50 seconds in "in self defense" - BS meter reading jumps to: "You gotta be kiddin' me"

I rewinded too now lol, def aussie imo.

Lol. She's very English. Definitely Northern England. If I had to guess I'd say Lancashire. Not even a little Aussie.

It does seem to work out like that a lot.

Yorkshire maybe?
*Googled-- Manchester apparently. Yorkshire accent is the best though.

Manchester is Lancashire so I'll put this as a win. There's a few distinctions between that and a Yorkshire accent but they kind of bleed into each other at the edges.

Obviously it's down to exposure and my being Yorkshire born and bred but it's honestly kind of amazing to me that someone would think it sounds Aussie. Is that how this Canadian girl i met felt when I thought she was American?

You are forgetting we are ignorant Americans

I did hear from a brit once that England has about 40 dialects. That I find amazing for such a small country. I do know from first hand experience that the Scotts basically speak another language, their accent is so thick. I could hardly understand a word this one Scotsman was once saying to me.

Isn't it one of those counter-intuitive things where more densely populated countries have more accent variation than sparse ones? I feel like I read that somewhere. Even Scottish accents are quite varied.

As for dialect, it wasn't until I hit university that I found out the word "mardy" is regional slang and nobody south of me knew the word. Similar for "nesh". I knew that was slang but didn't know it was regional till I got funny looks.

Hardest to understand is Geordie imo.

Well, I guess if we consider Europe for example, you have multiple of countries with multiple languages in close proximity to each other. So I guess in a sense that that's true.
I would imagine it has something to do with how long the language has been spoken in any particular country. For example, English in England has been spoken much longer than English in America. That would give the English spoken in England a much longer timespan for individual dialects to develop in the various regions which were somewhat physically isolated from each other, either through physicals barriers like mountains or rivers, or simply because of distance from one another.
I think this type of regional dialect development has now been stunted and now will be less and less common. First because of the spread of newspapers and the education of more and more of the populace, the populace now being able to read, and gradually through radio, movies and tv and now through mass media, where people growing up are more and more exposed to a common form of speech.

I think the idea was that in a place like America or Australia where there's a lot of smaller communities, places are quite isolated, large distances between major cities, there's less interaction between groups etc. that you'd expect to see a lot more variation in accents because of that (because they're developing in a more isolated environment and less influence by a dominant pronunciation). What you actually get is the opposite where more densely populated regions tend to have a greater degree of variation in the accents expressed. Geordie is very different to Scouse is very different to Cockney is a world apart from Scottish.

Honestly though, I'm vaguely remembering having heard this so I could be talking total bollocks here.

https://theconversation.com/why-does...20mass%20media.

I think we are both obviously hobby scholars. I have no academic training in this field.
So I remembered that Google is my friend and found this article. It basically backs up my theory. I swear I didn't read it when I first wrote what I did. I just basically based what I wrote on everything I read and learned in the past.
Your theory is also a valid point. And I don't know about Australia, but there are many accents in America, if not what you would technically call a dialect. But you are forgetting that when those 2 countries were formed, literacy was already wide spread.
Most of the first settlers in America were basically from the same community.
This is especially true of the Pilgrims of Plymouth colony, if not so much of the Jamestown settlement. As a matter of fact, the Plymouth colony might have been the first settlement in world history where every resident was literate.
The Puritans made sure that every man woman and child could read and write so that they could read and study the bible.

Edit: regional dialects are common in all of Europe, not just Britain.

Accents in the US are diverging and the reason why the UK has so many distinct ones is simply because it's a lot older.
It's a misconception that due to the effects of mass media, that accents are disappearing-- that's not at all the case.

https://www.ibtimes.com/whatever-bec...onal%20accents.

I don't agree with this. But it does seem that accents in the south are more enduring because the majority of the population speaks with the same accent.
I'm from Boston and the true Boston accent is hardly hearable anymore.

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/a...isappearing%20

Well, we should always look at multiple sources, not always fox News or CNN
This article gives a more in depth explanation of the matter, partially re enforcing Luckbox's point of view. You Luckbox.

https://people.howstuffworks.com/sou...cent-dying.htm

I'm sure time is a big factor. I just picked US out of convenience but presumably someone could make a comparison to Russia, an old country but more sparsely populated than Western European nations. There's also going to be a lot of technical and perhaps subjective stuff about how you determine how different accents are (all the rhotic vs. non-rhotic kind of things).

But like I said, I'm completely incapable of defending this idea. It was more throwing it out there because it's at the back of my memory and wondering if anyone would've heard similar.

The other thing that amuses me is how accurately I could guess at someone's accent while another person couldn't even get the country right. I know that's to be expected given I'm English but it also means me trying to do a surface analysis of accents in America might be equally far from the mark. If a foreigner can mix up English and Aussie then am I just kidding myself for thinking I could spot even the obvious differences between some American accents?

FreeBritney

My favourite cars are Audis. I'd beat you to death with a lightweight hammer to save zero.

This message is hidden because d2_e4 is on your ignore list.

****, just saw my last post, and that I have not said anything since then. That was a joke, obvs, I have been out getting shitfaced, not plotting against what's his face. I just re-read the thread and I look a bit bad in this!

I think we all knew it was an absurd joke when you spoke positively about Audis.

Do I get a little badge that says "trolled by the mod"?

Also, dude, you might want to see if you can get those indicator lights fixed. They never seem to work on beamers.

Remember when Dave got bodyslammed by Ken Jennings?

I memba.