MovieChat Forums > The Full Monty (1997) Discussion > Why do the English worry about accents?

Why do the English worry about accents?

posted 17 years ago by tbrandt-1
73 replies | jump to latest

Can someone from England please explain why speech and accent are an issue in England? I am American who lived in the Midlands for three years in the late sixties. I heard it a number of times from different people that they were worried about their accent. Those folks indicated that they wish they could speak like the "news person on the TV. It seems like they were worried that they would be deemed as being "low" class.

As Americans, we have a lot of different accents. We may remark that a person has a Southern, New England, or maybe a Brooklyn accent, but we generally don't think any less of the person. I am not trying to insult anyone, but it was just something I noticed while living there.

Again, I am not trying to insult anyone and I am not trying to say Americans speak better.

[–] NealR2000 11 years ago

Regional accents in the UK are not that much of an "issue" any more. Firstly, owing to internal migration, foreign immigration, and national television, regional accents are not as pronounced as they once were. They do still exist, though. You have to understand that the UK was until failry recently, highly class conscious. It still is to a certain extent, but not at the levels it used to be. Accents were a dead giveaway as to both your regional background and your social standing. Remember that the north of the country was considered smoke-stack working class. East London was associated with the criminal class. The Birmingham accent has always been considered one of the UK more uglier accents, and has been associated with lack of inteligence. Fast forward to today and some of this still remains. It's sort of gone backwards as speaking with an "upper class accent" is seen as being aloof and often met with ridicule.

[–] GirlwonderReturns 11 years ago

As Americans, we have a lot of different accents. We may remark that a person has a Southern, New England, or maybe a Brooklyn accent, but we generally don't think any less of the person.

I don't think this is exactly true. Certain accents within the U.S. are definitely perceived a certain way by some people. A New York accent (the city as well as areas of Westchester and Long Island) has long been seen by a lot of Americans as "low-class" or unintelligent. I'm from the New York suburbs but never had an accent - I guess I have that "news anchor" speech down, though not due to any conscious effort - and one of my friends, born and raised in the Bronx, actually self-trained her Bronx accent away because she herself hated the "coarseness" of it. Southern accents in some of their variations can also cause people to be stereotyped as hicks or rednecks.

Interestingly, I personally can perceive British (not strictly "English", mind you) tones or origins in both New England accents (particularly Maine) and certain southern ones, even though they sound quite different from one another.

It is also interesting that there are parts of the U.S. with no discernible regional accent. Iowa, for example, or Colorado, or Washington (state), places where the "news anchor" accent (or non-accent) is the standard. I'm not sure how that ended up the case. But when I lived in Colorado I pretty much fit right in, from a linguistic standpoint - the only real telling difference was in some of the local terminology and jargon (i.e. "soda" versus "pop", etc.).

As far as your OP, I remember reading an interview with Sean Bean years ago, and him saying that even though his family was financially well-off, he was looked down upon for his Yorkshire accent and origins, and that in England, your accent and where you come from are more important in determining your class status than your financial wealth. If that's true, it's definitely somewhat different than the U.S.

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