Regional Accent BBC News Interview - Jo Cameron

[KINGMJ1990]

It is BBC world news...BBC should not do away with the Cut glass accent..People all around the world don't speak or understand the scouse or Mancunian accent or cockney.....They should speak the Queen's English so that everyone around the world understands it and as people learn English around the world in Ex-Colonial countries,we are taught to speak without any accent like Standard English.

[Tokechan]

Pretty strange to think about as a Canadian. Here, unless English isn't their first language, MOST people have a pretty damn similar accent. I suppose there's a slight difference between East and West (notably Newfies), but not by a whole lot (except for those Newfies :p). It's interesting how accents enter into television and politics in the UK. It's like a whole cultural category that's missing from Canada.

[8Splendiferous8]

haha, it's fun to listen to english accents!

[RockBoulevardz]

wow all of you people are pretty cool.

[forwardvision]

Very interesting. I personally think that accents are part of our heritage & add to the variety of life. That being said, I don't like the fact that I've picked up the "Yam-Yam" accent since moving to Walsall, West Midlands. I'm not a native West Midlander - I was born in Kidderminster (Worcestershire) and grew up in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. I tend to pick up accents very quickly, after being in a place for just two or three weeks.

[berserker20008]

@forwardvision With all do respect sir but I highly doubt that you'd pick up an accent easily in a matter of 2 or 3 weeks !! well, may be in 2 or 3 years then I would believe it

[forwardvision]

@berserker20008 - Yes, I do pick up accents that easily. For example, when I went to Ireland for 3 weeks, by the time I got back home I had an Irish accent. Even some of the locals where we were staying thought my brother & I were from Dublin.

[gunzac21]

@berserker20008 nah their are people that actually do it naturally. I can literally pick up an accent fairly well in a conversation and be fluent within a 3days. People who care about speech can do this easily. i am actually sometimes surprised that other people can't. but people are different

[moongoddess1978]

Somewhat of a relief to know that even within Britain, people can have a hard time understanding each other. I'm an American and some British people, I almost want to ask, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" I don't as that would be really rude, but I ask them to repeat a lot...

[vibovitold]

I agree. I've lived in the UK for 5 years now but it's still harder for me to understand some people than it was in the US after just a couple of months spent there (in 2003). I know that there's tricky accents in the US as well - southern ones for example - but your average American accent is pretty much a non-accent to my ear, I mean it's just flat, it's plain speaking without anything on the top of it. It also works the other way round for some reason - Americans understand foreigners better

[MrJasonSmarts]

@moongoddess1978 i agree, although i do find Americans very hard to understand some times...

southern US accents are just wierd lol :P

[lottywood]

yes because the bbc accent is very international. Bollocks.

[leefost]

oh the irony