- Joined
- Oct 22, 2022
That's really interesting about American dialects/accents. I struggle to tell the difference between different American accents, other than Southern and New York.
You're right, there are a huge range of dialects in the UK, although, like in the US, these are disappearing.
I think to non-UK citizens, British and Australian accents must sound quite similar, as I often get asked if I'm Australian when I'm abroad (especially by Canadians).
My Canadian in-laws have to watch a lot of UK TV programmes with subtitles (e.g, "Happy Valley"), as they can't understand the dialects, which is completely understandable - I sometimes struggle myself with some UK dialects/accents, despite having lived here all my life.
Some linguists classify Doric as a separate languageReally interesting about the Scots accents. My dad was from Aberdeen and knew a special dialect called the Doric, which was really hard to understand.
The Real Diana Delafield almost never became my sister-in-law because my brother, when they first met in grad school in Canada, innocently asked her if she was from New Zealand and she said NO, she was from South Africa. She gave him grudging credit for not asking if she was Australian as most Canadians were assuming -- the Australian and South African accents both sound a bit like Cockney English, so she also got asked if she was from London. But she was getting very tired of people being surprised to hear she was from Pretoria.

