Are you able to hear the different English accents?

so are you saying that if you have a degree, you will lose your accent more quickly? What utter nonsense.

You misunderstood me, roz! It's clear anywhere that the more educated, that is, better schooled, the individual, the chances are that they will have had far greater exposure to learning foreign languages as a lawyer, university lecturer, surely a trained musician, even an engineer etc. as compared with a factory worker, common laborer, janitor etc. where probably zero English is spoken or even required!

That's just basic sense.

not in my experience tbh. These days people watch TV or listen to music to learn English, and do it very well. even 'common' people in my experience. You sound very snobbish.

Roz,

It's a question of the type/level of English to which one is exposed. Snobbish? You bet your sweet life I am, probably always will be, and bloody proud of it!

Even in the UK, with the gradual demise of RP at nearly every level of spoken language I can detect, listening to BBC etc. is painfully apparent, as compared to years back, when there was a higher general standard across the board.

Contrast Lady Diana vs. Kate Middleton, for instance. It practically hits you over the face, it's so apparent.

you might be snobbish but you are incapable of framing an argument...:):) But then i have always found that your average snob has very little to be snobbish about.

complete non sequiter, that guff about Lady Di and Kate Wales. What on earth do they have to do with the educational standards of people learning English? Random.

My point was that listening to their speech as examples of British English reveals huge gaps. Diana spoke articulately and deliberately. The little I've heard of Kate, I'm not impressed. Even the air-headed sex pots of the '50's like Diana Doars, Marilyn Monroe and company spoke better than the run-of-the-mill high school graduate these days. As to my being incapable of framing an argument, apparently you failed to see what I was driving at in the first place-)

Maybe I just didn't make myself clear.

Back to English accents, I say again that as an American, dialect from around Somerset is the closest to an "American" accent I've heard. The flat "a's" and clearly-sounded "r's" are a far cry from Queen LizzieLOL

well we were talking about learners recognising and gaining accents and then suddenly you started spouting nonsense about the British Royal family. So no I havent 'failed' to do anything, rather you 'failed' to grasp the topic, as usual....and went off on some vague digression.

Have a nice evening.

Digressions, sir, are something to which even the best of us are often subject, particularly in the heat of argument.

Lyzko.
Your pomposity is starting to grate, tbh.
I am not a 'sir', thank you.
there was no 'argument' just an interesting discussion which you derailed by going on about Diana and Kate (clue, 30 year age difference) Then start blithering on about me 'failing'. If anyone has 'failed' here it is not me. Thanks.

Not sure which is more grating here. Maybe it's your unwillingness to concede my point or at least chalk it up to "an interesting observation which I simply don't share."

Hate to put words in your mouth ol' girl, but why this resistance to provocation and sarcasm? It's the spice of life. Enjoy!

as I said, your pomposity grates. Your 'point' had nothing to do with the discussion. You try and sound all intelligent but fail miserably.
Do not call me 'old girl' thanks.

Have you no sense of humor?

you havent said anything humourous

If I come across slightly condescending on occasion, don't take it personally, as I don't take the barbs leveled at me by other Forum members:-)

Poles whom I know who've lived in England, find Northern English easier to understand than Londoners.

Way off! Actually, port cities tend to have the most distinct accents (Liverpool, London docks, Bristol, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull, Portsmouth, Yarmouth). As someone else said earlier, to natives it's sometimes possible to tell which part of a large city someone is from, just by subtle changes in accent. But the increase in university attendance means it's getting harder - graduates tend to lose/soften/change their accents, just by virtue of being more mobile and mixing closely with different accents.

Re why it is useful to know/be aware of accents - many migrant Poles wont be settling down in the first place they move to, and will tend to be mobile to follow the work, so knowledge of the variation is at least useful. Also pretty useful for academic conferences too!

I don't think a Pole* can ever completely lose their accent when speaking English. I can always hear it, even softly, and for most speakers it's quite pronounced - but all Brits have a regionala ccent of sorts, so it's not a bad thing, it's the same as recognising a Scot or a Brum.

*I have heard Polish-born children speaking English with a flawless native British accent, and also Polish with no English accent, so it seems quite easy for them to switch. But never, ever heard an adult speak without an accent, even those who went to the UK decades ago (as adults).

I always come back to the example of Joseph Conrad! A master stylist (with no detectable "foreign accent" in his writing) in a language which he didn't learn until his twenties as a seaman, by all accounts, his spoken English was so laden with Polish pronunciation to be practically incomprehensible at best.

Some people are clearly more developed in written than in oral expression, both in their native as well as their second language:-)

Yes, that's true, because if you have a degree you usually moved out of your home town aged 18 and lived in a dorm or house for 3 impressionable years with people from all over the country. Those without a degree are not compelled to do that, so most of them don't leave their home town until much later (if at all), unless they join the army. I'd hazard a guess that the proportion of graduates still living in their home town at age 30 is far lower than the proportion of non-graduates.

we were talking about speakers of other languages though, specifically Polish people learning English and L made some comment that more highly educated learners would lose their accent more quickly. I disagreed with this, judging from the people around me.

roz, ok, I might agree with that. I think it is age that has the biggest effect. And, actually, a graduate from Poland may have spent more of their life in Poland than an unskilled worker if both move to the UK at the same age.

Like you, I don't believe that's really true. In my opinion it all depends on how much you are immersed in a foreign culture and how much you are willing to adapt. I know some Europeans for example (not Brits or Irish!) who lived in Australia for a year and picked up the accent so well that you couldn't tell whether they were locals or not in the end. They were only successful though because they didn't have the chance to speak their own native language.

Brits (especially English) are actually quite susceptible to picking up accents. There was a well-known phenomenon in the 80s when English kids started talking with a faint Aussie twang after being immersed in Home & Away and Neighbours, and soaking it up. Notice how immigration has also rapidly changed the London accent of white natives (in the last couple of decades). Vocal mimicry between people has some social function (I think I read) so people tend to pick up each others' accents - it goes both ways if the immersion is deep enough, with immigrant accents also rubbing off on Brits. I'm not sure if many Brits will start constructing Polglish sentences such as "For what is this?", but it might happen!

oh yair? i rimimba when we all started making statements? into questions?

AQI? Australian Questioning Intonation?

Firstly accent and dialect are two different things. One can speak with a thick Liverpool or Birmingham accent but with the vocabulary of Standard English. Dialect refers to the lexicon and grammar which can vary widely from the standard and from other dialects. It would be wrong to suggest that dialect survivesonly in remote places but it applies to the purest form of dialects which are largely unintelligble to outsiders. Remember that for centuries many people lived and died in their own county, perhaps rarely visiting a town and had no need to communicate in anything other than their own local dialect. Here's an example of an extreme dialect of English spoken only in the Wexford area of Ireland, bear in mind when you listen that this is English, not Irish. It was spoken up until the middle of the nineteenth century or thereabouts:

youtube.com/watch?v=RFl9ptuxd8s

Now I really don't think you can say that the dialect of any port town compares in distinctiveness or incomprehensibilty to it.

The change in accent and disappearance of dialect is undoubtedly associcated with movement of people and from the latter half of the twentieth century television has made a huge impact because people are being exposed from birth to various language models which have had a huge influence on their speech. Your example of students changing their accent stems from the movement of people supports that but is more of 'sociolect', people adopting a general style of speech or use of language that unites them.


Yes but Kate is common dear, common :)) Lady Di was an aristo. Kate has the demeanour of a parlour maid who ransacked m' Lady's wardrobe and dressed up for the afternoon. Even her name, she sounds like a King's mistress rather than a princess. But just wait until Harry ties the knot with Megan Merkle or whatever her name is, then you'll really have something to complain about!

Thank you, I wanted to mention that but lacked the courage


From what I understand, the dissolution of distinct dialects/accents has little to do with mass media or education but rather whether mainstream values in the society favor centralization or decentralization. In other words, sometimes speakers of a language favor consolidation and at other times they prefer diversification (and linguists haven't found a real independent variable)

Polish dialects went through about 50 years to attrition after WWII but there wasn't much media (as late as the early 90s there were two TV stations one of which only broadcast a couple hours a day...). A lot of other forces though strengthened Standard Polish at the expense of local varieties (now more accents than real distinct dialects).

In a recent conversation with a student of Italian philology they said that Italy was going through several decades of consolidation and the expansion of standard Itallian that has recently begun to reverse with local dialect/languages showing renewed vigor (due to young people rebelling against their parents and grandparents).

Finally, getting back to accents in English, it's always a topic of keen interest for native speakers but tends to drive away learners.... just as in this thread!

Well I'm not so sure. Certainly with reference to England, when the printing press was developed a conscious decision had to be made about which dialect to use for the printed word and the decision was the dialect of the south as opposed to the north of England and that's the beginning of the standardisation of English. However, in the English speaking world there is absolutely no doubt that some usages have disappeared permanently and others have come in from diverse places. I would say that American English usages have made much more of an impact on Britain though than British English in America, probably because Brits watch a great deal of imported American programs (and of course films) whilst Americans watch far fewer British imports.


An interesting point. I thought that was at least partly due to the migration of millions of Poles from the eastern side of the country to the western side. And if you look at the places where the distinctive dialects have been retained such as the Góralski once again it's because of relative isolation, though I would agree that there is probably also an element of resistance to comply with conforming to a 'centralized' language.

That's true but I was reacting to the old idea that TV would make everybody talk the same (the same claim had previously been made about radio and the telephone so there's a long history of overestimating audio media's power to shape speech if that's not what people want)


As one of the main domestic tourism destinations of the country? A better explanation is that they realize that their exotic funny sounding dialect is something tourists expect of them and so they assume it's in their economic interest to maintain it.


And i think some of the British imports that some Americans watch were made with them in mind and so tone down the differences (I've heard legends of there being two versions of some shows but I doubt that).

But lots of shows that were popular in Britain wouldn't be watchable for Americans because of comprehension issues (I remember a English guy who tried to convince me that Only Fools and Horses was hilarious - I didn't... get it in any meaning of the word). I remember a co-worker who enjoyed Are you being served? but admitted that sometimes she didn't know what they were talking about - sometimes that was purely linguistic (in the US 'belt up' can only mean 'fasten your seat belt') and other times there were cultural references that Americans wouldn't get (this was in the early 90s - I imagine a lot of the cultural references would now sail right past modern British audiences).


In the 'regained' lands that was an issue as there was local dialects speakers from different places settled into least common denominator Polish. There are also cultural factors and orthographic ones - it's much easier for people who want to shed a regional accent in Polish to adopt a reading pronunciation - the looser connection between spelling and pronunciation in English makes taking on upwardly mobile pronunciations much more difficult.

Nowadays, but fifty years ago? Apart from those holiday camp things built for the workers' holidays I don't think tourism was highly developed there. Although people also visited the mountains for walking, hiking etc. I would compare it more to the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast where until quite recently it was pretty much a 'take us as you find us' vibe. However there is no doubt that the Communists encouraged a certain kind of 'folksy' cultural thing as part of overall Polish identity and they certainly trotted those fiddling groups around the countryside to give 'displays' of music and dancing. Today though, undoubtedly the Highlanders see the monetary value of maintaining their unique cultural identity.

Mostly Poles couldn't leave the country (Hungary and Bulgaria were the main foreign tourism destinations) so domestic tourism was very developed in the PRL. It fell off in the early 90s and lagged some from its PRL peak. But through the 1980s a trip to the mountain area was something almost everyone did at some point or other.

@Atch, of course you're right! Big difference between being a Middleton vs. a SpencerLOL

On the other hand, even in the late '70's when I was first in England, I do distinctly remember run-of-the-mill Londoners (Cockneys excluded, of course) with their bowlers and brolleys who spoke an English closer to the aristos than those today.

Seems everywhere, here in the States as well, there's a deep-seated post-60's near hatred of what is perceived as snobbery in both pronunciation and pretense! What's the big deal about having an affectation anyway??