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Living in the UK with an American accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4390 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 21 20 April 2015 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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How are you viewed in the UK if you live there as a non native English speaker whose accent is
tendentially very american ? Can that bring about some problems ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 21 20 April 2015 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I doubt you'll have any problems. You'll quickly pick up English words and idioms and even the accent. I recently watched an interview with a Polish immigrant who had a very distinctive Geordie (Newcastle) accent. He'd obviously lived here for a couple of years and had picked up the local accent which was mixed with his native accent.
There is a lot of immigration between EU countries, in fact London is considered France's 6th largest city. I have a number of Italian friends who live in London and none of them have ever told me about any problems related to their language or accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4390 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 3 of 21 20 April 2015 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok thanks . I actually don't have problems with the English standard accent, so far I have spoken with a
scottish ,a guy from York and some other people from Hastings , I haven't had problems whatsover with them . It is just that when I open my mouth I have a pretty thick american accent blemished by my native tongue , I thought that that could be viewed as weird and even more unnatural than If I had only an Italian accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Richard Burton Newbie Spain Joined 4334 days ago 34 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* | Message 4 of 21 20 April 2015 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you allow me to enlarge the scope of the topic a bit, for me the question would be: "can you survive in the UK without at least a passive understanding of the Estuary dialect?"
Answer: with great difficulty, more so the more you deal with the young/working class/autoctonous side of the population. This dialect is violently different from RP or General American because the phonological system varies vastly, and keeps newcomers bewildered for a long time. You can have the luxury of NOT speaking Estuary, but you CANNOT do without UNDERSTANDING Estuary. For example, Filipino nurses do NOT understand British patients in hospitals at all! They just disguise and use telepathy and context to survive. I suppose as an American you can live comfortably as long as you get used to the schizophrenia of carrying an American mouth and an Estuary ear in your head at all times. It is fine if you start saying /ol rait mait/? to acclimate as long as you are not thrown off by hearing /ol roit moit/. No idea how long it takes for you to develop aural proficiency. About how Britons will mentally process you ( /prouhses yah/, /praahses yu/ for you), I bet there will be nothing in particular going on in their head, just a "there it comes the American", but I am an outsider in this discussion. 3 years experience living in UK. I was startled and idol heart broken when I heard Dido, who sings in standard, speak Estuary on tv! So unsexy and distressing! That was a different person! Fortunately her visual beauty was still in place. I wonder what goes on in her unconscious for her to "diglossify" herself like that. I will never understand these people. Edited by Richard Burton on 20 April 2015 at 9:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 21 20 April 2015 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to be fairly common and absolutely fine to have a non-native accent layered on top of a regional non-UK English accent; American's the most common, but not the only one. Having a non-British accent, whether or not it's layered by another language's accent, even has advantages, as you don't get slotted into the class system, so can talk more easily with a wider range of people.
It's perfectly easy to survive in most of the UK without understanding Estuary English, which is another topic entirely. There's a lot more than London and its outskirts to the region. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Richard Burton Newbie Spain Joined 4334 days ago 34 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* | Message 6 of 21 20 April 2015 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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You may know better, Volte, I am no expert in British dialects, but it really does seem that Estuary conquered the whole of Uk but the Northern areas, it is just that linguists are lingering behind in describing the situation. Even the Queen was caught with Estuary features! So much for "Queen English". RP is gone in the real world, just we are lazy to acknowledge the situation. A loose General American has some sort of default option flavour to it now, arguably aka Global English or something, so Americans are welcome to be themselves everywhere, and foreign users approaching that model as much as they can must be felt as normal linguistic fauna I would suppose. Edited by Richard Burton on 20 April 2015 at 9:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 7 of 21 20 April 2015 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
True! I lived in England for 10 years and only ever heard the "Estuary" dialect on TV but I did live in the North- Yorkshire, Lancashire and Liverpool. There's a whole 'nother country beyond the "Home Counties". Ay up lad!
Edited by iguanamon on 20 April 2015 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 8 of 21 20 April 2015 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you have an American accent, from experience, people would 100% notice it. But most
owuld probably say nothing about it. Every now and again some might comment on it (either good or bad), but if you have mixed Italian accent too, I think that generally people are impressed. Note that there is always a bit of underlying tension between the UK and USA, that has existed for centuries both politically and culturally (and militarily). The dual invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq have caused quite a lot of tension amongst UK public and the USA, saying that the UK were made to go to both wars because the USA made the coalition to do so. I had one classmate in uni from an estate in Leeds who said (not randomly but during a conversation) about the Americans, "Ah joost dawn't lakh thum" Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 April 2015 at 9:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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