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  • i live in Thailand and yes, I am Thai. I've been to uk twice and i love the country. Though, it rain quite lot but once it rain it doesnt rain as hard as thailand's. I love your buildings and cultures. It's just so fascinating. I'm just glad i'll be moving there in 2 years time.

    I love Thailand, but it'd be good for a change.

  • i thought Chingford is greater london! north London next to tottenham!!

  • what kind of accent does he has?

  • @Numy33 Some sort of Northern English accent.

  • question....i heard that the "oxford english" accent is common among the upper class/ well educated (and that is what the charles shaughnessy, the actor, has....love it). How does the upper class have their own accent?

  • I have a friend who grew up in Liverpool as a Chinese immigrant. He has a perfect "received pronunciation" accent, not from public school, but from learning English from BBC.

  • Yeah, im from Leyton and people from pre 1970s will say it was or even still is Essex, but the boundries have broadend.

  • Yh, technically david beckham is from London, Chingford is in Waltham forest, which is a London borough, not Essex.

  • As younger, i always wanted to learn the real British Accent... as 7 y.o., I was in love with the accent, som much, that i have been study the accent for years!

    But, Im 15 years of old today, and I haven't learned the British Accent yet.

    The British accent, sounds way better, than the stupid American one :P

    its like, its impossible to learn the accent, but, i know, that someday, somehow, I will learn the beautiful British accent! EVEN if i was 80 years old

  • As younger, i always wanted to learn the real British Accent... as 7 y.o., I was in love with the accent, som much, that i have been study the accent for years!

    But, Im 15 years of old today, and I haven't learned the British Accent yet.

    The British accent, sounds way better, than the stupid American one :P

    its like, its impossible to learn the accent, but, i know, that someday, somehow, I will learn the beautiful British accent! EVEN if i was 80 years old!!

  • @MrWonnabee there isn't a British accent. Britain includes many accents. Various Scottish accents, Irish accents, Welsh and English. A single British Accent doesn't exist.

  • @MrWonnabee be prepared to do a heck of a lot of reserch then, because we have so many diverse dialects and accents in this country, thats even within a 30 mile radius

  • @MrWonnabee LOL..Maybe we should swap accents because I like the American accent better than my British accent :/

  • As younger, i always wanted to learn the real British Accent... as 7 y.o., I was in love with the accent, som much, that i have been study the accent for years!

    But, Im 15 years of old today, and I haven't learned the British Accent yet.

    The British accent, sounds way better, than the stupid American one :P

    its like, its impossible to learn the accent, but, i know, that someday, somehow, I will learn the beautiful British accent! EVEN if i was 80 years old!! .. God help me to be British.

  • both of my parents are from Guatemala and I want to learn how to speak with a british accent god damit!

  • First, thank you to Kaiwanoshima for hosting this thread, and transmitting answers from MrRobinson. Myself being a former Diplomat and having studied Baccaleaureat at the CAPITAL of Spanish language, Valladolid; English language in Cambridge; a B.A. in Law in Universitas Complutensis in Madrid, and a Harvard MBA, my question is whether you consider Cambridge or Oxford to be the CAPITAL of the upper class English? Kindly pont a website or linguist to learn that upper-class English pronunciation

  • @megatendenciasnet Thank you very much for your comment. It does not have to be a posh English and Mr Robinson says so too. Yes, many British diplomats tend to be from those universities you have mentioned (we should think that you did not mean cities). But for example Mr Grant the actor is known for his RP speech yet his background is not POSH.

  • @kaiwanoshima So kind from you both to answer. I am the greatest fan of CaryGrant, and would long to develop his debonair RP unique tone in "The Grass is Greener" . And yes, I was referring to those Universities´English. I keep wondering if you may kindly refer some website or linguist to get trained on that precise pronunciation. I would really appreciate such a pointer, in London or elsewhere. Most obliged.

  • @megatendenciasnet We would have replied as kaiwanoshima.co.uk. Unfortunately we are not taking any new members at the moment and would like to think about it. Please give us some time.

  • Badly entitiled vt.

  • Hello, I am from Germany and I love your language. So far I have spoken the American accent for 20 years. However, after my stay in London in August I am determined switch to the British accent. As for me, it sounds better and it's music in my ears. I haven't thought that it is complicated to adopt the British accent. How can I improve my accent? What I already do is listening to CNBC or CNN (there are also British speakers).

  • i come from spain and i really like more the british accent than the american because it is more pure, natural and of course, original.

  • British accent is beautiful and I love it

  • This is how to talk properly.

  • What type of accent do you have?

    its very pronounced and clear

  • @mike318921 Mr Robinson belongs to British Library not to kaiwanoshima. He is one of our regular speakers. Although we have known that he had moved a lot in Britain, we were not in a position to answer to your question. So we asked him. He replied, "My voice has many influences. I suspect if I were to describe my own accent, I'd use a term like Northern RP".

  • @kaiwanoshima (These are not shown somehow) Mr Robinson says - 2 -, "might be more appropriate if a learner is more likely to encounter US English. Above all, anyone who has learnt any foreign language will know that trying to familiarise oneself with a variety of accents is excellent preparation for being in a native-speaking environment where you will encounter a huge range of voices and speech styles. There's plenty of this sort of thing available online now."

  • @kaiwanoshima (These are not shown somehow end of Sep) Mr Robinson says - 1 -, "RP is definitely the most appropriate model for a learner in terms both of listening (although no longer the exclusive voice of broadcast and teaching, it's still it's still the most widely used in the UK) and also as a target for a learner to try and imitate as it will be most widely understood both here and in any (British) English-speaking context. Of course, General American, continuing to - 2 -

  • why does everyone in london sound like dizzie rascal these days? whats happening to the london accent?

  • This is the real English, it's beautiful, you like it or not. But, there are some regional accents I would not be able to understand, it just sounds disgusting, you can't catch a single word.

    But, overall British english is the original English, well Amercans used to speak the same British English when they newly settled in America.

  • i prefer British accent compare American accent even i' m from Malaysia

    .......

  • It's funny how English accents eventually became Southern accents when the pilgrams came accross and took the Natives land :)

    I am interested in how the American dialect started. It is probably is a mis-mosh of a lot immigrants and slaves. Washington probably had an English accent. The English accent is the greatest off all. Does the English like American accents? Probably sounds like cockney to them...

  • I prefer the british accent, but I honestly understand more the american accent.

  • @martinmaine1990

    i don't get how people don't get the english accent

  • Hello, I am from Brazil. I liked your explanation about the several accents that may be found in the English language. With so many accents it seems to me that no native speakers may be face two problems that are Speak and Listen. Will be there an easier accent to develop the ability of listening in a smoother way?

  • so what is standard England accent? is that oxford accent?

  • @justwaita '3' a 'standard' in the sense that it remains the theoretical model used in educational contexts, such as teaching foreigners to speak English or pronunciation guidance offered in dictionaries etc. As with any accent of English, however, RP encompasses a wide variety of speakers and should not be confused simply with the notion of 'posh' speech. I've written a fairly comprehensive description of RP on the Sounds Familiar website, British Library (learning langlit sounds)."

  • @justwaita '2' its students - i.e. international, while in recent years the BBC has pursued a much more inclusive approach to regional voices in its broadcasts. If there is a notion of a 'standard' English voice, then it is Received Pronunciation (RP), the regionally neutral accent associated with some middle and all upper class speakers in England. Recent estimates suggest that RP is spoken by only 2% of the UK population - and almost exclusively in England - but it arguably counts as(..below)

  • @justwaita Mr Robinson says(must be cut in 3)"To answer your enquirer briefly:There is no 'standard accent of England' in quite the same way as 'Standard English' applies to a generally accepted grammar of British English. Certainly terms like Oxford English and BBC English are inappropriate: the accent of Oxford is, like any regional accent, characterised by pronunciation patterns local to the city and surrounding area and the accent of the university is as diverse as the background of(..below)

  • @justwaita im form oxford wahaaaay

  • so what is the standard accent of England? oxford accent?

  • London accent sucks American accent all the way

  • @brazabel

    I am neither American or England but I can Say I would MUCH prefer an "English-london" accent. The American accent is boring, all You do is roll Your r's.

  • @Daniella545 americans dont roll the "R"s they just stress them. Spanish speakers roll their "R"s...

  • @Daniella545 Americans do not roll their Rs. In the deep South of the USA, they place heavy stress of their Rs and tend to pronounce their letters heavily. Now, you say the "American accent" is boring...might I ask which American accent? Southern? Mid-Western? Northern? See, that is the thing with a lot of people, they group American accents into one group just as they do with English and British accents....there are SO many different accents in both areas....

  • This was insightful. Thanks!

  • WE say bottle...you say bah-tohl

  • @goodess1976 no, we say 'bottle' just like you :'/ and no, it's not always overcast in England

  • WE say bottle...you say bah-tohl

  • is it really always overcast in england?

    i live in LA and cant imagine never seeing the sun, id go nuts!

  • Hi, nice video, i am learning english so please could u help me with my speaking?

    hey do you have any friends from UK to introduce me?, so i can learn english

    and improve my speaking please. u know, to have a little chat)))))

    thanks

  • @zahir22 We regret to tell you that we are not in a position to give you 'one to one lesson' and that we are not taking a paid membership on our own webchannel at the moment. The primary purpose of using YouTube is to upload videos and to watch them. Kaiwanoshima is a limited company. Perhaps you would be better off with other websites should you wish to chat.

  • Britian is beautiful, rich, and full of life I wish america never made the split :)

  • Very educational, imforative and well addressed :)

  • Very educational, imforative and well addressed :)

  • @Suki278 because I dont like it!!!!! and I don't think it is sexy :) it is awful..

  • i speak estuary english, its awfull =/ people dont want to employ me!!

  • Mr Robinson, I'm guessing Rugeley?

  • @usenetposts No, he is not from Rugeley, if you mean Rugeley Staffordshire. Thank you very much and keep guessing!

  • @kaiwanoshima Hinckley? Nope, that's too far north. West Bromwich?

  • @usenetposts He is not from Leicestershire, I'm afraid. But he might have picked up some West Midlands accents. Then again he is not from the West Midlands :)

  • BTW guys england is not posh we stoped that after ww2 but some people still have it becose of there parents!

  • gorgeous accent :)

  • I would give everything to speak like he does..........................­.. all I want is to get rid of my fucking russian accent

  • @TheFluffydoll Why on earth do you want to get rid of your Russian accent??? The Russian accent is soo sexy!!!

  • @TheFluffydoll dont worrie russian accent isent all bad :P after all you sound like nico belic :D

  • @TheFluffydoll We usually ask the fellow users of YouTube if s/he could remove any inappropriate words when Kaiwanoshima receives a comment, no matter how grateful we might be, due to our policy. Because '89sylucha' had commented wonderfully before we noticed our error, we have decided to keep your comment as it is.

  • I love British accent!! I'm French and I was told by Irish I had an American accent... But I'd like to get the British one... Any suggestion? Thanks!! ^^

  • live in britain

  • @Twiladdict I disagree - Irish is the sex of accents. Sod British.

  • lol........luv it!!!!

  • I so love your accent!

  • they talk so proper to me lol AND CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY IS IT ALWAYS DARK OR GLOMMY IN LONDON OR UK

  • its not, we had a foot of snow last month and now its sunny

  • im a brit but i think the american accent is far easier to understand.british english goes back centuries.We should abandon it for the american accent which is more vibrant,sophisticated and newer..................

  • er no? even if an accent were not a locational byproduct out of our immediate control, would it not be nice to retain some national identity?

  • How dare you suggest we switch the British accent for the American.

    ENGlish is from ENGland. Our version is the original. You are what we call a commercial head. You have obviously watched too many hollywood films!

    Horrraay for the British accent!

  • @asopaso07 Surely 'huzzah', since we're being English...? =P

  • @asopaso07 I agree. I myself am American, but... the idea of abandoning your own dialect for one of another country is silly. Everyone should be proud of who they are and where they came from, and that includes accents. :)

  • @asopaso07. The "English" accent has changed drastically. There are accents in Southern US that resemble the original "British" accent moreso than the modern accents.

  • @asopaso07 Or its possible that our accent is evolved or an advancement from yours. It goes both ways.

  • @asopaso07 at the same time.the british accent isn't promoted enough if at all.most foreigners think the yanke accent is attractive.I can't blame them.movies,music,dress code.are all learning tools.how many of those england exports basically none.beyond the "old english" and oxford ppl do not see any use of it.the same applies to French.I am French and ppl are stuck in 1965 whenever they feel like tasting the French experience.

  • @asopaso07 my british teacher told me i should speak american enlish,why?

  • @240kankan Because it is easier to speak and to understand, darling.

  • @asopaso07 I am Chinese and I love the British accent, especially the Received Pronunciation. XD

  • @asopaso07 'Not true. American is closer to middle english that shakespeare spoke.

  • @asopaso07 Not true American is closer to middle english that shakespeare spoke

  • @asopaso07 If you want to get technical, the English language originated from Germanic invaders and has evolved tremendously since then. There is no original. Not for English or any other language.

  • @ninodelbayble You know that, according to population percentages, the 'American accent' is probably Hispanic, right? America's a big place, dude - it's got a looot of accents in it.

  • @ninodelbayble because the language is ENGlish not AMERICANish.

    Jackass.

  • @ninodelbayble please tell me you're being ironic? if not its ignorance

  • "eeerrr" :DD

  • ..just by saying a word ending with 'er' - you can tell where someone is from. Usually.

  • Speaking in an English accent in Sweden's English class ears you extra points.

    Score!

  • i want to have a london accent lol, i dont really know how Australian accent sounds like to British and Americans. but i am sure most Australians want to have a british accent as their cultural accent XD

  • Haha actually we don't :)

    We love our accent.

  • Comment removed

  • Thanks for this video!

    I am not a native speaker of English. But I am trying to learn the UK accent very desperately. However, all I could find only the RP material everywhere, even when I switch on to BBC (no other UK tv channels are telecast in India).

    Can anyone help me get some nice materials? I would more than grateful! :)

    By the way, I love London accent.. Its very attractive! :)

  • David beckham sounds like a little girl! i have a good yorkshire accent.

  • I'm Yorkshire :)

  • oh man i so love british accents loved hearing my grandma she was full british from Yorkshire and she did not lose it moving to usa either

  • @BeautifulSoulgurl Good for her!! its a great accent. It's sad when people leave their home country and lose their accent. I love Yorkshire, it's beautiful. If you haven't been, go! =)

  • All langauges evolve and change...Americans, Canadians, Australians and South Africans speak English, but have their own regional accents. Language evolves.that; what it needs to do, or a language will wither and die.

  • Americans have a difficult time saying 'British'.

    They tend to replace the 'T' with two D's, and say 'Briddish'

  • @MrFrankenchrist Umm.. Check how you pronounce your "R"s...

  • @MrFrankenchrist haha yh they do, your right about that m8.

  • @MrFrankenchrist Haha thats true, pretty funny that you should mention it.

  • @MrFrankenchrist I know. I'm American myself, but I don't say 'Briddish.' Americans tend to not get words right. For Churros, they say Choo-Rohs when it's Choo-rrohs with a rolling tongue for the 'r'.

  • @MrFrankenchrist

    In American English, intervocalic "t" or "tt" are pronounced like the "d" sound. This is a part of our accent, and we pronounce "British" just as perfectly as you do. It's called descriptive dialectal variation, you twat.

  • i hate British accents!!! ughh...

    im so happy that i have an american one

  • and im so happy i dont

  • And we get a Scotsman talking at the end instead of an Essex man because...?

  • Thank you very much for your query which is fair. We filmed him due to the fact that we wanted to show something new in terms of David. That's right. It was rather in relation to 'David' not 'London Accent'.

  • @skepticat1 innit?

  • i want a london accent.........

    SO. BAD.

  • I love British accents and I wish I have one.

  • so do I... :'(

  • London actually has 4 slightly diffrant accents...

  • water doesn't mean WADDER...

    duty doesn't mean DOOTIE

    please understand you americans..

  • American accents suck... they should all come to Britain and learn how to speak english properly instead of ruining our beautiful language. I mean bottle = BOTTLE not BADDLE and duty = duty not DOOTIE.

  • American English and British English are different. Just like the Spanish in Mexico is not the same as the Spanish in Spain. Calm down and get over it.

  • hehe dootie

  • XnehaX, this may come as a shock, but all languages continue to evolve. To expect all English speaking nations to forever maintain an unchanging London accent is ignorant.

    Americans, Australians, Canadians and South Africans all speak English, but have their own distinct accents.

    The irony is many American accents are closer to the 1776 British accent than modern British accent is to 1776 British accent.

  • @MrFrankenchrist Australians don't really have that much of a differing 'regional' accent. There are a few Aussie accents, but they aren't region specific.

    The states sound slightly different, but most of the time it just sounds like that individuals way of speaking.

    In short. Aussie accents don't differ widely.

    Just a lil info :)

  • I'm really worried about my accent, because, i learned english with UK, and US teachers at different times, so, i don't know, how to speak correctly :( I think that I mix both accents, so I think that's embarrasing :s

    i speak spanish, and i have the same toruble with deutsch

    wich accent is better, the one of the uk or the us accent???

  • I'd say UK.

    But I'm English so I'm biased. I'd say London English is more clear and the stereotype that comes with it suggests you are educated.

  • not all the stereotypes, lol...

  • i have exactly the same problem ^^

  • don't worry i grew up in london and moved to america when i was little so i think i don't speak properly of either accent either. i know for me, and maybe for you, will probably never be accepted by either group

  • Says who?

    We have trouble understanding N American accents for the same reason.

  • can someone learn how to speek with accent?

  • @Nuuna101 - yes it is very easy if you want to learn it, your need to be passionate about, but you need to put in alot of hours, It wont happen over night.

  • no u dont

  • Totally agree with you bud. The northest would be Canada and yeah that's it! They have a very clear accent and I think it's the easiest to understand.

    The British accent sucks so hard. They put an extra Y sound after every O sound so the words "windows" and "own" would sound like "windoys" and "oyhn". They do not pronounce the R's so it's damn difficult to get the words like "pair" "bear" "care" etc, they just sound like the first letter of the words and a couple of continues E's like peee.....

  • well which part of england have you been to because i've never said windoy, what the hell is that all about? if you want to make a comment, you should at the very least know what your talking about

  • We are nervous about the usage of 'hell' as a company, meaning we are bound by our charter and have some publishing guidelines. However we'd like to see this as an enthusiastic healthy debate. Thank you very much for your comments, everyone!

  • my sincere apologies, not meant offensively

    but that's a word we use quite often inside my local language therefore surely it falls into the catagory of this 'debate'

  • I'm neither british or american, but I think this guys accent is really easy to understand. Generally, I find british accent easiest to understand, compared to the american's.

    But maybe that's because I'm taught in english accent more than american.

    I don't know. ;)

  • wow i didn't understand everything

  • I guess Norway is the country with most accents and dialects in the entire World!

    People in Oslo don't understand me when I talk because I live in North Norway:D

  • from oslo to north norway it's a long way ,so it sounds logical there are enormous differences. in italy you go 1-2 km further and people there have already a different dialect.. :p

  • I've lived in London for 34 years, and I'm a linguistics graduate, and I'd love to meet someone who could tell me the difference between a north London accent and a south London accent, because in all my years, I've never spotted one.

    I simply don't think this exists - although I concede that perhaps 100 or 200 years ago, when travel wasn't what it is now, it may have done.

    If someone can point me in the direction of something that can tell me the difference, I'd be delighted to see it...

  • Kaiwanoshima has asked Mr Robinson. The summary of his comment is,

    "The picture is arguably increasingly blurred by external influences,

    such as our increased social and geographic mobility, and by the

    emergence of Multicultural London English among young speakers in very

    ethnically mixed areas, but there are differences even today.

    As you are a linguistics graduate, you might be interested in the work

    of academics such as.. continue..

  • ..2nd part, Laura Wright (Cambridge University), an expert on

    London English. There is also some interesting information available

    from the UCL Phonetics department at (it appears that the message is not shown due to the URL).

    Because a film about a lady working in London scheduled next month, on Nov 12 for a month, on our own we will have his full comment available to read @ the site during the period.

  • Yes, it is due to URLs. 'on our own' means our own url which is shown during this video.

  • I live in Battersea and I can tell the difference between a fulham accent and a Battersea accent and a tooting accent - about a 2 mile radius

  • lol dont glomb all americans together.

    i, for one, know there are a lot of different accents and i can generally pick out where someone would be from just by hearing them. :D

  • Americans obsessed with our accent! Too bad they can't tell the diference between differnet regional accents in our country. Its weird because most brits can tell American regional accents apart. This is because we don't stereotype them under one accent.

  • Eh, don't be too harsh on us Americans. Not everyone gets the chance to see a display of all the types of British accents. We are simply introduced to various accents, and since we're not particularly familiar with them, we have a likelihood of grouping them together to form that stereotypical accent. Ignorance? Sure, call it that if you want. It's just like the East Asian languages, characters, or people. I doubt an average "foreigner" would differentiate between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

  • You are right! It's difficult to be familiar with a specific set of dialects when you are thousands of kilometres away from the ambient where they are used.

    I live in Okinawa, Japan, where I had the opportunity to run into lots of Americans, most of them related to the military.

    Since Okinawa is somewhat close to Australia, for many times I was mistaken by an Australian because of my accent, which is close to what they call "Received Pronunciation".

  • freakkkk

  • Chingford's not just outside London. It's E4; in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

  • how strange if somebody speak london accent in NY let say? but i love it

  • im a londoner n i can tell the difference between a south/north londoner. that golfer is a prick.

  • Why is he a prick?  Is it because you are not a David's fan?

  • yay! i'm slightly less oblivious about english accents. :D (i'm american)

  • a ffink so yeh? not that complica'ed atall

  • jeez this stuff is complicated; I mean is saying i fink (think) counts as a correct word???

  • Mr robinson says, "Given that it is a dialectal pronunciation there is no established spelling convention." When people speak in their mother tongue, they usually do not have a spelling in their mind. The sounds come out naturally. Don't you think?

  • i liked this video a lot lol, except for the bit at the end about the golf, i stopped watching

  • I'm from Chicago, but I just love the British people and their accents.

  • shame most of the brits make fun out of you..

  • I hate the way Americans go on about "The British Accent". If you think people from Cardiff, London, Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham... if you think they sound remotely similar then you need your hearing tested. The accent you talk of is RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION.

  • EXCUSE ME! I realize there are a lot of diffrent accents in those areas and I respect every single one of them!! I'd like to see you try to speak in all the different accents in the U.S. ! (I'm not trying to offend you in any way, just saying!)

  • What about cockney slang? Does it still exist?

  • Cause' it does treacle

  • LOOOOOOOOOOOOL. alright, i'm a londoner. 'course cockney slang still exists. it's not latin, y'know.

  • lol i have an australian accentbut an english one wud be nice

    it wud be mad to sound like devvo

  • oi shink yew missed arrt the east anglian accent bur. oi wish yewd mayke yurr moind up un starp a-rattlin on abowt them orrible furreners. thaat ud be bootifull.

    uss owd suff'kers loike lunn'n but yew tonnies never lern an at's a fact bor. kent yew see ut yew duzzy owd fuel?