Heh.... UK = England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.
None of these accents sound remotely alike. Back to the drawing board with this methinks.
> So a posh southern English accent would be the same category as a northern one?
I'm more amused that you think southern England is the posh part :-) Though on a more serious note, we use shorter vowel sounds in the north (in the north we say 'bath', southerners say 'baarth') which can make us harder to understand to those whom English isn't a first language.
I understood that to mean there were two dimensions: location and class.
More often than I am comfortable with, I am told I'm very easy to understand. I recommend using a middle class Midlands / South Midlands accent when abroad.
Yeah, you just described the kind of "roping in" of multiple dialects that make me worry that trying to define pronunciation in English is impossible.
I have friends who are Welsh, I have friends who are Australian, my background is Scottish, Irish, and Estuary English.
You learn very quickly that everyone has completely different ways of saying things and that you have to accept it. I can't imagine trying to define all of them, it's utter chaos.
Outside of mass media there isn't very strong standardization of pronunciation. Linguistics is a spectrum, and occasionally society decides to totally upturn how they want to pronounce things, like in the Great Vowel Shift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
> I'm more amused that you think southern England is the posh part :-)
Isn't that the stereotype? I thought London area is considered pretty posh. At least that is what I am getting from most popular culture. Of course both dimensions, class and location are partly independent but there is some overlap.
> Though on a more serious note, we use shorter vowel sounds in the north (in the north we say 'bath', southerners say 'baarth') which can make us harder to understand to those whom English isn't a first language.
Yeah, as a non native speaker I need to concentrate way more because it feels faster. I love the accents though, really fun to listen to.
> Isn't that the stereotype? I thought London area is considered pretty posh.
I think what you're getting at is Estuary English, which is spoken around the estuary of the river Thames. It's pretty close to Received Pronunciation which is sort of the 'standard' English as it used to be spoken on the BBC. And probably what most Americans would classify as a posh English accent or even as just 'British English'. London also has Cockney though, which I don't think anyone would say is posh.
Cockney and MLE (a modern multicultural London accent/dialect/whatever it's officially called) are non-posh southern England accents. See the "in popular culture" for examples of MLE (Eggsy from Kingsman for example). Working-class London accents, not posh.
None of these accents sound remotely alike. Back to the drawing board with this methinks.
> So a posh southern English accent would be the same category as a northern one?
I'm more amused that you think southern England is the posh part :-) Though on a more serious note, we use shorter vowel sounds in the north (in the north we say 'bath', southerners say 'baarth') which can make us harder to understand to those whom English isn't a first language.