There's no such thing as a British accent!

[Battenbergcake]

To other Brits I'm English.
To other European's I'm British.
To other foreigners I'm European.
To aliens I'm grand emperor of the world... or just human which ever won't get me incinerated.

http://strikingthoughts.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/officallanguage.jpg

 

[ClunkiestTurtle]

And who here doesn't give a shit

That would be me then...

But then again i am English and typically English people don't really give a shit about people lumping us all in together as British its usually only people in the less important parts of the isles (joke) that get all flustered over it having been feed nationalism for breakfast all their lives.

 

[Phlakes]

After all there is Texan,

Ahem, no such thing as Texan either, it's Southern or Western. We Central/Eastern Texans don't like how we're generalized with those hillbilly, ranch-owning, oil-drilling West Texans.

Are you telling me there's no "hillbillies" in, for example, Bowie County? Or is that considered the Arkansas Annex?

It's not that they're only in West Texas, it's just that the "Texan" stereotype is mostly based on people from that area.

 

[Battenbergcake]

You're splitting hairs but i get you, they mean a southern well spoken accent, as opposed to a gordy or scouser accent.

 

[Baldry]

What annoys me that the stereotype of the "British" accent is really posh, but I have yet to meet any fellow English man with that accent

 

[Logan Westbrook]

Okay, this has been bothering me for years. There is no such thing as a British accent!

The terms "British" and "English" have been used pretty much interchangeably for years now. I don't think it's really worth getting upset over.

 

[secretsantaone]

So for discussion value, who here is like me, bothered by people saying 'British accent'? And who here doesn't give a shit?

What bothers me is people who don't know the difference between a dialect and an accent. The differences are VERY distinct and are often confused since the term "dialect" has a negative connotation.

What's the difference between the two? I'm curious is all.

I recently read Pygmalion in school, and the main character was a professor of phonetics in (...England somewhere.... I didn't read that closely). It's ludicrously complex, if you ask me, and it's certainly only slightly useful. I think trying to be exact, or even at all "correct," about the accent you're referring to is much of a waste of time. For the sake of general conversation, the public conception of the "British" accent, or whatever, is perfectly effective at getting a point across.

Just another example of how stereotypes can be useful.

A dialect is the local slang and lexis used in the region. An accent is the way the words are pronounced. An example would be how people from the north of England tend to call a round piece of bread a 'bap' while someone from the south would call it a 'roll'. Introduce bacon and it becomes a bacon buttie or a bacon sarnie in the north, no idea what the call it in the south.

A more famous example is how 'do you understand?' is represented by 'ye ken?' in areas of Scotland.

You could pronounce a Scottish dialect in received pronunciation if you wanted. Probably for comic effect.

 

[minarri]

It's semantics, folks. "A British accent" can just as well mean "one (of a group of) British accent(s)" so calm down.

Plurralbles and Irridium, well put :3

 

[Icecoldcynic]

This is one of my pet peeves. Whenever a foreigner (usually from NA) starts talking about 'British', I invariably know that they do in fact mean English. Why is that so hard to understand?

 

[mokes310]

So for discussion value, who here is like me, bothered by people saying 'British accent'? And who here doesn't give a shit?

What bothers me is people who don't know the difference between a dialect and an accent. The differences are VERY distinct and are often confused since the term "dialect" has a negative connotation.

What's the difference between the two? I'm curious is all...

What 99.99999% of every respondent in this thread is referring to is a dialect. An "accent" is the sound of an individuals primary language imposed upon another: i.e., a native Madarin-Chinese speaker having trouble with the letter "L" in the word really/re-RRy, etc. So, when someone says that they have a "British accent" or "Texan accent", they are really saying that they have a specific DIALECT.

 

[Arashi500]

It's just simpler and faster for people to generalize it, like how people use frankenstein as frankenstein's monster . People need to stop being worried about political correctness, it only makes the world function slower.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

It seems like when people say a 'British accent' they are referring to the English accent. So why not just say the English accent?

Because "Britain" or "British" have become largely subjective. I know, it shouldn't act as a substitute for the word "English" but, such is the way with language.

 

[Kiefer13]

Okay, this has been bothering me for years. There is no such thing as a British accent!

The terms "British" and "English" have been used pretty much interchangeably for years now. I don't think it's really worth getting upset over.

It's irritating when you're from Scotland, and yet people insist on referring to you as English, believe me.

I'm Scottish, or British preferably. But not English. That's like someone over here calling a Texan a New Yorker. They may be both Americans, but it's not correct.

And OP: There IS such thing as a British accent. Any accent from anywhere in Britain could be correctly referred to as a British accent. But true, there's no one British accent, which is generally stereotyped as being a posh upper-class English accent. But to call that a British accent is not incorrect, because it is one. Just not the only one.

 

[Vampire cat]

And knowing is half the battle.

G.I Joe!

 

[Knight of Cydonia]

This remind's me of that old game of Nazi zombies I players once I made the mistake of plugging my Mic in and for the whole game I was known as....

...The British guy.

 

[Ravek]

Nothing wrong with the term 'British accent'. I'm not always able to distinguish between, say, a Scottish and an Irish accent, while still being able to tell that it's not any form of American or Australian English, or otherwise. How else would I refer to such an accent?

 

[atomicmrpelly]

Sure, there's no such thing as a British accent, but then which of the many regional accents of England do you take to be 'English'? And as people have said calling someone English when they are Scottish or Welsh is like calling an American Canadian or vice versa; they don't like it!!!

 

[Flames66]

I always specify that I am English, not just British so yes it could get on my nerves slightly.

I, on the other hand, am British, not English. The Channel Islands are not part of England.

That's interesting actually. What do people from the Channel Islands refer to themselves as?

 

[Timeslament]

In truth it is wrong to call it an accent its a dialect and also a form of English. There's American standard then there is English standard. An Accent is if you come from a foreign language speaking country and learn the new language giving you an accent, lets say you come from France and you go to America then you would have a French accent. While lets say you come from Ireland you would have an Irish dialect, same with all other parts of English speaking countries. As is the same for any other foreign language, separation between people causes dialects to be born.

 

[DarkRyter]

Okay, this has been bothering me for years. There is no such thing as a British accent!

Great Britain is an island made up of three countries, England, Scotland and Wales. Each of these countries has their own accent, not to mention countless more dialects depending on the area of the country.

It seems like when people say a 'British accent' they are referring to the English accent. So why not just say the English accent?

It's like saying someone has a South/North American accent or an Asian accent. It just doesn't make sense.

I know making this thread isn't going to change anything in the grand scale of things, but I just hope that some users here on the Escapist realise that there is no such thing as a British accent.

So for discussion value, who here is like me, bothered by people saying 'British accent'? And who here doesn't give a shit?

Thanks for putting up with my rant.

Well, to the untrained (American) ear, all three accents, and the numerous variations on them are indistinguishable from one another. "British Accent" is a catch all term to describe them.

Same way Brits call a person of East-Asian descent "oriental", regardless of specific national origin. Or an American calling someone "Middle Eastern" rather than "Iranian" or "Saudi Arabian".