> Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do

> Americans certainly have no problem talking about an English accent as if Cockneys sound anything like Scousers. To American ears, of course, they actually do As an American, I wouldn't say that; while I would say "English accent" in conversation, to me that means something more specific than just "anything from England", but less specific than one specific accent; in my head it's "James Bond but not Sean Connery" (I'm not very familiar with those movies, so I don't know the different actors). They probably have different specific accents, but they're similar-ish to me (in my limited exposure), but not something I'd ever confuse with like, Cockney (that being the only specific English accent I know by name). So yeah, I'm not sure what he means by American accent. Being more familiar with the different regional accents, I'm curious which one he's referring to, since they're so diverse. I casually expected that since the US is so big, geographically, people might have more specific ideas of regional American accents. You're probably right about the "because those accents share some characteristics", though. American accents sound so distinct to me, I never really thought about them being all sharing something distinctively American-identifying about them; I wonder what it is about them.