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Comment by smokel | Hacker News Reader

As a non-native speaker, I was interested in learning the perfect British accent. Turns out there is no such thing. There are many different accents, but none of them is the default.

"Received pronunciation" [1] probably comes closest, but apparently it makes you sound like someone who is a non-native speaker and who tried to learn a default accent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

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In fact, I find it strange when Germans, for example, have a 'perfect British accent'. Even I would say it's perfect. Problem is, no one speaks like that... except the Germans. It also goes with grammatical accuracy as well. If any German, or Nordic etc, says "With whom were you speaking" it marks them as a foreigner instantly.

It’s not grammatical accuracy on their part, it’s the opposite, it’s a calque, a word by word translation from their native tongue.

If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part they’d be saying “Who were you talking to” or “Who were you speaking to”.

Correct is what the people say, not the opinion of literal singular English language teachers.

> If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part they’d be saying “Who were you talking to” or “Who were you speaking to”.

There is a sizable contingent of English speakers out there that continue to insist that it’s incorrect to end a sentence in a preposition. (I am not part of this group and it is fortunately shrinking over time.)

There's an old joke:

  Texan: Where are you from?
  
  Harvard Student: I'm from a place where we don't end sentences with prepositions.
  
  Texan: OK. Where are you from, jackass?

Hence Churchill's response to said contingent that "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

> There is a sizable contingent of English speakers out there that continue to insist that it’s incorrect to end a sentence in a preposition

That is the sort of nonsense up with which one should not put.

“With whom were you speaking” IS grammatically correct though. “Whom” is the object of the preposition “with”.

Even if you want to differentiate "who" and "whom", "Whom were you speaking with?" is more natural.

I use English according to defined grammar rules. It marks me as upper middle class and therefore trustworthy in administrative professional positions, greatly improving my life outcomes compared to someone who is not able to do so.

There's something slightly irritating about German or Dutch people trying very hard to have that perfect British accent. I can't really tell why, but it always seems affected and pretentious. I much prefer the "wooden" (Holzern in German) accent of the Swiss

Your opinion is common in language learning it seems, as most people praise a perfect accent but some get very offended by it.

I couldn't tell you why, maybe it's a feeling of lack of authenticity?

I find it impressive when someone has acquired a good accent personally since it's quite difficult to do.

I'm impressed but it's weird to compliment a non Brit on their perfect British accent when they don't sound like you, a British person...

It sounds too studied, almost a mockery of real native speakers, there's always too much of perfection in the way these learners speak that makes it sound uncanny

Interesting, yeah I can see that. A lot of modern language learning tries to get you to sound natural, but the question becomes, natural where? You start to delve into dialects, when I meet people who learned English naturally from TV and media, they often have a weird blend of dialects that constantly switches, it's kinda fun actually. One minute they have American inflections, next they're Australian etc.

When learning Japanese I was encouraged to pick a person with a dialect I prefer and listen to them a lot, as I'll likely pick up their accent and mannerisms.

RP itself has changed over time, as the wp article notes -- if you tried to speak RP of the 1950s you would definitely come across rather strangely today. Some of the arguments over naming the article mentions is I think a disagreement over whether RP should only refer to that upper class style of speech (and thus be a relatively rare accent today) or if it should be used as a name for what some people would label "Standard Southern British".

A great example of this is Sir David Attenborough. "Planet Earth III" has some excerpts from programmes he made when we all lived in greyscale and you can hear how his accent has changed quite noticeably through time.

Yes and no. I used to have a regional accent that was a soft mix of Lancashire and Yorkshire accents. I now work in south Worcestershire, and the local accent is pretty much modern RP. In adulthood, I softened my accent further towards RP to such an extent that people think I’m local.

What you are probably referring to is the ‘educated European twang’ that often remains when people are targeting the RP accent from 50 years ago.

"Estuary English" is the closest to the "default" there is today. RP is coded posh, Estuary is "vaguely from around London" without any particular colouring.

There's no such thing as a 'perfect' accent. Do you mean a standard accent?

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