I have a fake British accent like Madonna now. American accent is so dumb sounding. An insult.
Jesus don't actually do that OP, it's cringe as fuck and literally nobody will enjoy your company
Still nowhere near as bad as the white South African English accent. This is the closest I've found to a decent comparison between an American accent and a South African one, for anyone making the mistake of being sincere online. Keep in mind I would consider this an extremely soft accent, like every white person I know in South Africa easily has a way harder accent.
https://youtu.be/VeeSCCrK_T8
A South African accent automatically makes you a cheap action movie villain. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules
"You're right my china".
Yes, that is actual slang used by a ton of people
Don't Afrikaners usually have a thicker accent than British whites because English is their second language? I'm sure you hate the example (lol) but Yolandi Visser sounds extremely foreign while Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones) sounds obviously anglo, at least to me.
Depends. The person in the video actually has an Afrikaans accent, it's just extremely soft by comparison to most Afrikaans accents. In general Afrikaans accents are harsher. The English people that are still culturally British still have a noticeable Brit accent, but that's getting rarer these days. The "English" SA accent is its own thing that doesn't sound like a British or Afrikaans accent, with slang and all. This image should give you an idea about the slang. Ninja sounds the way he does because he went to a super expensive private boys school and he was raised upper class by his rich parents, the whole persona is fake.
Interesting. I have wondered if the difference I usually hear is a class difference but never asked anyone because I've always been creeped out by South African online spaces. I guess in my mind Afrikaners were rugged settlers like us while Brit South Africans were more like the posh European colonizers elsewhere in Africa, but I'm also pretty much just assuming that with no basis lol.
Definitely never seen slang like that. I feel like even with our most hard to understand regional accents you'd be able to understand them if they're transcribed lol.
There is definitely a class element to it in some respects, I remember a posh english white guy in highschool saying that he would refuse to date an Afrikaans girl with a "ratchet accent". However the class element is more due to a cultural and city vs farm divide than some sort of income difference , as apartheid oviously massively enriched Afrikaaners. Though people from generally poorer areas, such as run down mining towns like Brakpan (was an open pit uranium mine ... yeah) tend to have harsher accents.
However South Africa has 11 official languages, which leads to all type of English accents. There are various POC accents, depending on the home language of the person (Zulu vs Xhosa vs Sepedi for example)
I’ve always been creeped out by South African online spaces.
You should be, they're unusable and creep me out as a white person. The South African reddit is the perfect example of this. Though South African twitter is alright as more people use it compared to other platforms due to twitter data bundles. Just avoid the obvious white supremacists and digital blackface accounts.
Definitely never seen slang like that.
It sounds foreign to me and I've lived nearly all my life there. Though it is a heavily exaggerated example, I have met one or two people that speak exactly like that. While I did learn to understand it, I've never gotten used to it.
Come on now, the British Isles are full of awful sounding accents
I shall withhold my judgment until someone clears up from which side of the border the above lad is from
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c
This guy is the champion of being totally indecipherable:
https://youtu.be/3VA9vuId3ds
I exaggerate my Spanish accent to let USAmericans know my brain is bigger than theirs because I can speak more than one language
Like the Spanish accent with the lisp or one of the various Latin American accents?
Lol when I was a kid my mom knew a lady from Spa*n and it was pretty off-putting when she spoke "Ethpañol" after mostly being exposed to my Honduran neighbors.
Hard disagree. (Heads up, gonna get real language wonk here.) American English is actually based off English peasant pronunciations. The whole modern British accents crap is actualy a late 19th century phenominon that was intended to replicate social caste systems by enforcing stupid cultural boarding school pronunciations. Yeah, really, look it up! American English is more akin to English as it was originally spoken. Most American immigrants were the undesirables of European society. Before there was American imperialism, there was British imperialism and, while fuck 'em both, I'm gonna stick with the historical pronunciation of the working class.
This sounds akin to the affected lisp that developed in the Spanish court because some noble had a lisp and didn't want him to dislike them. Making some pronunciations like E-beeth-a (Ibiza). Is that correct? That's something that definitely exists today, although not as prevalent as in earlier times.
Unfortunately that’s an urban legend. The seseo/ceceo goes way further back to like the 15th century. But there is something to be said about “early colonies” maintaining the “original “ language. The canaries and Puerto Rico are said to have the more “authentic” Spanish because they were isolated. This is more what is important to maintaining a type of regional accent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanish_coronal_fricatives
Very phonetics heavy but gives a good overview of the “Spanish lisp”
Fucking righteous! I learned something today. (Learning is my favorite.) A genuine thank you! :party-blob:
I've heard the same about the pronunciation of Thames (as in the river)
I can totally see that. Thames (rhymes with James) and Thames (rhymes with hems).
Yes! Appalachian American English is actually closest to original pronunciations, lol.
Mainly English/Scottish colonists and isolated so makes sense if you think about it.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
I had a history teacher in middle school who has a very odd kinda bostoney accent, and once he told us a he met a linguist from britain who was really fascinated with his accent and said it was the closest to the original english they had ever heard in the wild.
Americans dress stupid as fuck. Even though I am AmericanI changed my style.
I wear a top hat and a morning coat like an extra in a period drama now. American style is so dumb looking. An insult.
Holy shit imagine going out of your way to sound like a Br*t on purpose.
It's not the accents that sound stupid it's the stupid shit they say.
i actually have been working on speaking with different accents, just in case I ever become a fugitive and have to assume a new identity
