this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Depends on which accent.
As far as Americans are concerned, there are only 2 British accents:
Villain or wise mentor: Queen's English
Henchman or comic relief: Cockney
I would really like to see a movie about a team up between detectives with Yorkshire, Brummie and Scouse accents; working cross regionally to bring down a gang of criminals. Hardcoded subtitles for the Americans please.
Michael Cain would like to have a word about the Cockney accent typecasting.
He gets a pass cause he can make cockney sound refined
Hey now, I've watched enough Simon Roper to know that's not true.
In Flushed Away, is Rita's accent Cockney? It's certainly not Coruscanti
Anecdotal..
British gal is visiting New York. Loves it and makes plenty of friends. She learns that if she has a job offer she can almost certainly get permission to stay. Goes to an employment agency and gets an interview the same day. Hired to a prestigious firm almost immediately. They tell her they love her classy British accent. In the UK she was lower middle class.
edit = silly me. I forgot that 'middle class' means different things.
At home, she would be a barmaid at the local.
In NYC she was a receptionist in a law firm on Madison Avenue.
Do you mean in US terms or UK? That phrase means something very different in the UK.
I'm an idiot.
Yes, I meant USA.
To rephrase, to a Brit she was a slum girl who'd gotten a bit of education.
To americans she was Lady Diana's cousin.
Did she speak RP tho? Or is this so nuanced in the UK that everyone can tell when you try to speak RP but come from a lower middle class family?
Okay, now I'm lost. RP? Role playing? Ron Perlman? Randy panties?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_American_Speech
The 'midlantic' accent was created in Hollywood and popularized by actors like Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Thanks for the information.
Nah, despite the article that was just the “North Eastern Elite” accent and people just spoke like that.
Many yanks don't tend to think of brummie or scouse...
Why go with two English accents and not Irish and Scottish?
My apologies in advance to the good people of Birmingham but it is well documented that the accent is associated with low intelligence.
That's only in the UK.
Brummie is the 8th most attractive accent in the world (to Americans)
As someone living not far from Brum, I concur. Brummies are thick.
Fair point.
Because Americans tend to have positive views of scottish accents. I picked the two most famous examples of accents generally viewed somewhat negatively.
Because it says British? Ireland isn't British
Assuming “British” is being used colloquially, as it often is, to describe someone or something from the UK, then there are Irish accents in the UK. The island of Ireland contains Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. People from Northern Ireland have Irish accents. Try telling Nadine Coyle she doesn’t have an Irish accent.
Interesting take. Try telling Nadine Coyle she has a British accent?
That’s fair. It’s not like the whole thing around Northern Ireland and Britain isn’t without its complications and controversies, to understate it massively. But that applies just as much to saying that people from Northern Ireland aren’t British as much as it does to saying they *are *.
People from Northern Ireland are legally entitled to choose to be British citizens. That doesn't make their accent British, any more than them cooking boxty makes boxty British.
I think it’s a little more nuanced than that, but I’m not going to argue.
Is Ireland one of the British Isles?
Given that the people of Ireland reject that name, it's a very British thing to deadname them.
Serious answer - no Prythonic speakers lived in Ireland, so there is no proper basis for the name beyond people quoting a Greek who had never been there. It fell out of use for a millennium and was revised by a Welshman who spoke to angels as a way to erase the separate identities of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. His reasoning was that the King of the Britons, Arthur, had conquered Ireland (if he ever existed, he did not). I am speaking of John Dee who also coined the terms British Empire (it stuck) and British Ocean (it decidedly did not).
To expand on Arthur, if he ever was a real person his first historical record was written 300 years after his supposed death and it claims he was a war leader, not a king, fighting the Saxons to ultimately no avail, though the Historia Brittonnum makes sure to assure the reader that's only because the Saxons kept bringing in new troops and not because Arthur lost any battles.
Why can't England be part of the Irish Isles?
It does, but I once met a Mancunian who sounded, in his own words, common as muck and rough as fuck to a fellow brit, but in the states was treated like Shakespeare
Oi! That's a right load of poppycock!
+20 intelligence