The general opinion of the Swiss is that we Americans sound like they have a potato in their mouth.

I don't think that's a compliment.

I am Belgian and a couple of years ago I happened to end up next to a British man on a skiing elevator in the French alps. We were talking all the way up, and upon arriving on top of the mountain, he asked me in a full Oxford British accent: 'Are you American?' and I was thinking to myself: should I consider this a compliment (after all, English isn't my mother tongue) or an insult? :-)

My friends and I, all Southerners, were on a plane to Italy this summer. We were seated in one row across the plane with 4 other American, but not Southern, people between the two sets of couples in our group.

At one point, I asked my friends on the other side of the row a question, and they answered. I was amazed to hear the 4 people between us go into a long, not whispered conversation about Southern accents. None of them had ever been to the South, but they had very strong opinions about ridiculous Southern accents and the ignorant people who are attached to them! I was shocked that they would be so insensitive to us, until they asked us if we were from New Zealand because of our accents!

I'm Irish,and I love American accents, especially the ones from the Southern States, but i also adore the New York accent.

In the US (eastern states only) my Australian accent was at times taken to be from England, South Africa, "Up North" and, most mysteriously, Georgia.

Going back to an earlier post - I believe that actors can do foreign accents better these days because dialogue coaching has become more sophisticated. I heard a coach interviewed on radio last year and her approach began with getting the subject to think themselves into the nationality concerned before working on the speech patterns. As an example she mentioned coaching a group of South African actors about to perform an Australian play - from memory the training began with exercises and role-plays designed to get them physically "looser" and socially more relaxed.

Seems to me that the dominance of American films means that actors from other English-speaking countries have to master American accents if they want to make it into the big league.

What did English audiences make of Rene Zellweger's "Bridget Jones", I wonder? She seemed to my untutored ear to be speaking a little too slowly but otherwise OK.

I thought Renee Zellweger's accent as Bridget Jones was very good - I never noticed it slipping.

TCCoffey : "pop" is commonly used in England for fizzy drinks and "poke" is a Scottish word for bag - generally (or perhaps always ?) a paper bag.

A thing I notice about a lot of Americans on holiday is that when two families find themselves sitting next to each other by the pool or whatever, they feel the need to tell each other their life stories; up to where they work, where their children are currently at college, etc. Often in rather pentrating voices. This is quite annoying if you are enjoying the peace and quiet of a beautiful location and/or trying to read. But I'm sure Fodorites don't do that :-)

Renee's accent was very good - as is Gwyneth's in things like Sliding Doors and Emma.

Personally I love the American accent - I've had several American boyfriends for just that reason! I particularly like the Southern accent.

I think the difference lies in the fact that Americans tend to comment on our accents (I have a particularly clipped, traditional BBC accent and it's always mentioned when I'm in the States) whereas in our naturally reserved way, we don't comment on yours.

>>>>>
The general opinion of the Swiss is that we Americans sound like they have a potato in their mouth.

I don't think that's a compliment.
>>>>

I question this assumption as the swiss are not particularly concerned with language (as opposed, perhaps, to the French and British). Nor are the swiss highly regarded for their use of the french, german or italian languages.

As for the topic of decible level of speech, I think that this is as boring a topic as the relative fat level of americans. Caroline, i'm a little surprised that you are bothered by this as it is usually a complaint of self conscious americans who are embarrassed of their "less enlightened" countrymen.

I think a quick walk down a typical british high street on a saturday afternoon or evening is all that it takes to dispell the stereotypes that the british are quiet and reserved. Perhaps this is a factor of class, whereby the idea of "typical british" ignores the vast underclasses. The british are certainly not known being quiet and reserved when on holiday...indeed the chaos caused by brits on certain greek islands, costa del sol, etc is well publicised. most of the traveling public would rather hear two american families discussing their children, their health, and even the value of their homes as compared to sharing a pool with british lager louts.

Likewise, I don't see how anyone who has ever come across a group of traveling aussies, or who has traveled in greece, italy, spain, latin america, or asia could maintain that loud talking is a charateristic unique to americans.

I think you just get used to a noise level! After living in England for a time, I cringed at "shouting Americans" when I returned to the US. Within a year, I was back to shouting along with them & more often than not, thinking nothing of it. Still, if given a choice, I'd go for the quieter approach & leave the shouting to situations where it seemed necessary.

I do remember an English taxi driver saying to me and several of my friends (mid-Atlantic & Southern accents) that he found "American" women's acccents to be very coarse and unpleasant as compared to his Berkshire-bred friends!

When we returned from our long stay in England, we caught a friends's anthropologist father listening carefully to our speech. He decided the changes he detected were not changes in accent, but rather a major change in intonation, as well as our adoption of certain words used frequently in conversation in England that really weren't used much in the US...we picked up the British pronunciation & rhythms associated with those words for that reason. Anyway, our speech patterns for a time provided him with a lot to mull over!

I live in Berkshire and believe me, there are plenty of coarse Brit accents to be heard here.
American accents are always getting beat up on, but many of them are perfectly fine and some charming. Most of them are not coarse, not grating, and (GASP!!!) many Americans do NOT shout or speak loudly--they speak at a perfectly normal level. Conversely, there ARE many British and Australian accents that can be just as grating and irritating as the worst American accent and any American who thinks that most of today's Brits are a soft-spoken lot has been watching WAY too many Masterpiece Theatre reruns.
On my frequent train rides between Berkshire and London, I hear lots of LOUD locals. Not to mention the constant swearing, particularly with the F word. Briefly, this is the accepted lingo of all too many Brits under age 30:
School or work is "f***king boring"
Bosses or teachers are "f***ing stupid"
latest fashion trend/girlfriend/boyfriend/pop star/Ipod download is "f***ing cool"

We lived in Brussels for 6 years (still do part time) and as the city is one-third expat, we hear a lot of different accents/languages on a daily basis. Americans are no louder than anyone else overall. For every loud American, there is also a loud Brit and Australian. And if you want REALLY loud, then just hang out with a bunch of hard drinking British nannies on a week-end night.

Schuler, your Swiss friends probably do NOT want to hear what Germans think of that Swiss German accent.

Americans really need to stop falling all over themselves and fawning over British accents. Most of them are no better or worse than any American accent. RP (*) Britspeak is not that widespread.

(*) http://www.yaelf.com/rp.shtml

There is far more difference within Canada and within the US than there is between Canada and the US. It is difficult to distinguish between some onefrom Toronto, for example, and some from a Northeast US city. The only way to tell is by the Brish accent stant is used in a few words, i. e. PRO-ject rather than proj-ect, REC-ord rather than rec -ord and the i in words like generalization (general-eye-zation, rather and general-iz-ation.)

The interesting thing is that while an attentive American can identify Canadian speech, Canadians have no ability to distinguish Americans (speaking standard American) from themselves in speech. I'd guess that they hear so much US TV and movies that the differences sound normal to them.

" Hans, I was interested to read your post about enunciation. German seems to me to be a much more clearly enunciated language than just about any form of English. When I hear spoken German, I can often tell what's being said, even if I don't know what the words mean.

This is exactly why this whole thread is ridiculous. Which German speech are you referring to? Southern German and Swiss German speech is thoroughly slurred and barely enunciated. Even the Northern Germans don't understand them.

The original poster mention "the" British accent spoken by trained professionals. There are dozens of theres. They use good one for media. There are plenty that great your ear like a cheese shredder.

I love the quote," I love the British accent, and judging by the number of Brits on American infomercials, other
Americans do as well."

You forget about the part that whwnever they want to make a character an arrogant prig and a thorough twerp, they given him a British upper class accent.

Anyway, who gives a rat's behind what anyone thinks of American speech.

The American accent (in its many forms) sounds soft to me and a little sloppy too, with words rolled together and a lack of crisp consonants.
I have moved to Boston and I have to ask for "badderies" instead of batteries at the store because most people seem to forget there are T's in that word. Same problem with "wadder". There's a lack of hard, crisp consonant sounds. However, its a sound I'm well used to because American TV and movies have dominated the Western world for so long. It's not at all strange or foreign sounding to me.

But speaking of sloppiness.... I think my own English accent is completely wrong when we drop our R's off the end of words. Car is not spelt Cah yet that's how we say it. I consider that just as sloppy as the American way of softening T's so I'm not perfect either!

I think I'll start a support group for abused Consonants.

"You forget about the part that whwnever they want to make a character an arrogant prig and a thorough twerp, they given him a British upper class accent."

Haha, just look at the original Star Wars trilogy. All those Imperial officers have British accents. Eddie Izzard has a riff on that in his HBO comedy special.

Now now wiesel, no need to get personal. And if you don't give a rat's arse, then why either bother reading this post?

Hi Guys:

We did this wonderful pronunciation exercise in our CELTA class. Most of the class was British. I had to stand up and say a sentence and the class repeated my sentence. It was hilarious because they tried to copy-cat my American accent.

Then a Scottish woman stood up and said the same sentence. We repeated her wonderful musical accent but it sounded so strange coming from my lips. (especially the word "arrived".)

Then a southern British gentleman stood up and said the same sentence. Again, it was quite a challenge for me.

I think it's the same way in all countries. We all have our accents (in any language) and they are all accepted. The Swiss German sounds very harsh but they are still very proud of it. I was very proud of my American accent among my fellow British students.

In the end, it doesn't matter which accent you have because it's your personality that shines through. And that's what makes the difference.

Having said all that, the Swiss still hear my American accent when I speak their language, even after twenty years. There's just some things you just can't change.

walkinaround: of course I agree that British lager louts are the worst. But I don't holiday in the same places as they do :-)

I agree that Americans need to get over an apparent cultural cringe towards what they call the "British" accent - in reality a localised south-east English accent spoken by the ruling class. If York and not London had emerged as the business and cultural capital of England, "BBC English" would today be a very different thing. (You can trust me on this - as an Australian I'm an expert on cultural cringes, not to mention English snobbery.)

Most Americans speak English clearly and not at all unpleasantly. And the "British" accent many of them so admire is the product of a Norman-descended ruling class whose arrogance and folly caused 18th-century Americans to wage a war of independence. Most of the English ancestors of those same rebels had a quite different accent, and it was the sounds of the West Country and East Anglia, not the Home Counties, that most influenced the development of the American accent.

In reality there's no reason for any of us to feel ashamed of our accent. If you think it "grates", ask yourself "in comparison with what?", and whether that "what" is where it is for reasons of economic (read social and cultural) dominance rather than aesthetics.

Well, the purpose of speech is that it can be understood.
Whatever the accent, words should be clearly articulated and should be impossible to confuse.

I can remember an American woman telling me that she enjoyed writing as a hobby.
I asked her if she had her own horse ;-)

The voice should be audible to the person you are addressing but not to an entire restaurant.

An attractive voice is a bonus.

I can remember having elocution lessons at school. I expect that this would be politically incorrect in this day and age.