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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

I just mean there is no discernible accent; you can't tell where in the UK I am from.

Can you point us to an example of you speaking a few sentences of unprepared material - let us decide.

I find accents hard to pick up but fascinating. I can just about make out the accent differences between my (town-sized) city and the next one though as there is a specific inflection that differs.

But you do sound distinctively British? Similar to Americans that saw they have no accent but there's no mistaking they're American.

Ethnocentrism 101: Only other people have accents, never us.

Yeah, the American English that people use in the Midwest and on TV is the correct form of English. Everyone else has an accent.

I served this one up on a platter for someone to take but I think lkozma's reasoning is more plausible. I don't think ErrantX's comment was based in ethnocentrism. It's just a way of describing a non-regional accent in the US and apparently the UK.

Do you mean a Californian accent? A New York accent? Boston? The accent of a hypothetical guy who immigrated from Mexico when he was 5, went to an all black school in Chicago for 3 years, then moved to South Africa till he finished high school, and now lives in New York? Because while he would have a "non-regional" accent, he will kinda sound a bit different.

All of the above. It could be a person from anywhere without a distinctly regional accent. The news person is the common example. It's what Veronica Corningstone refers to in Anchorman when she says, "But while they're laughing and grab-assing, I'm chasing down leads and practicing my non-regional diction."

People that think they have this accent or that someone else has this accent will often refer to it as "no accent". It's not an ethnocentric viewpoint. Now, I definitely think the average person is not aware of how distinctive their accent really is and mistakenly think they have a non-regional one. But I do think it exists.

Just to give an example off the top of my head: take Conan O'Brien. He's from Boston, went to college in Boston but does he have a Boston accent? Maybe you could pick it out of his voice, but the average person probably wouldn't and he certainly doesn't have a strong one.

Grew up in Australia and then moved to the UK for 10 years. English people think i'm Australian. Or sometimes American (too much time watching US TV, I think). When i'd return to Australia, people would think I was English.

I then spent 2 years in Boston. And now 2 years in Toronto. My accent is completely mangled and jumps all over the place (ie, I might sound vaguely North American, but I know that you there's a 'h' in 'herbs').

I have the same problem with Americans thinking my accent is English, and vice versa. My accent was originally South African, but it has changed into some sort of weird hybrid.

I once talked to a Frenchman who learned English in Australia. I could clearly hear the two accents. It was fascinating.

There's no such thing as a non-regional UK accent - there's perhaps a non-regional middle-class English accent, but no non-regional UK accent.