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The English don’t notice their English accent. England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so. We understand each other nonetheless; we’re habituat
by tarkin2 5y ago
The English don’t notice their English accent.
England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so. We understand each other nonetheless; we’re habituated to it from birth. We rarely realise others don’t experience the same.
- stordoff 5y ago> England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so If not less. There's been a fairly large of degree of flattening over recent years, but my grandparents could quite often differentiate between the accents of people who grew up barely more than a couple of miles apart. One thing that seems to trip up even some native speakers is that the T-V distinction[1] still exists in the Yorkshire dialect in some contexts. I seem to recall a band getting some criticism for lyric that went "I tell thee", which a few people saying it sound sounded phoney or nothing like what a young person would say, and that it was only used to make the rhyme work. It sounded perfectly natural to my Yorkshire ear - it would just a normal dialect use of "thee". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
- tarkin2 5y agoI wonder if "thee" comes from "thou". Definitely distinctly Yorkshire. I wouldn't use it as I think people would accuse me of taking on a false Yorkshire accent.