Paul S

thank cripes I'm not the only once who experiences this

Do you get the same dumb look when you spell it out and it dawns on them what your name is?

meauxna

gods, you're a freak. Get over yourself.

orangemirror

This might be a load of bollocks and maybe already been discussed on here. But i did hear that the American accent is similar to how people talked in Britain a few hundred years ago, and we changed the way we speak due to changes in fashion, etc.

Norri

I have no idea but my guess would be bollocks

meauxna

Then I am going to have to support the theory. Just on principle.

viceversa

I am mocked almost daily for my accent. My boss actually quizzed me yesterday on how I pronounce certain words; if I pronounce them the way he does, the response was, "oh, that's okay then". if not, he'd laugh. Seems to be fair game, open season on accents, year-round.

Servers get my order wrong regularly, and I've never had anyone here get my name right on the first try (although, admittedly, it's a somewhat unusual name).

I suppose if I weren't so confident (read: stubborn), I might try to soften my accent, but I don't want to sound fake. *shrug* Just my experience from the other way 'round.

Okuda

I get asked daily about my accent ... even in McDonalds

I work in a Dr's office and this really old southern man called and was trying to ask something .. he couldn't understand a word I was saying and vise versa lol, had to get someone else to take the call.

One time I was in the mall and I got asked if we have Kangaroos in England .....

sime303

We do, I saw them at the Cotswold Wildlife Park

orangemirror

That reminds me that when i was in Australia a guy asked me if we had Meat Pies in England. That was the first question he wanted to ask me when finding out I was English. Then he asked me if we had The Bill TV programme in England.

Sir Denis Eaton-Hogg

This is partly true. The classic stereotypical 'American Accent' is very similar to the accent spoken by most people in England in the 17th & 18th centuries.

The 'most common stereotype of the 'English' accent is 'Queens English' 'or whot one speaks when one is considered frightfully posh' Officially know as Received Pronunciation' or RP and made famous worldwide by the BBC world service and British colonialism. It is a deliberately created form of pronunciation that borrows from all sorts of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh dialects.

Most other English 'accents' Geordie, Brummie, Liverpudlian, etc etc are not accents at all but dialects and therefore more authentically 'natural'.

Because of RP and the snobbery and elitism that surrounded it,much that was common in dialects throughout the country at that point became softened, or even ridiculed into obscurity or localized/marginalized. This did not happen to the same degree in America. For example the softening of the R sounds, what had been Budder became Butter through RP in England but remains as Budder in most of the USA.

Of course the typical (and there is really no such thing) 'American accent' of today has been greatly affected by the immigration from other countries/cultures and has changed vastly from the time of George Washington, as well as developing distinct regional differences. However it is highly likely that a 17th century Englishman would be far more able to understand a broad American accent than the weird Ameri-Engl-Mid-Atlantic-Hollywood-glish that is so common in many parts of the UK today.

Just for fun whilst we are talking about accents and words - Bollocks was the Anglo Saxon word for testicles. Like most current 'English' Swear words it was a perfectly normal word. In fact in Anglo-Saxon England there were no 'Swear words' only curses. Only when the Normans turned up (and they spoke French) bringing Christianity with them did the Church start associating Anglo-Saxon words with paganism start to label them 'bad' words. If you used Anglo-Saxon words you were defacto a heathen yobbo... the rest is history.

Fork me! I guess Pete & Dud, Viz, Gordon Ramsey et al would have had a considerably less in the arsenal if was not for the Normans ehh?

Here endeth the lesson...And yeah, I know this is really nerdy and pedantic but its Friday, should rekindle the flames in this thread.

Sir Denis

orangemirror

Interesting stuff. I wonder why Americans don't use bollocks if it goes back to Anglo Saxon times? It's probably my favourite swear word. It has so many uses. I've taught it to all my US relatives and they all love it and use it all the time instead of bullshit. They don't really understand that it's rude though so even the 5 year olds run around shouting it. Oh well.

Sir Denis Eaton-Hogg

Probably something to do with the fact that in the 18th century it became common slang in the UK for Clergymen along with 'Ballocks'... no idea why.

I suspect that whilst a healthy ability to mock the religious establishment has always been tolerated in Blighty such things do not go down as well with our more devout brethren here in the colonies ... so it most likely it died out.

I love the fact that Parminda Nagra as Neela says it all the time on ER without editing, but Hugh Laurie (with a great US accent) cannot say Arse (sorry, Ass) on House without being censored. Brilliant!

mistahsinclair

Ah yes...my 5 year old tells the dog to 'bugger off'.

That's ma boy!

Sir Denis Eaton-Hogg

Sorry I could not help myself......

A December 2000 white paper from the Advertising Standards Authority. titled 'Deleted Expletives' Places "bollocks" in eighth position in terms of its perceived severity, between "pr*ck" (seventh place) and "ar**hole" (ninth place).

Well at least they get their Biology right!

By comparison, the word "balls" only reaches number 22.

I know, I am bad, sorry, sorry, sorry, I just love that they actually spent time and money compling a list that runs to 64 pages!!!!!

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archi...rch/delete.pdf

orangemirror

I was a bit surprised when i first came here that it was perfectly acceptable to say Piss on network tv but completely unacceptable to say other stuff that we would consider much milder.