On a few holidays in far flung places i'm often thought of being Australian, although i'm from Kent with a south east accent having now lived here for nearly 30 years , but i suppose the first Australians mainly came from around the south east and London, and with a bit more twang the the accents may be similar? i used to live in the midlands and i've totally lost my accent from there , but then the odd word slips in , i've also found that if i spend some time with someone from a different region i start talking in their accent , perhaps thats just a normal way of fitting in etc. When i first moved to Kent they thought i was from Liverpool, southerners are useless at guessing northern accents, my favourite accents are welsh and lincolnshire, i speak often to people in lincolnshire (head office is there) and they just sound so lovely and friendly.
I've found the funniest thing on holiday is when someone you can tell is english comes over to you and asks in a sort of pidgeon english if they can take the spare chair etc , and i reply yeah ov course mate its all yours, perhaps i just don't look english, or perhaps its because my wife looks italian so other people say, maybe they think i look australian!

I have a southern accent - well to me i dont sound like i have an accent! haha

but we decided this year that if people ask where we come from we would say London as its easier and people know where London is whereas if you said where you actually come from they would be like huh?

we went to Tunisia this year and the thing that made me and mum laugh was when the staff spoke to us they would speak in English and we would be like do we look English? Lol

but I would rather have a Nothern accent because i lovee their accents!

xx

Andreaa wrote:

I have a southern accent - well to me i dont sound like i have an accent! haha

but I would rather have a Nothern accent because i lovee their accents!

xx

I'm like that coming from down south I dont feel like I have an accent, very non descript, I would love a Northern accent so much more interesting. One of my close friends moved to Yorkshire about 20 years ago when she was 30 ish and she has retained her southern accent it just hasn't changed a bit so it's quite fun to listen to her and her daughter who has a yorkshire accent having a conversation. I am sure if I had moved for that long a time mine would have changed. I find it all facinating.

doepsmc wrote:

I love it, trying to work out all the different Northern accents, I would like to think I know Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle

Manchester and Liverpool stand out on their own really, and Newcastle is totally different. What I think would be difficult for Southerners would be to identify Lancashire and Yorkshire accents - they are really "broad" When I was in hospital having my son, there was a girl on our ward who had been transferred from Accrington for the special baby care unit in Manchester and she would be chattering away to us all in her broad East Lancs accent and most of us would just sit there nodding politely because we didn't have a clue what she was saying... A few years ago I had a boyfriend from Farnworth (Bolton) and it took me a while to get used to his accent, even though there wasn't a huge geographical distance between where we lived.
I'm currently fascinated by Yorkshire accents, particularly West Yorkshire - Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Wakefield etc, I think they sound lovely and so different to my own, although a lot of Southerners wouldn't probably notice much difference.

doepsmc wrote:

Also if you come from down south and especially any of the Home Counties, its often just easier to say you are from London, which is a bit of a cop out.

I always tend to say we're from Manchester, just to make it easier for other people to get a general idea, but I'm not actually from Manchester Metropolitan Borough; I'm from Tameside which is on the eastern edge of Greater Manchester and there is a great variation in accents just in our little borough, some people have broad Oldham/Lancs accents, others are more "Cheshire" and then many (like me) are "proper Manc", although I did live just "over t'border" in Manchester for 12 years and my kids stayed at school there when we moved back "home". I am now working in Stockport which is 5 minutes away from where I live and is also on the border of Central Manchester, and the people there seem to think I have a very broad Manc accent!

cant do it now but when i was office bound talking to suppliers all over Europe spotting them from up north was easy, i could even differentiate between Acci,Blacki, ozi, preston,bolton, oldham and a few other towns as i use to have a true Kent accent [rolling r's etc] i found most difficulty at first with traditional Hamps,sommerset,suffolk,norfolk as i would start to roll with them

When we used to go on holiday, people we met from the UK always said the same -
oo-haar oo-haar, carrot crunchers, the Wurzels and cider!

That has stopped now thanks(!) to Little Britain - now it's 'oh, you sound just like Vicky Pollard' but maybe the fact that I do look like her and model myself on her fashion style(!), I am asking for trouble!

I love the Geordie, Scottish, Irish and Welsh accents but when families and friends have conversations together, I do find it hard to keep up but it is all worthwhile as we have met many nice people from all over the UK.

Oh, by the way, I come from Somerset!!!!!

thees be aving i on, thees cant spell zider

SomersetSuzie wrote:

thanks(!) to Little Britain - now it's 'oh, you sound just like Vicky Pollard' but maybe the fact that I do look like her and model myself on her fashion style(!), I am asking for trouble!

Oh dear! I think you should look at our Euro-chic thread for some style tips! I do love those South-West accents though - I think Bristolian is a great accent!
I enjoy listening to different Brits when we're on holiday and I often wonder how the Spanish people working in bars etc can understand our different accents when English isn't their first language, and when even us Brits have difficulty sometimes!

Try having a Geordie accent....... I've been accused of being from all over the UK but the top 5 would be:

Welsh
Scottish
Irish
Scouse
Manchester

Crazy or what ! I'm sure some people just hear a different accent to their own think "somewhere up north" I can understand the Welsh connection as it's similar in being sing songy speak......but Liverpool ! I had an argument once with a guy on holiday who asked "whereabouts in Ireland are you from then" I said I'm not I'm a Geordie from Newcastle (Upon Tyne) & he wouldn't believe me and kept insisting I tell him where in Ireland. I never did convince him despite trying for a good 10 minutes. He used to shout at breakfast every day "top o the morning to ya"

The best laugh I always have on holiday though is listening to Mackems (Sunderland grrr, it's a football thing) telling people that they're Geordies, because obviously most people wouldn't tell the difference and everyone knows Geordies rather than Mackems....They'd get lynched at home in Sunderland if anyone heard them say that they were Geordies though...LOL

I am a Mackem and have never been mistaken for a Geordie
I have been asked many times on holiday if I am Welsh,both here and abroad.
My friend always says she is a Geordie if asked ,much to the annoyance of her husband.
Many years ago in Singapore a shopkeeper in a material shop asked me if I lived anywhere near the village where my husband is from!
His fiancee had worked at the hospital there! He recognised our accent which amazed us.
I think the Turks are good at pin pointing where you are from and are excellent mimics of the different UK accents.
My son and daughter live down south and their accent isnt so strong now but we are often told when we visit them by their friends that we have a friendly accent.
My husbands aunt lived in Kent and she could carry on a 3 way conversation with her husband in a southern accent then talk to us in her Mackem accent.
My favourite accent is Brummie followed by Irish.

As a scouser, my accent has never been mistaken for another - although the caretaker at
Silves cathedral couldn't understand me at all and asked me what country I was from!

(And I'm not that broad a scouser either! I think it's because I/we tend to talk quickly. )

Like many of us southerners I don't think I have an accent but many years ago in Filey, Yorkshire, I was asked if I was Australian. "Not quite so far south, Essex!" I said. At the airport in Tunisia I once bought a coffee and pastry and was quoted what sounded like a stupid price. I asked what currency they were talking about and it was Swedish krone as they thought I was Swedish!!

I'm from Northern Ireland and on holiday they often mistake me for Scottish.

But when in sussex many years ago people kept thinking I was American for some reason!

I'm from Durham and not a Geordie, our accents are totally different but people still call us Geordies from daan saaaf. My neices boyfriend is broad geordie and our friends from daan saaf were really surprised in the differences on holiday this year.

I have also been mistaken for Scottish, Welsh and German....

Another example I found amusing - on an evening boat trip on the Moselle, with dancing on deck, the night finished with of all things 'Auld Lang Syne'. Two couples next to one another in the circle, both speaking 'pidgin english/german' finally established that one couple were from Uddingston (near Glasgow) and that the other couple were from Blantyre about 3 or 4 miles from Uddingston.
They had been trying to converse all night each thinking the other was German.

I am Glaswegian by birth but left home at 20 years old. I have lived for various different lengths of time in England, Ireland, Canada, Cyprus, Wales and Germany. Through all that I have maintained a fairly soft Scottish West coast accent.
I was recently dealing with a woman at my place of work in Wales when she commented on my accent and asked where I was from. I replied that I was originally from Glasgow. She thought about this for a moment and then said "thats a coincedence", " what is" I asked, to which she replied that she did not realise there was a Glasgow in Ireland. She flatly refused to believe me when I said I was Scottish.

John

Never been mistaken for anything other than what I am - Scottish. But then, I am from just outside Edinburgh, which, according to a recent survey, has been voted the sexiest accent in Britain!

On the few occassions my Scottish accent has been mistaken for Irish, it has been by people from "down South". Spanish and Turkish can identify my accent straight away! I find that bewildering.

I met my ex hubby down South, he was from West Yorkshire with quite a broad accent. Over the years I got used to it but often had to translate for my fellow Southerners what a shock the kids had when we visited his folks and he reverted back to dialect, I had to translate for them too.