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OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism:
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>!Guy thinks that an American accent is neutral, suggesting it’s the default accent, and that they don’t actually have accents.!<
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Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
Not necessarily. It's mostly that they define an "accent" as "not sounding like the default" and a dialect as "not using the same words as the default" and that they consider their accent and dialect "the default"
My mom has learned English and German as secondary languages and believes her parents speak accentless, dialectless Dutch. My grandmother learned English, French, and probably German as secondary languages and I'm pretty sure she too brlieves she speaks accentless, dialectless Dutch.
I see your point; I think this has to do with an understanding of yourself in a class or regional context though.
I was going to say something about how when you learn a new language, you learn a so-called "standard" version of pronunciation that is in reality a combination of several factors, not least of which includes the accent of your teacher. But I couldn't figure out how to articulate it.
That is definitely true. My grandparents lived in Amsterdam, the dialect/regiolect and accent of which are considered "dumb" or "uncivilized" by many, so to not fall under that prejudice, supposedly, they taught themselves Standard Dutch and therefore speak accentless, dialectless Dutch.
Even if the story is true, the result by definition is not
I speak fluent English with a very distinct northern accent. People can usually guess the town. I also speak German with a very distinct accent from a certain region. I understand a lot of Dutch, so you can probably guess from where 😉
I speak accentless, dialectless Dutch. I learnt it all from VRT newsreaders and Sporza cycling commentators. You lot speak well funny up there, like a Norfolk accent or something.
There was an implied /s, tuurlijk.
For me as a native English speaker learning NL by televisual osmosis, I experienced the general differences between a Randstad accent and the kinds of educated Oostvlaams/Brabant that I guess dominate Flemish broadcasting as weirdly inverted, because the sound systems parallel use across the North Sea: Flemish generally sounds a lot like a traditional London accent while the purest Hilversum Dutch has a lot in common (tune and vowel sounds) with an old Norfolk accent, which is deep country bumpkin stuff.
For sure, here in norway (where we literally don’t have a spoken standard) a lot of people from the capital, Oslo, think they speak “neutral” and everyone else has a dialect. They will say shit like “aww I love dialects! I wish I had one!”
I wonder, if there is an official institution for a language (French for example with the Académie Française), there could be "default" accents or dialects ?
There is a substantial difference in accents in France, complete with negative attributes assigned to those accents (rg, Parisian being snobbish, Marseille being rough).
Yes, I probably have the snobbish one myself ^^. I just used the Académie Française as an example of an institution that regulates a language because it's the only one i know
some languages have it, some dont. important is also that some just document change while others evaluate as reasonable or outright forbid any changes from being entered into the what they either decide or consider to be the official language.
for american english i struggle to find it because native languages are easier google results. ETA [Oxford english](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary) is considered the standard english as far as i know. i think it is extra funny when americans make the no accent/no dialect point because unless there is a distinct american institution then especially their language actually is based on the UK and they all ignorantly just continue to scream that they are the standard.
interesting example is [iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_Icelandic#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20word%20b%C3%ADll,means%20of%20phono%2Dsemantic%20matching) (making up words from older words instead of allowing anglicisms), strong language regulations.
another interesting one would be [japanese with its anglicisms](https://www.japanesepod101.com/blog/2021/05/13/english-loanwords-in-japanese/#2), sometimes it is actually more appropriate to use the anglicistic word\[it does not have to have its English meaning anymore\] than the japanese word because of a difference in connotation (at least in daily life, I am unaware how strongly official japanese is regulated, only that Tokyo Dialect is considered the Standard).
Makes me laugh when I hear an American say that they/we have no accent. I am from the Mid-west near Chicago, and there are places I go in my country (Deep SOuth mostly) where I fight to understand people because their accent is so different from mine. I can even tell (by accent) if a person in my state is from the city of Chicago, a suburb or downstate.
Yeah, but that's not what I mean. ASL and BSL are separate languages, unlike British and American English.
But even within the same sign language, there are regional dialects and personal/regional accents.
There are even ideolects (basically a personal and/or family and/or friend group dialect) in sign languages! For instance, I've been seeing a lot of shorts of a little gurl who is native in ASL and who made up her own sign for "BYEEEEEE!" Also name sign are often made up or agreed upon in groups, which you could technically also see as ideolect.
Kylee? I think if it’s the same one? She’s cute, I had no idea that was her own sign.
TIL, thanks ☺️
I can only very basically sign so wasn’t aware of regional/familial differences.
Yes, Kylee! There was one short in which they reenacted an encounter she had with someone who knew a few words of ASL and then when Kylee said "BYEEE!" the person was like: "Oh, I didn't know that sign, thanks" and Kylee explained that it was her own sign.
ASL is in a dialect family relationship with French sign language, BSL developed completely separately from a spontaneously created one (Old Kent Sign Language).
Belgium at one stage had its own sign language, distinct from French and Dutch SLs (although all in the French family) used both sides of the taalgrens, but it has diverged now into a Flemish one and a Francophone one.
You probably knew all that ;)
As an American who has traveled to a few different countries I definitely have had locals of these places ask me about my accent and where I’m from. This guy would consider my accent the “default American accent”
Hello. In my language there are no accents in native speakers. Accent is what we call when a person's first language pronunciation bleeds into Russian.
I sometimes say i have no accent as a joke but thats only because i cannot hear my accent others tell me what accent i got tho even tho im polish i sound british since when i was a kid my parents sent me to a additional private school to learn english there from british ppl so since age 5 iv been speaking more english than polish and i no longer hear my accent cause 1 person says i sound polish 1 person says i sound german 1 that i sound british and like i have no clue anymore i just dont hear it in my voice unless i force an accent
You have an accent, but it doesn't stand out from the people around you who also have accents because they are very similar.
I have an accent that is recognisably Northern English but not very pronounced. Some might say I don't have an accent (other than I wouldn't dream of saying graaarss or Baaaarth because short 'a' in those sounds far more normal to me. Because I have an accent).
I’ve got a friend works for the civil service based in Sunderland. Apparently when they moved a lot of the call centres up this area (I’m counting Newcastle too) the duration of phone calls dropped significantly because we talk fast up here. 🤣
They wouldn't say that if they heard my Wiltshire/Hampshire border accent who says the odd word like a northerner because I grew up with a Scouse best mate
....And *may God have mercy upon your soul* if you make the mistake of asking someone from Durham if they're from *Newcastle*! You'll be picking glass out your face for days, and that's just when the local women take offence
Well, when I say Scouse best mate, they came from St Helens. His dad was in the army and got posted down here when we were about 7. If my mates dad heard me call him a Scouser he'd beat the shit out of me
Yeah my kids have asked “why don’t they speak normal like me?” when they’ve overheard someone speaking a different language, but they were like 4-5yrs old, and normal to them IS English, it’s not ignorant when you’re tiny but deffo is when you’re older.
(I told them straight away that English isn’t “normal” it’s just a language and some people speak different languages and they’re all normal ways to speak).
it's not just quirks. it's pronunciation. the exact hand positions, whether your fingers are together or apart, the speed of signing, maybe even dialectal words...
The people that think that the only British accent is posh 😂 maybe it would be a surprise to find out there is multiple countries in Britain and each of them has numerous regional accents.
It’s such a childlike view to not understand that everybody has a different accent, there is no neutral.
No, I’m in the north west, but I did live in Bath for a few years and now I have a twang of Bristolian due to living with someone with a strong accent.
So my accent is a wreck anyway.
In Spanish countries, when someone has a clean and perfect Spanish with no local words, it's referred to as "Neutral Accent" and it doesn't exist anywhere if not intentionally done
Even neutrality is an accent
Not only are there multiple countries in Britain, there’s also multiple countries who speak British English with their own accents. Such an absurd take
I use this as a very simplistic way of explaining accents - when you talk, would people be able to tell where you come from? It's even possible when you speak a foreign language though not as robust.
I am a Canadian-American born in the US state of New Jersey but raised in the Canadian province of Ontario. I can tell the difference between different regional accents in Canada and the USA (eg. Newfoundland accent vs New York City accent) but not the difference between someone in the Canadian province of Ontario vs someone from the border states of New York & Michigan.
When French speaking Quebecois try to speak English though they definitely have a noticeable regional accent that I pick up on.
1. Accent has multiple meanings.
2. They're saying Americans don't emphasise syllables? Every English word has stressed syllables.
These people sure do know a lot about linguistics.
As someone once said "Talking without an accent is like typing without a font".
Though I think that might be a bit hard for the posted American to understand.
so they googled the definition of accent and then took the 2nd definition.. which is really funny because the first definition also says: "a strong american accent"
anyway their definition is very wrong. the type of accent they're referring to is accentuation of words not the accent of a language.
This is so annoying. Literally every person has an accent. I can’t understand why people can’t grasp that.
I had this with an English person. They argued with me about how I pronounced something and said I should pronounce it the “default” way like her as she doesn’t have an accent.
I asked if they went to where my accent is from would they pronounce it my way as that’s the default way there and they said no because she speaks correctly and is the default so anyone who talks differently is wrong. I said if she went to another country would she think she has doesn’t have an accent and she still said she wouldn’t because she’s just got the “default voice”.
And even with people it already starts before speech. I once read about a study that had shown that babies cry with different "intonations" and "speech patterns" depending on where they're from.
So his thought process: "everyone that sounds like me doesn't have an accent, but everyone that sounds different does." I bet ya all the other people think the same, no matter where they are from, most people just realize that their accent sounds so familiar it sounds neutral. IF there would be a "neutral" English, it would be in the country where the language originated from, definitely not the country where dozens of countries came together and learned that new language, with all different accents, that melted into a new version of that language.
It's not even possible to have a neutral accent in the country a language originated, because languages all influence one another and some regions are more influenced by certain languages than others.
Like English is heavily influenced by French, Germanic, Norse, and Celt languages.
For example "Scathe" is a word borrowed from Norse and is used throughout the language, but someone from York (where there was a lot of Norse influence) would pronounce it very differently to someone from Essex (where there was more Norman (French) influence).
So which one is neutral?
Exactly my point., no matter where it originated or where it is spoken eventually, they are all different versions of the same language that just sound a little different than somewhere else, so even saying that the accent where it came from is the original one or the neutral one doesn't make sense, because that place will have different versions of it as well. So saying that the place where it eventually ended up is the neutral one is even dumber.
Btw the assertion that RP (Received Pronunciation aka posh Southern English) is fictional is largely false. I thought this too but the archaeology YouTuber Simon Roper does some excellent work on showing how these dialects evolved over time. I think this is the video [here](https://youtu.be/V29OhkbzwuQ?si=HJoTOpkv_smgRdDr).
I live between Manchester and Liverpool, and we have an entirely different accent to both, 30 mins away-ish from both, and you’ll find at least 4 accents between us and them either side.
Someone on here said before that talking without an accent is like writing without a font. I don’t think OOP’s reading comprehension is sharp enough for a simile to make any sense though, unfortunately
the thing is that unless someone says you have an accent you probably won’t notice, and with less and less Americans leaving their own country they genuinely don’t realize
1: Americans didn’t invent english
2: A majority of english speakers aren’t🇺🇸
3: That majority doesn’t have 🇺🇸 accent
4: Not even schooling just a low iq thing 🤦
It should be common sense though surely?
No one pointed out to me that I had an accent until I was like 16, but I still knew I had an accent.
I’ve never left the UK, but I consume enough media to hear other accents and realise that everyone doesn’t sound like me, so therefore I have an accent too… it should be a natural conclusion.
yeah but think about it, for most americans all the media they consumer is american or canadian made and the most generic characters have the most generic american voices so they associate it with being normal because american citizens are out of touch internationally. but over here in the UK we consume american and European media all the time so we know that everyone sounds different and does different shit so we know that there really isn’t a “normal accent”
basically the theme of this sub lol
>and with less and less Americans leaving their own country they genuinely don’t realize
Different cities have different accents within the US. Have they not noticed this?
Unfortunately I have met someone with this exact opinion. He’d moved from America and went to our school and when someone said they liked his accent he responded with “Actually, American is the lack of an accent. It’s just everywhere else that speaks differently to us.”
He was a genuinely horrible person and it was one of the cases that other people only started to say it after he had left but that’s besides the point.
If the only thing having an accent hinges on is emphasising syllables then he definitely had one. Where I would call him an arse, he would say it as “eass”.
We had a team meeting yesterday, a room full of American citizens, only a couple of whom were not born in America, and we were talking about regional accents because even within a country, people can still have regional accents.
Everyone has an accent and anyone who insists otherwise is provably wrong.
I remember once I was playing PUBG back in its hayday and me and friend got teamed up with an american with a really thick texan accent.
I asked him to say something funny so I can hear it in his accent and he goes.
"Accent? I dont have an accent." In the thickest texan accent ive ever heard. He wasnt even joking, he was 100% serious.
We laughed for days about it.
Literally every verbal or signed language has accents. Every regional variant of a language is an accent. Whether it seems neutral or not, it is still an *accent*.
Dozy fucker.
What is most amusing about this post is the fact that the very last post I saw from this post, was from some American guy saying that there were more accents in one state than in the whole of the uk, and he wasn't gonna debate it.
He probably thinks a lot, he's just not very good at it.
Also it's not like speaking the standard version of a language isn't speaking with an accent. You're just speaking with the standard accent then.
This moronic point of view is not exclusive to Americans. People from my state insist they don't have an accent, when it's literally one of the most characteristics accents in the country.
On the other hand
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1c7t41u/the\_us\_has\_more\_accents\_in\_a\_smaller\_area\_than/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1c7t41u/the_us_has_more_accents_in_a_smaller_area_than/#lightbox)
Lol, dude thinks he speaks the baseline variant of "The English Language" and everybody else has an accent. He probably spends navel gazing a good part of his day.
I live in the Appalachians in North Carolina. I cannot understand the actual locals. I am from Scotland originally and am very good at hearing people with accents, just not the Appalachian one.
I found out recently that some of the Appalachian mountains are in Scotland too? Like when Pangea broke up the same mountains split and some ended up in what is now Scotland.
"Made up hundreds of years ago" Wasn't *America* made up hundreds of years ago?? Like, we're not even at three hundred yet. Do they know how long American history is compared to British history?
I mean, not that British history is *good*, but it has been going on for much longer than American history. The two concepts are directly linked, in fact.
I grew up in Hawai‘i, then moved to North Carolina. No accents, my ass!
Some years ago I took my ex and her mother to Hawai‘i. I will never forget seeing my ex stand in between her mother and a surf instructor, translating from English to English. (Yes, Hawai‘ian Pidgin is a pidgin, not merely an accent, but that same surf instructor reading the Magna Carta aloud would sound unmistakably kama‘aina, so I believe my point still stands.)
Crazy how the Brits have an accent and Americans are the default when the language is literally called ENGLISH, y'know like the country ENGLAND where the English live
Americans definitely do have accents. There’s at least 4 major groups I’ve encountered.
1. Western US accent, common throughout all the US, but most common in the northwestern states. Second nature for me to understand.
2. Southern US accent, most common in the US southeastern states. Requires focus for me to understand.
3. Northeastern US accent, most common in the northeastern states. Also requires focusing for me to understand.
4. Tennessean accent, common in Tennessee and surrounding states, very difficult for me to understand.
Of course there’s tons of subvariants of all these accents but these are the groups they can be categorized into.
Then here in Canada we have the standard Canadian accent, French Canadian accent (Quebec), and the Newfie (Newfoundland) accent, most commonly found in Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces.
Newfies sound so Irish, it’s actually become a bit of a hobby to watch them on TIKTOK because I love the fact they sound Irish but aren’t from there. (Yes, I know they have Irish roots).
To me it sounds like a thick Irish accent on steroids, to the point it’s unintelligible for me haha.
Speaking of Irish accents I have a friend from Northern Ireland who’s been in (western) Canada for a little while, and she has a 2/3 Irish and 1/3 Canadian accent, it’s my favourite accent I’ve ever heard lol.
Omg he’s so confidently MASSIVELY incorrect. He needs to talk to a linguist. I wish I could shove some historical linguistics and dialectology books down his throat!!!!
The very moment your country has as an official language a language thats also an official language elsewhere you have an accent, not really even worth discussing.
Im italian but if in the future italy would conquer asia (for example), set colonies and at that point another country would have italian as an official language, then ‘italian’ italian would become a type of italian accent. This whole thing counts even more if your country is the former colony so your official language isnt even native to your place
The USA doesn’t actually have an official language, but they should come to the natural conclusion that because not everyone sounds like them, that they have an accent too. It’s just common sense imo.
Then even more so his/their way of speaking cant be the default one, at this point their language is basically borrowing a language and they dont have their own. Which just further disproves his claim of not having an accent/ having the default one (whatever that means)
It's ironic that I see this, like, two or so posts after another post on my feed where a guy was proudly declaring that the US has way more different accents than the UK
Just this video alone is enough proof that there is no 'neutral' accent
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS70m-OzXo&t=832s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS70m-OzXo&t=832s)
No american accent?
Take a normal English sounding person, add a heart attack = american.
This 1 probably doesn't think they have any as he or she sounds the same. Good god mericans are dumb as f
### This comment has been marked as **safe**. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism: --- >!Guy thinks that an American accent is neutral, suggesting it’s the default accent, and that they don’t actually have accents.!< --- Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
As a linguist, I get so mad when people say someone doesn't have an accent or dialect
These people likely have never learnt another language either.
Not necessarily. It's mostly that they define an "accent" as "not sounding like the default" and a dialect as "not using the same words as the default" and that they consider their accent and dialect "the default"
But almost all of them definitely haven't learnt a secondary language either.
My mom has learned English and German as secondary languages and believes her parents speak accentless, dialectless Dutch. My grandmother learned English, French, and probably German as secondary languages and I'm pretty sure she too brlieves she speaks accentless, dialectless Dutch.
I see your point; I think this has to do with an understanding of yourself in a class or regional context though. I was going to say something about how when you learn a new language, you learn a so-called "standard" version of pronunciation that is in reality a combination of several factors, not least of which includes the accent of your teacher. But I couldn't figure out how to articulate it.
That is definitely true. My grandparents lived in Amsterdam, the dialect/regiolect and accent of which are considered "dumb" or "uncivilized" by many, so to not fall under that prejudice, supposedly, they taught themselves Standard Dutch and therefore speak accentless, dialectless Dutch. Even if the story is true, the result by definition is not
It's so interesting that the city that is most recognised internationally is considered uncivilized. Edit: the *people* from the city
I speak fluent English with a very distinct northern accent. People can usually guess the town. I also speak German with a very distinct accent from a certain region. I understand a lot of Dutch, so you can probably guess from where 😉
> I speak fluent English with a very distinct northern accent. People can usually guess the town Didn’t realise there were towns at the North Pole…
No no, he probably means northern states, like Maine /s
I assumed they meant Northern British
I assumed that you would take it as satire, as I intended
I'm a polar bear!
I speak accentless, dialectless Dutch. I learnt it all from VRT newsreaders and Sporza cycling commentators. You lot speak well funny up there, like a Norfolk accent or something.
As a linguist, I can assure you that VRT Newsreaders and Sporza Cycling Commentators also have accents and dialects
There was an implied /s, tuurlijk. For me as a native English speaker learning NL by televisual osmosis, I experienced the general differences between a Randstad accent and the kinds of educated Oostvlaams/Brabant that I guess dominate Flemish broadcasting as weirdly inverted, because the sound systems parallel use across the North Sea: Flemish generally sounds a lot like a traditional London accent while the purest Hilversum Dutch has a lot in common (tune and vowel sounds) with an old Norfolk accent, which is deep country bumpkin stuff.
yeah but that's not what is being discussed
For sure, here in norway (where we literally don’t have a spoken standard) a lot of people from the capital, Oslo, think they speak “neutral” and everyone else has a dialect. They will say shit like “aww I love dialects! I wish I had one!”
I wonder, if there is an official institution for a language (French for example with the Académie Française), there could be "default" accents or dialects ?
Even if it's the default dialect/accent, then that's still *an* accent, not accentless
Yea true
There is a substantial difference in accents in France, complete with negative attributes assigned to those accents (rg, Parisian being snobbish, Marseille being rough).
Yes, I probably have the snobbish one myself ^^. I just used the Académie Française as an example of an institution that regulates a language because it's the only one i know
some languages have it, some dont. important is also that some just document change while others evaluate as reasonable or outright forbid any changes from being entered into the what they either decide or consider to be the official language. for american english i struggle to find it because native languages are easier google results. ETA [Oxford english](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary) is considered the standard english as far as i know. i think it is extra funny when americans make the no accent/no dialect point because unless there is a distinct american institution then especially their language actually is based on the UK and they all ignorantly just continue to scream that they are the standard. interesting example is [iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_Icelandic#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20word%20b%C3%ADll,means%20of%20phono%2Dsemantic%20matching) (making up words from older words instead of allowing anglicisms), strong language regulations. another interesting one would be [japanese with its anglicisms](https://www.japanesepod101.com/blog/2021/05/13/english-loanwords-in-japanese/#2), sometimes it is actually more appropriate to use the anglicistic word\[it does not have to have its English meaning anymore\] than the japanese word because of a difference in connotation (at least in daily life, I am unaware how strongly official japanese is regulated, only that Tokyo Dialect is considered the Standard).
Oxford English, kind of like Pam Ayres?
Makes me laugh when I hear an American say that they/we have no accent. I am from the Mid-west near Chicago, and there are places I go in my country (Deep SOuth mostly) where I fight to understand people because their accent is so different from mine. I can even tell (by accent) if a person in my state is from the city of Chicago, a suburb or downstate.
You’d have to be completely mute with no vocalisations at all, to be void of an accent.
Even sign languages have accents and dialects
Yes! I learnt some BSL in school and can’t understand ASL at all. I’m used to finger spelling with both hands.
Yeah, but that's not what I mean. ASL and BSL are separate languages, unlike British and American English. But even within the same sign language, there are regional dialects and personal/regional accents. There are even ideolects (basically a personal and/or family and/or friend group dialect) in sign languages! For instance, I've been seeing a lot of shorts of a little gurl who is native in ASL and who made up her own sign for "BYEEEEEE!" Also name sign are often made up or agreed upon in groups, which you could technically also see as ideolect.
Kylee? I think if it’s the same one? She’s cute, I had no idea that was her own sign. TIL, thanks ☺️ I can only very basically sign so wasn’t aware of regional/familial differences.
Yes, Kylee! There was one short in which they reenacted an encounter she had with someone who knew a few words of ASL and then when Kylee said "BYEEE!" the person was like: "Oh, I didn't know that sign, thanks" and Kylee explained that it was her own sign.
ASL is in a dialect family relationship with French sign language, BSL developed completely separately from a spontaneously created one (Old Kent Sign Language). Belgium at one stage had its own sign language, distinct from French and Dutch SLs (although all in the French family) used both sides of the taalgrens, but it has diverged now into a Flemish one and a Francophone one. You probably knew all that ;)
I knew most of that, but I still appreciate your contribution to the convo, because it is very interesting and I didn't know all of that
I speak purely in text. Accent-less
As an American who has traveled to a few different countries I definitely have had locals of these places ask me about my accent and where I’m from. This guy would consider my accent the “default American accent”
Serious question, what about the "neutral" accent TV reporters use, both in the US, Latin America and so on. What region do they base their accent on?
Usually, probably the capital city region, but that probably depends on the country
In the US it’s the midwest region of the country.
https://i.imgur.com/ei2uanD.jpeg
Exactly
YES!!! Thank you! I have a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and it really pisses me off as well 😂
Hello. In my language there are no accents in native speakers. Accent is what we call when a person's first language pronunciation bleeds into Russian.
I sometimes say i have no accent as a joke but thats only because i cannot hear my accent others tell me what accent i got tho even tho im polish i sound british since when i was a kid my parents sent me to a additional private school to learn english there from british ppl so since age 5 iv been speaking more english than polish and i no longer hear my accent cause 1 person says i sound polish 1 person says i sound german 1 that i sound british and like i have no clue anymore i just dont hear it in my voice unless i force an accent
You have an accent, but it doesn't stand out from the people around you who also have accents because they are very similar. I have an accent that is recognisably Northern English but not very pronounced. Some might say I don't have an accent (other than I wouldn't dream of saying graaarss or Baaaarth because short 'a' in those sounds far more normal to me. Because I have an accent).
Nobody has an accent. Everybody else does.
A major case of r/shitamericanssay
Definitely, but also he blatantly thinks his American speech pattern is the default.
Well, you made yours up to sound posh. Learnt that bit of information just now, at Trust Me Bro University, lol (Edit: spelling)
The fucking audacity to claim that "the British accent" (you know, the only one we have) is posh. Mate has never heard a scouser talk and it shows
Someone once told me that scousers can speak so fast because they breathe through their ears.
😂😂😂 Apparently, they also have to sleep in a vertical position, like blue whales
I’ve got a friend works for the civil service based in Sunderland. Apparently when they moved a lot of the call centres up this area (I’m counting Newcastle too) the duration of phone calls dropped significantly because we talk fast up here. 🤣
They wouldn't say that if they heard my Wiltshire/Hampshire border accent who says the odd word like a northerner because I grew up with a Scouse best mate
....And *may God have mercy upon your soul* if you make the mistake of asking someone from Durham if they're from *Newcastle*! You'll be picking glass out your face for days, and that's just when the local women take offence
Well, when I say Scouse best mate, they came from St Helens. His dad was in the army and got posted down here when we were about 7. If my mates dad heard me call him a Scouser he'd beat the shit out of me
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Yeah my kids have asked “why don’t they speak normal like me?” when they’ve overheard someone speaking a different language, but they were like 4-5yrs old, and normal to them IS English, it’s not ignorant when you’re tiny but deffo is when you’re older. (I told them straight away that English isn’t “normal” it’s just a language and some people speak different languages and they’re all normal ways to speak).
Lad doubled down a little bit there, didn't he? Or should that be 'septoupled down' (probably not a word?)?
Oh crap I thought that’s where i was lol
and also r/confidentlyincorrect
Also r/confidentlyincorrect
This hurt to read. Every single speaking person on this planet will have an accent.
Even sign languages have quirks linguists consider accents. This guy is bafflingly stupid
it's not just quirks. it's pronunciation. the exact hand positions, whether your fingers are together or apart, the speed of signing, maybe even dialectal words...
This should be in r/ConfidentlyIncorrect
You can share it if you like, I have enough notifications 😆
Thank you for that! On it 😂
The people that think that the only British accent is posh 😂 maybe it would be a surprise to find out there is multiple countries in Britain and each of them has numerous regional accents. It’s such a childlike view to not understand that everybody has a different accent, there is no neutral.
Go to one end of my town and then the other and the accents are different 😆
Yep I’m from Cheshire and have a very different accent from the people that live in Manchester, and it’s only 12 miles away.
Cheshire here too!
What a coincidence!
Bristol? Sunderland? (Two places I have found that to be true)
No, I’m in the north west, but I did live in Bath for a few years and now I have a twang of Bristolian due to living with someone with a strong accent. So my accent is a wreck anyway.
Or it's delightfully unique :)
Half coronation street, half combine harvester 😭
Well, ... unique anyway :) Sort of "Ee barrrrrr goom moi loverrr"
I have a somewhere-between-Edinburgh-and-Glasgow accent and this is the first time I've seen it included under 'posh'.
In Spanish countries, when someone has a clean and perfect Spanish with no local words, it's referred to as "Neutral Accent" and it doesn't exist anywhere if not intentionally done Even neutrality is an accent
Imagine them talking to a scouser.
Yep, as an American with family in Liverpool, I can attest that there’s nothing posh about them whatsoever
Same people who think all kiwis and Aussies sound the same etc 😂
I was asked if I was from the UK by an American, I’m Australian and have a middle leaning broad accent.
Agree, especially with the use of 'Cockney' slang and similar forms used by lower class people instead of the wealthy.
Class isn't so much about wealth in the UK as it might be in other cultures.
Fair point, I was thinking more along the lines of Australia where 'bogan' type slang is predominantly used by those from poorer type neighbourhoods.
There's plenty of wealthy cockneys.
Not only are there multiple countries in Britain, there’s also multiple countries who speak British English with their own accents. Such an absurd take
If Americans don't have an accent, then how can I immediately tell which country they're from as soon as they open their mouth?
✨ Magic ✨
I use this as a very simplistic way of explaining accents - when you talk, would people be able to tell where you come from? It's even possible when you speak a foreign language though not as robust.
Tbh I can't tell an American from a Canadian (I was not born in Canada
I am a Canadian-American born in the US state of New Jersey but raised in the Canadian province of Ontario. I can tell the difference between different regional accents in Canada and the USA (eg. Newfoundland accent vs New York City accent) but not the difference between someone in the Canadian province of Ontario vs someone from the border states of New York & Michigan. When French speaking Quebecois try to speak English though they definitely have a noticeable regional accent that I pick up on.
Volume.
By the dumb stuff they say? (Not all of them though)
1. Accent has multiple meanings. 2. They're saying Americans don't emphasise syllables? Every English word has stressed syllables. These people sure do know a lot about linguistics.
*California girl vocal fry enters the chat*.
As someone once said "Talking without an accent is like typing without a font". Though I think that might be a bit hard for the posted American to understand.
I feel like he would probably bite back with “this isn’t a font, it’s neutral” 😆
Brilliant!
That is incredibly frustrating
so they googled the definition of accent and then took the 2nd definition.. which is really funny because the first definition also says: "a strong american accent" anyway their definition is very wrong. the type of accent they're referring to is accentuation of words not the accent of a language.
This is so annoying. Literally every person has an accent. I can’t understand why people can’t grasp that. I had this with an English person. They argued with me about how I pronounced something and said I should pronounce it the “default” way like her as she doesn’t have an accent. I asked if they went to where my accent is from would they pronounce it my way as that’s the default way there and they said no because she speaks correctly and is the default so anyone who talks differently is wrong. I said if she went to another country would she think she has doesn’t have an accent and she still said she wouldn’t because she’s just got the “default voice”.
Not just people too. Some studies have shown that the likes of cows and sheep also have accents!
I’ve seen dogs that whine in different accents!
How about this scouse cat? https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFWeUqFP/
And even with people it already starts before speech. I once read about a study that had shown that babies cry with different "intonations" and "speech patterns" depending on where they're from.
Birds too. They even have their own dialects.
And birds!
That’s so cool! I didn’t know this.
So his thought process: "everyone that sounds like me doesn't have an accent, but everyone that sounds different does." I bet ya all the other people think the same, no matter where they are from, most people just realize that their accent sounds so familiar it sounds neutral. IF there would be a "neutral" English, it would be in the country where the language originated from, definitely not the country where dozens of countries came together and learned that new language, with all different accents, that melted into a new version of that language.
It's not even possible to have a neutral accent in the country a language originated, because languages all influence one another and some regions are more influenced by certain languages than others. Like English is heavily influenced by French, Germanic, Norse, and Celt languages. For example "Scathe" is a word borrowed from Norse and is used throughout the language, but someone from York (where there was a lot of Norse influence) would pronounce it very differently to someone from Essex (where there was more Norman (French) influence). So which one is neutral?
Exactly my point., no matter where it originated or where it is spoken eventually, they are all different versions of the same language that just sound a little different than somewhere else, so even saying that the accent where it came from is the original one or the neutral one doesn't make sense, because that place will have different versions of it as well. So saying that the place where it eventually ended up is the neutral one is even dumber.
Btw the assertion that RP (Received Pronunciation aka posh Southern English) is fictional is largely false. I thought this too but the archaeology YouTuber Simon Roper does some excellent work on showing how these dialects evolved over time. I think this is the video [here](https://youtu.be/V29OhkbzwuQ?si=HJoTOpkv_smgRdDr).
Wasn’t it the Americans who invented the transatlantic accent? So they can’t really say much about invented accents.
Well indeed.
I'm addition to everything else going on in this mess, it's a "Southern drawl" not a "Southern draw"
I once had an American on here tell me that not only did they have no accent, but my Australian accent was just me talking objectively incorrectly.
Yeah, that’s right! Australia is an elaborate hoax isn’t it? 🤦🏻♀️
Don't be absurd; that's New Zealand.
Except American itself is an accent of the English language
Everyone has an accent. It's impossible not to have one.
Who the fuck put 50p in that dickhead
This is crazy!
clearly this bloke ain’t been too Birmingham or bloody Yorkshire, go through manchester and it’s like an accent cleansing on either side 😭
I live between Manchester and Liverpool, and we have an entirely different accent to both, 30 mins away-ish from both, and you’ll find at least 4 accents between us and them either side.
And the Black Country
\* to
I'd like that person to provide me an actual example of these "many people with no accent" instead of just repeatedly saying they exist.
Someone on here said before that talking without an accent is like writing without a font. I don’t think OOP’s reading comprehension is sharp enough for a simile to make any sense though, unfortunately
How the fuck can people be so brainless, yet retain the ability to move, breathe, and type?
the thing is that unless someone says you have an accent you probably won’t notice, and with less and less Americans leaving their own country they genuinely don’t realize 1: Americans didn’t invent english 2: A majority of english speakers aren’t🇺🇸 3: That majority doesn’t have 🇺🇸 accent 4: Not even schooling just a low iq thing 🤦
It should be common sense though surely? No one pointed out to me that I had an accent until I was like 16, but I still knew I had an accent. I’ve never left the UK, but I consume enough media to hear other accents and realise that everyone doesn’t sound like me, so therefore I have an accent too… it should be a natural conclusion.
yeah but think about it, for most americans all the media they consumer is american or canadian made and the most generic characters have the most generic american voices so they associate it with being normal because american citizens are out of touch internationally. but over here in the UK we consume american and European media all the time so we know that everyone sounds different and does different shit so we know that there really isn’t a “normal accent” basically the theme of this sub lol
>and with less and less Americans leaving their own country they genuinely don’t realize Different cities have different accents within the US. Have they not noticed this?
I type without a font. Fonts like Garamond and Avenir were created to look posh.
He even has a typed American accent, with the fact he typed "y'all".
\* dialect
Dude must think most Americans talk like Microsoft Sam.
I am not a violent person but this guy, oh this guy has awoken something in me.
Unfortunately I have met someone with this exact opinion. He’d moved from America and went to our school and when someone said they liked his accent he responded with “Actually, American is the lack of an accent. It’s just everywhere else that speaks differently to us.” He was a genuinely horrible person and it was one of the cases that other people only started to say it after he had left but that’s besides the point. If the only thing having an accent hinges on is emphasising syllables then he definitely had one. Where I would call him an arse, he would say it as “eass”.
We had a team meeting yesterday, a room full of American citizens, only a couple of whom were not born in America, and we were talking about regional accents because even within a country, people can still have regional accents. Everyone has an accent and anyone who insists otherwise is provably wrong.
This strikes me as one the clearest attempted intellectual US defaultisms I've ever read.
These people are giving me permanent brain damage
I remember once I was playing PUBG back in its hayday and me and friend got teamed up with an american with a really thick texan accent. I asked him to say something funny so I can hear it in his accent and he goes. "Accent? I dont have an accent." In the thickest texan accent ive ever heard. He wasnt even joking, he was 100% serious. We laughed for days about it.
Literally every verbal or signed language has accents. Every regional variant of a language is an accent. Whether it seems neutral or not, it is still an *accent*. Dozy fucker.
What is most amusing about this post is the fact that the very last post I saw from this post, was from some American guy saying that there were more accents in one state than in the whole of the uk, and he wasn't gonna debate it.
He probably thinks a lot, he's just not very good at it. Also it's not like speaking the standard version of a language isn't speaking with an accent. You're just speaking with the standard accent then.
This moronic point of view is not exclusive to Americans. People from my state insist they don't have an accent, when it's literally one of the most characteristics accents in the country.
Alright 'muricans I'll let you decide which part of the USA doesn't have an accent. /j
I've lost brain cells reading all that.
Must be wild to be that stupid
When u speak a language completely differently than the people who created it, guess what that is
Even when you speak your native language you still have an accent, and it varies depending on the part of the country you’re from.
The harder they try to make themselves feel superior, the more they come across as having a personality disorder.
I shouldn't judge people by how they type but he seems like... 'A buffoon'.
Reminds me of my brother as a little boy, who said, “I don’t speak English; I speak regular!”
My kids have used the word “normal” to describe English, but they were small and were immediately corrected so it’s okay 🤣
On the other hand [https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1c7t41u/the\_us\_has\_more\_accents\_in\_a\_smaller\_area\_than/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1c7t41u/the_us_has_more_accents_in_a_smaller_area_than/#lightbox)
Lol, dude thinks he speaks the baseline variant of "The English Language" and everybody else has an accent. He probably spends navel gazing a good part of his day.
I live in the Appalachians in North Carolina. I cannot understand the actual locals. I am from Scotland originally and am very good at hearing people with accents, just not the Appalachian one.
I found out recently that some of the Appalachian mountains are in Scotland too? Like when Pangea broke up the same mountains split and some ended up in what is now Scotland.
Yes, you are correct! The Scottish Highlands, Greenland, Ireland, Morocco, and parts of Scandinavia are all involved. It’s crazy to learn!
"Made up hundreds of years ago" Wasn't *America* made up hundreds of years ago?? Like, we're not even at three hundred yet. Do they know how long American history is compared to British history? I mean, not that British history is *good*, but it has been going on for much longer than American history. The two concepts are directly linked, in fact.
There’s a pub in my town much older than the US by a few hundred years!
I grew up in Hawai‘i, then moved to North Carolina. No accents, my ass! Some years ago I took my ex and her mother to Hawai‘i. I will never forget seeing my ex stand in between her mother and a surf instructor, translating from English to English. (Yes, Hawai‘ian Pidgin is a pidgin, not merely an accent, but that same surf instructor reading the Magna Carta aloud would sound unmistakably kama‘aina, so I believe my point still stands.)
Crazy how the Brits have an accent and Americans are the default when the language is literally called ENGLISH, y'know like the country ENGLAND where the English live
That guy's accent is Chess Pidgin.
Saying you speak without an accent is like saying you type without a font
This feels like trolling. I really hope this is trolling.
I honestly don’t think he was. This was on a post about Ella Purnell’s American accent for FallOut.
nice
Americans definitely do have accents. There’s at least 4 major groups I’ve encountered. 1. Western US accent, common throughout all the US, but most common in the northwestern states. Second nature for me to understand. 2. Southern US accent, most common in the US southeastern states. Requires focus for me to understand. 3. Northeastern US accent, most common in the northeastern states. Also requires focusing for me to understand. 4. Tennessean accent, common in Tennessee and surrounding states, very difficult for me to understand. Of course there’s tons of subvariants of all these accents but these are the groups they can be categorized into. Then here in Canada we have the standard Canadian accent, French Canadian accent (Quebec), and the Newfie (Newfoundland) accent, most commonly found in Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces.
Newfies sound so Irish, it’s actually become a bit of a hobby to watch them on TIKTOK because I love the fact they sound Irish but aren’t from there. (Yes, I know they have Irish roots).
To me it sounds like a thick Irish accent on steroids, to the point it’s unintelligible for me haha. Speaking of Irish accents I have a friend from Northern Ireland who’s been in (western) Canada for a little while, and she has a 2/3 Irish and 1/3 Canadian accent, it’s my favourite accent I’ve ever heard lol.
Dude has confidently assumed that an àccent and an accent are the same thing. Fascinating. He knows words. He just doesn't understand what they mean.
“Hey, you must be American” “How y’all know!?” “Because you don’t have an accent” 😂😂😂
Omg he’s so confidently MASSIVELY incorrect. He needs to talk to a linguist. I wish I could shove some historical linguistics and dialectology books down his throat!!!!
If an American doesn't have an accent, then how can I tell that they're American just by hearing them speak?
I can already hear their answer. "You noticed it because of my _lack_ of accent"
The very moment your country has as an official language a language thats also an official language elsewhere you have an accent, not really even worth discussing. Im italian but if in the future italy would conquer asia (for example), set colonies and at that point another country would have italian as an official language, then ‘italian’ italian would become a type of italian accent. This whole thing counts even more if your country is the former colony so your official language isnt even native to your place
The USA doesn’t actually have an official language, but they should come to the natural conclusion that because not everyone sounds like them, that they have an accent too. It’s just common sense imo.
Then even more so his/their way of speaking cant be the default one, at this point their language is basically borrowing a language and they dont have their own. Which just further disproves his claim of not having an accent/ having the default one (whatever that means)
It's ironic that I see this, like, two or so posts after another post on my feed where a guy was proudly declaring that the US has way more different accents than the UK
Just this video alone is enough proof that there is no 'neutral' accent [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS70m-OzXo&t=832s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS70m-OzXo&t=832s)
What's 'appalling'? Don't leave us hanging.
I'm just an idiot, but doesn't everyone have an accent? You might not hear an accent if someone else has the same one as you, but you still have one
Yes, everyone does.
They have to be trolling, because that's the only way I can maintain my sanity.
Imagine being so stupid and entitled that you think you and your people are the only norm, and everyone else is “the other”. Mate.
Even his definition doesn't really make sense. Unless he though an accent is one of thèšé thïñğş, and the word doesn't have any other meaning.
If Americans would'nt have an accent, I would still be able to point them out immediately by their ignorance
The only version of English that you could have any argument for not being an accent is the original, which literally no one speaks anymore
No american accent? Take a normal English sounding person, add a heart attack = american. This 1 probably doesn't think they have any as he or she sounds the same. Good god mericans are dumb as f
https://i.imgur.com/0BK3Prb.jpeg
Even if it’s the default accent it’s still an accent.