have the same problem with accents as I have with expressions: beyond the broad spectrum or within accents that are quite close to each other, it's hard for me to tell what part of someone's speech-formation is supposed to be "accent", and what is just how their mouth is shaped. There also becomes the issue of accent contamination, which is weird and random because of TV etc.

I will tend to echo the accent and speech-patterns of anyone around me completely unconsciously, which means I tend to be an accent-chameleon without doing it on purpose. Working in a store with an Irish boss and co-worker meant that any time I was on shift with them, Irish tourists were regularly asking me where in Ireland I was from, assuming that my family had moved when I was in my teens.

[redsixwing]

I'm an unintentional accent chameleon as well. I have to work -not- to do it in situations where that might not be to anyone's benefit.

Due to working with a whole bunch of assorted folks from India, I can pick up Arabic vs. "Indian" (I don't have a better way to differentiate this) vs. Gujarati accents, to a fair degree of accuracy.

Regional accents to my local area are pretty subtle, but they're there. Some of them are more habits of speech (ie. "coke" for all soda products) than accents.

If it gets outside of Specific Areas I Heard A Live Speaker From (could I phrase that more awkwardly?) I lose it and have to default to 'large regional accent' instead.

[ironed_orchid]

When I first saw it, I thought "Why are these Americans trying to sound like Londoners and failing?" and then I just let that be those characters identifying features and got on with the story.

Interestingly, to me they don't sound Auralian/NZ/South African which are the 3 main versions of Southern Hemisphere English that I hear.

[ironed_orchid]

See my comment below. Pretty much the same response.

[castiron]

I can get broad regions, but I don't notice anything more specific unless I've been really training my ear to hear it.

(On the other hand, when I go to Belgium, after several days I can immediately tell when a Dutch speaker is from the Netherlands rather than Belgium.)

[nanila]

I couldn't tell Geordie from Mackem separately, but given an audio clip from each I could tell you what the differences are.

Ah, this is a good point! It's more difficult to place accents when they're encountered in isolation.

[nanila]

But I can sort of put up with it with the usual fanwank that they moved when they were young and sometimes weird things happen in accent transitions.

Ahaha. My problem with this line of reasoning is that I moved from California to London ten years ago and that definitely hasn't made me sound Australian. :P

I'm impressed that you can do Glaswegian. I can scarcely understand Glaswegian, especially on the phone.

Postgrad academia is such a rarefied atmosphere. I work in a lab with two Canadians (one of whom doesn't speak English as a first language), five English (with different regional accents including Devon and Cockney), two Irish (also different regional accents), an Italian, an Indian, a Spaniard, an Austrian and a Pole. So many accents!

[nanila]

I'm enjoying the poll answers very much. You're right about it being easier to imitate an accent when you've got an example to hand (or when you've heard the same words spoken many times, e.g. train announcements). And direct experience is probably required to distinguish subtle variations, whether they're geographically or linguistically/stylistically linked.

[nanila]

I wasn't sure if Australia or New Zealand, but definitely didn't think "Brit"!

[nanila]

I think the conclusion we must draw is that while it's not an American accent, it is aslo not convincing as either British or Australian. :P

[nanila]

Some accents are more "famous" than others, probably due to media exposure. I'm sure a lot of non-Brits can recognise a Cockney or a plummy public-school accent, but probably not, say, a Norfolk accent.

Yes, and you know more about Australian accents. So I'm afraid we must conclude that Sarah & Felix's accents are not convincingly either. :P

[nanila]

Yes, it wasn't even a necessary level of detail! Such a shame.

What are the regional Mancunian accents? Not that I'd be able to distinguish them myself, but it would be nice to know the theory at least.

[nanila]

Haha, you don't have to tell me about accent contamination. Mine is alllll over the place, and depends very much on company, time of day and emotional state.

I love hearing accent-chameleons. I have a couple of friends who are (imyril being one) and I always feel chuffed when I hear them saying something in my accent.

[nanila]

It's complicated, isn't it? Accent and dialect are intertwined, too, so sometimes it may be a particular expression that we use to pinpoint a speaker's origin, rather than the pronunciation of that expression.

[nanila]

Definitely not South African! (My boss is South African so I hear that accent almost every day.) I think (as mentioned above) that we must conclude that, as neither Brits nor Australians recognise Sarah & Felix's accents as their own, they are in fact not convincingly either.

[nanila]

How interesting! Can you specify one or two pronunciation markers you use to distinguish Dutch speakers from the Netherlands/Belgium?

[liseuse]

I'm mostly thinking about there is a distinct difference between the accents I heard in Stalybridge - where my mother and aunts grew up - and how my aunts speak now that they've lived in different parts of Manchester for years. One is in Oldham, and she, and her children (apart from J., who has lived in Bristol for years and has lost a lot of her original accent), sound notably different to M. who moved to the other side of Manchester. There isn't a vast geographical distance between Stalybridge and Oldham, but there is a slight difference in regional accent. And my cousins live up on Saddleworth, and every time we go for a family do it's really interesting hearing an accent that isn't quite Mancunian but also isn't quite Yorkshire.
And my dad, who grew up in Salford, sounds very different to my mother. I suspect that a lot of it is the influence of the other languages spoken in the different areas, rather than there being a particularly large difference between the accents.

[castiron]

I can't point to any specific markers; my general impression is that Flemish sounds broader and Netherlands Dutch tighter/higher in the mouth, but I'm not sure if that's what's actually going on with the vowel phonetics. Their pronunciation of the second person singular is a little different, and Wikipedia says their alveolar consonants are articulated in slightly different places.

And of course they have the regional vocabulary differences; I don't know either language well enough to give a lot of examples, but my ex gave the example of the word "gelul", which in Belgium is a perfectly innocuous interjection whose best equivalent in American English is "malarkey", and in Netherlands Dutch is incredibly rude, or at least was so 30 years ago.)