Scrustle said:
Megawat22 said:
Well I'm from Scotland but moved down to the Isle of Wight to live with my Dad over a year ago.
Wow, the Isle of Wight. I live like 30 minutes away from Portsmouth. It's weird to see someone on these forums that lives so close to me.
OT: Not in the slightest. I have a very much a middle class Southern English accent, because that's who I am.
From the same area originally, live in the North of Hampshire now. Same middle class southern English accent, but I do sometimes have a "Bognor twang" which slips out sometimes, I absolutely hate it, it's due to when I was very young living in Chichester for a bit, can't shake it and comes out when I'm in a relaxed environment generally. However I've gone to Uni in Coventry for the past four years where according to all the Locals that accent is interpreted as posh, I laughed and said they should meet some of the actual posh lot from down south, cannot understand how they don't find their own voices annoying...
One thing I have found interesting while at Uni is the variety of the accents you meet, for instance two of my best mates are from Yorkshire one north and one south, both talk totally different but both are still instantly recognizable as from Yorkshire (When I first met them when they spoke to each other in a sole conversation I couldn't understand them). The strength of their accents vary depending if they have spent time at home recently. I've been told mine stays fairly consistent but I have picked up a fair amount of their turn of phrase and slag, ie before I came to uni I don't think I had ever used the phrase "Cheers lad" they say it so much it's stuck in my sub-conscious!
===Message To All Non-Brits thinking they have British Accents===
Really doubt it, in the midlands you can go as little as 10 miles and there is a different regional accent you have probably never heard on the tv, there's an obscene amount of regional slang and slang with different meanings in different areas. The British accents portrayed in 99% on all American TV is pretty unrepresentative of any actual accent spoken things like game of thrones are one of the few programs where any decent accents are spoken. Even the BBC is pretty bad for representing anything like how 99% of the country speaks.
Short of being a critically acclaimed actor you probably can not pull off an actual British accent, short of living here for some time.