I teach English in Spain. I’ve heard a couple of my students exclaim “Howay man” and use ridiculously long north-eastern vowel sounds. I’m so proud of them.

Also, met a French woman in a curry restaurant in Bilbao. She sounded like an extra in Eastenders, she even exclaimed “you facking norveners are so facking difficult to understand”

“Errrm, no, it’s just that I work at home and they spent 2 years watching the Disney Channel for 8 hours a day”

Was the slightly embarassed reply.

Probably explains why my kids have a fair amount of Americanisms in their speech – the only English person they speak to on a regular basis is me, and the rest of their exposure to the language comes from the telly. Not massively concerned, though I did draw the line when my eldest daughter told me we needed “tomaytos” yesterday.

Seriously?

Yes – our accent has changed loads since the 1700s don’t forget. We’ve actually been mangling our own vowels, and they have (supposedly) mangled them less.

On the subject of accents rubbing off, my wife has retained her American accent, but when she was working with a load of local Welsh people she’d occasionally come out with some very British phrase delivered in a hybrid Welsh/American accent. I found it endearing 🙂

My 3yo daughter seems to have picked up the Valleys habit of stressing the last consonant in words or adding an extra heavily stressed y on the end of words ending in vowels (i.e. “wait for mee-ya”) even though she has little contact with people who talk like that. So I think she sounds part Welsh and part English since she has a lot of English vowel sounds rather than American. However my mate thinks she sounds really American because of some other sounds. Strange what we pick up on.

Also, met a French woman in a curry restaurant in Bilbao. She sounded like an extra in Eastenders, she even exclaimed “you facking norveners are so facking difficult to understand”

Yeah, I knew a german lad who had come to east london on a school exchange visit as a kid. Must have been there a while – his accent was laaverly. You pick up on the exaggerated bits first, I suppose

Worse still, your country mimicking your lisp because you’re their king. Leading to why S America and Spain have different accents.

For me the Orcadian accent trumps everything else in the UK.

Used to work with a French guy who had studied in Glasgow, when we was daan saarth (surrey) together people thought he was a weegie soap dodger just like me…

Got good friend whose Italian and when she starts swearing you think you were in deepest darkest Dundee!

I believe the Liverpool accent to be quite distinct in that it bears no relation to those surrounding it; geographically speaking.

Also I find the borders accent the strangest as it sounds like English people who can roll their “r’s”.

Don’t get me started on the “Kelvinside” accent though, my mates mum used it all time fn annoying.

molgrips, which Valley are you in? Im Ogmore based and being from England my other half is a local valley girl tells me I always sound dead posh whenever we are out with a group of her freinds

Yes – our accent has changed loads since the 1700s don’t forget. We’ve actually been mangling our own vowels, and they have (supposedly) mangled them less.

Yes, but English probably only established in NZ in the 19th century with the early colonists…I doubt they had their own accent until fairly recently.

Anyway, the effect of the accent is reduce the number of available vowels: tin/ ten and here/ hare for example.

I believe the Liverpool accent to be quite distinct in that it bears no relation to those surrounding it; geographically speaking.

I think you can hear similarities in places like Chester and the north Welsh borders.

For the footy fans – remember Steve McLaren’s Dutch accent?