NAR14

I can understand where she's coming from. Whenever I phone a company about a bill or something, it's always Geordie on the other end. Takes an age to get stuff sorted.

It's good though, I love regional accents. You can be in one town, then travel 30 miles to another one and barely understand what anyone is saying. It's brilliant.

Zonie

ah divvent knaa what yee are taakin aboot.

chartreuse

Appaarantly there was a study, some years ago, that concluded that people found Geordie accents more trustworthy. That's why there's loads of call centers there.

chartreuse

Divn't fash, Pet!

NAR14

Yeah I heard that too, I think. Maybe it's because you can't tell if they are fleecing you or not

chrisfromusa

Does anyone know why England has so many accents in such a small country?? That always perplexed me

Bill_S

Didn't someone say "The English are branded on the tongue"?

Bill_S

On my couple of trips to London many years ago, I had the most trouble with the "anyfink else, mister Smif?" accents. I don't know the technical term...

helwardman

Technical term = tosspot southerners

snowbunny

Estuary English.

NAR14

I guess it'll be down to so much outside influence. So invasions in the North from Nordic countries probably influenced the Scottish and North East England accents for example. You can hear a sort of link I think between Scandinavian language sounds, through to the Scottish accent and then down to North East England. It kinda dilutes the further South you go.

This is purely my guess work of course!

Sally Redux

I heard somewhere that the Geordie accent developed because a local landowner had a speech impediment but the locals imitated him to curry favour.

Kaffy Mintcake

Like Barthelona?

nettlebed

We have a biweekly tradition at work where our VP pays for a Friday unwinding. People sign up and get a budget to go and buy food & bevvies, and present a themed event. We (my VP and I are both expat Brits) recently did "A Taste of Great Britain," and we had a competition: worst fake British accent, and boy were there some terrible ones.

We also presented some examples for people to learn from. Here are the ones we showed:

Rowley Birkin QC


Oz from Aus Wiedersehen, Pet


The Scousers


and the ever-lovable Rab. C Nesbitt


Of course, anyone who has spent more than a week or two in London has met all of these people...

chartreuse

Sounds like something a southerner made up.