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Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:03PM (#5130962)
A Brit' here, most British dialects are heavy on the R's. Whether that's the rural accents ranging from the Cornish (south west) to Norfolk (south east). Then you have the harsher sounding dialects of the north east - who also seem quite rhotic (or at least, the thicker accents are). Then you have the Welsh and -as mentioned in the article- the Scottish and Irish who all also emphasise their R's (it's quite amusing when I hang out with some of my Scottish friends as they can't pronounce "Karl", so every time they call his name, my other friend "Carol" answers!)

The ironic thing is, the way the English are perceived to speak isn't the way how 99% of English (let alone British) people speak. Even in London and it's overspills (the neighbouring counties), which is where our dialects are the least rhotic, most people don't pronounce themselves in the same way as they do in American TV. But I can understand why the stereotyped accent is used; it's a slower and more clearly spoken - which is ideal for broadcasting where the actor needs to be heard and understood by the audience. Many of the northern accents are spoken with such speed that it can be difficult for an untrained ear; even for some of us English! It's also a sexier dialect (few sane people would fall in love with a Geordie accent, Brummie or even Cockney, if they weren't already brought up in that area.

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to find youtube videos for some of the more distinct dialects.

[edit]

Just been chatting to my wife about this. She's from the north east of England, I'm from the south. It seems I've overstated the amount of emphasis the north east places on their R's.

I'm not sure if I'm alone about this, but the funny thing about pronunciation is the moment you're asked to think about the way you pronounce a word, you've instantly forgotten how you normally talk!

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by ithkuil on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:31PM (#5131144)
The Karl - Carol is probably caused also by the insertion of a schwa sound between some consonant clusters, it's a phenomenon known as Epenthesis; another typical is Film -> "Fil[uh]m"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScottish_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by kafkaesque on Monday January 28, 2013 @07:27PM (#5131632)
I've only ever lived in North America, but I did have a good Scottish friend with whom I used to discuss linguistic differences between cultures and languages.

To my ear, Scottish people would pronounce the 'a' in Karl as /ɑ/; an open back unrounded vowel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel

But I'm not sure, since in Canadian English, the 'a' in Karl would be pronounced as /ɑ/ and the one in Carol would be an open-mid front unrounded vowel (/ɛ/).

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by ithkuil on Monday January 28, 2013 @07:36PM (#5131666)
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/british/car...

vs.

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/american/ca...

So probably for a brit's ear the difference is mostly in the schwa

(disclaimer, I'm not a native speaker. Living in Ireland though)

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by kafkaesque on Monday January 28, 2013 @07:49PM (#5131705)
I think what laumars was referring to was the pronunciation of the first vowel in Karl and Carol.

In other words, both dialects have a schwa inserted (even in NA English), but the difference is that Scottish people do not differentiate between the 'a' in both Karl and Carol.

Put differently, Scottish people pronounce Karl and Carol the same way to an English speaker (from England).

What I'm saying is that to my Canadian ear, I could hear a difference between the few Scottish people I've spoken to in Canada. But come to think of it, they were probably Canadianised.

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by ithkuil on Monday January 28, 2013 @11:02PM (#5132261)
The thread started off about rhoticism ("[...]heavy on the R's [...]"), so I guess he reinterpreted the r+schwa as longer r.

However, the key player here is not laumars, but his friend Carol :-)

I mean, the interesting part is that she heard her name because the epenthesis process transformed a monosyllabic word into disyllabic one, and that changed the shape of the word: kar(uh)l has the same rhythm as carol, and small vowel quality differences are probably less important that the rhythm when the word gets parsed by the brain.

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by Thrall on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @03:51AM (#5133013)
Of course it's possible that the Irish pronunciation of film is not inserting a vowel sound, rather that the modern english spelling and pronunciation has removed one. It's possible that the Irish resembles the old english pronunciation more closely and it's the modern english pronunciation and spelling of film that has undergone the more significant change.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by ithkuil on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:00AM (#5133495)
Sure. For example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s 00:04:36, states that film is spelled philome in Shakespeare's work.

Unfortunately a google search of "philome" yields only pages about shakespeare pronounciation, especially by these two guys; I don't know what that means.

However, I think that thinking about the evolution of a language as a linear progression is misleading.

Is certainly possible that modern Irish pronunciation stems from what was spoken at that time, and the modern "mainstream" english pronunciation evolved later from a slighly different root, and epenthesis acted only in one of the two branches.

Film derives from west germanic filminjan, which in turn comes from proto germanic fello(m), and proto indoeuropean pel-, with cognates in lating and greek, pella and pellis respectivly.

So it's possible that epenthesis was applied on top of filminjan in irish scottish accents (possibly due to pressure of the gaelic substrate), while the dialect which originated RP didn't have this change.

I'm sure somebody with better knowledge of the matter can be more precise about that, however, it's strange how little (and often more misleading than uncertain) information is there about one the most widely spoken languages.

(Sorry, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter comment :-) )

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by ithkuil on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @07:09AM (#5133538)
EDIT: The video displays the page at "the lash of Philome", which clearly references Philomela (Φιλομήλα), so I'm not sure if I understood their point

(see http://goo.gl/TxMkG for an annotated extract of the text)

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by felideon on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:28PM (#5131124)
> If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to find youtube videos for some of the more distinct dialects.

There's already this semi-interactive map that made to HN a while back:

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by gcv on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:08PM (#5130996)
Please do! I'd be especially interested in some of the ones you mentioned: Geordie and Brummie. Also, some of the harder-to-understand ones. I can understand Yorkshire pretty well, but maybe some others would give me trouble.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:56PM (#5131264)
This is taken from a British sitcom, 'Alan Partridge'. It features a Norfolk and a Geordie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc It's actually a pretty good example of a Newcastle (Geordie) accent despite being a comedy show.

Finding a good example of a Brummie accent as proven more tricky as I'm either stumbling across paradises where they over accentuate the "twang", or TV personalities where the access is suppressed a little. Ozzy Osbourne is from that area and in his interviews you can sometimes hear the accent showing through. The pronunciation itself isn't hard to understand; I highlighted it because it's a unique accent. I think these days it's mellowed quite a bit though.

This video isn't work safe, but it's the best example of a Welsh accent I could find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o (this is also probably the accent I hate the most - I couldn't explain why, but it just grinds)

This is the Cornish (south west) accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 It's probably the closest to the old Shakespearian English that someone linked to in these comments.

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by stan_rogers on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:13PM (#5131362)
David Mitchell's character in this "Dying Wish" sketch from The Mitchell and Webb Look has a very good Welsh accent as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-BpLgVxLRY (It's not David's own, which is very much RP, but it's entirely believable.)
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by JonnieCache on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:37PM (#5131461)
Witness Ross Noble's stupendous sunderland accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nHg6hDiRQQ

Sunderland is about an hour away from newcastle.

EDIT: Oh gosh and there are some amazing clips from a local radio phone in show in norwich here: https://soundcloud.com/voices-of-norfolk/sets/radio-norfolk-...

This lady is particularly endearing: https://soundcloud.com/voices-of-norfolk/nancy?in=voices-of-...

Here's a recording of market traders in london with cockney accents, and some jamaican I think: https://soundcloud.com/london-sound-survey/brick-lane-market...

That soundcloud account is full of field recordings taken in london, lots have distinctive voices in them: https://soundcloud.com/london-sound-survey/wembley-cheapjack...

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:54PM (#5131522)
I'd forgotten how random Ross Noble is.

    > Sunderland is about an hour away from newcastle.
Not even that. Newcastle and Middlesbrough are about an hour apart (just down the A19); Sunderland is less than half the distance away.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:32PM (#5131441)
There's also Gavin And Stacy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AZxRBMECQU (I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner!)

For the non-English readers, the two girls are Welsh, the two boys are from (if I recall correctly) south Essex (a suburb north of London).

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by walshemj on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:42AM (#5133439)
As some on coming from Birmingham Ozzie has lost most of his Noddy Holder (the lead singer in slade) has a stronger more black country accent (the rural brummie accent and how Sam Gamgee should have sounded like in the LOTR)

As well as the accent there is the question of the brummie dialect which can be much harder to decipher for a non native "yow" for "you" for example

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by prophetjohn on Monday January 28, 2013 @08:20PM (#5131823)
How representative is the typical accent you hear on Doctor Who of the average English accent? And in case I'm conflating a bunch of very different accents, I'll just go with Matt Smith's Doctor[0].

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FxKcLId-Ys

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by rupertj on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @05:00AM (#5133174)
I'm from England, and his accent in that video sounds pretty neutral to me. It's got a bit of a "posh" or "well spoken" edge to it, but in terms of region, that's going to be somewhere around the south of England, excluding places like the south west and parts of London, which have distinct accents.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @03:15PM (#5135984)
I agree.

Occasionally you'll find extras which sound Welsh, because the show is filmed in Wales. But for the most part it's a very neutral accent. Even Amy Pond's accent isn't particularly strong.

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by toyg on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @09:54AM (#5134263)
You're omitting all the North-West accents, Mancunian (aka "the Noel Gallagher") being the most famous. The sounds change quite spectacularly as you go up the M6 and into deep Lancashire. Get some "roots" people from Blackpool, Chorley and Burnley in the same room, and their accents will be all over the place.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by green7ea on Monday January 28, 2013 @07:10PM (#5131576)
I was sure the guy with the Geordie accent was a Newfie. That was before he said 'aboot'.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by vellum on Monday January 28, 2013 @10:08PM (#5132120)
There's a show called Geordie Shore, which is the MTV UK's take on Jersey Shore.

Here's an interview with some of it's stars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fLiVKNuzjE

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by lostlogin on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @12:59AM (#5132612)
Something that fascinated me while in the UK - subtitling accents. I mainly saw this (heard this?) with the Scottish, but other strong accents had this done also. It was the BBC I noticed this with.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by justincormack on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @04:53AM (#5133151)
This is very rare, I cannot recall seeing it in the last few years. Occasionally on news programmes. Most of the Scottish programmes are only shown there is BBC output is quite regional. You can get them online though now.

Welsh is subtitled but that's a different language...

Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by lostlogin on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @10:49PM (#5137959)
It was 2000 a 2001 that I saw this, so things may well have changed in that time frame.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @03:19PM (#5136001)
I'm really interested to hear that. I've only ever noticed this on American shows and, until now, I always assumed it was added for American's benefit, but hard coded so they also appeared on UK airings. But now I'm wondering we're the ones adding it.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by groovy2shoes on Sunday February 03, 2013 @02:02PM (#5160664)
Some American shows also have subtitles when the speakers have strong regional accents, particularly accents from the Deep South.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by Yhippa on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:34PM (#5131162)
I've been looking for some sound clips of the different accents and would love to hear them if you have YT videos readily available.
Re:When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents? by laumars on Monday January 28, 2013 @05:58PM (#5131281)
I've had a dig around, it was actually a lot harder than I was first anticipating (so you may have already found better examples than I). But the ones I did post are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5131264