How Your English Accent Sounds To Others (2023)

FAQs

How accent affect our communication with others? ›

Ineffective communication due to a strong accent can create barriers in business; it may also have negative effects on job performance, cause missed job opportunities, affect educational advancement and everyday life activities. It may also affect your self-esteem.

The way in which a person pronounces their words and constructs their sentences can significantly influence the way that person is perceived by others. Accents can be a marker of group identity and “standard accents” are often perceived in terms of the host community's characteristic way of speaking.

The short answer is: It doesn't matter. The “quality” of your English does not depend on the origin of your accent. There's no such thing as a “good” or “bad” accent. But an understanding of clarity in English, and how your pronunciation can affect communication, does matter, and that's something you can improve.

Accents can tell us a lot of interesting things about someone's life, such as where they've lived and who their friends are; they can also give us a sense of identity and belonging. Unfortunately, when accents become associated with harmful stereotypes, this can lead to negative accent bias and discrimination.

Having an accent can act as your identity and of the place you come from. It helps you stand out among the crowd. If used correctly it can help you gain your place. Not only that, an accent helps stress on what you speak.

An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside (a regional or geographical accent), the socioeconomic status of its speakers, their ethnicity (an ethnolect), their caste or social class (a social accent), or influence from their first language (a foreign accent).

Factors that influence it include gender, age, social class, etc. The factors that influence a speaker's or writer's choice of language vary, and they include the context that surrounds the speaker or writer, the age, gender, culture, etc.

We tend to believe speakers who sound the same as us, though much depends on their tone of voice. Summary: A recently published study shows that unless they speak in a confident tone of voice, you're less likely to believe someone who speaks with an accent.

The Boston accent ranks among the “smartest sounding” accents in America, according to a new survey.

Why you should be proud of your accent? ›

Having an accent is just a mark that you're bilingual. It shows that your brain can process the world in more than one language. You're able to think more abstractly, and that's something you should be proud of. Just because you sound like a native speaker of English doesn't mean that you can't get your point across!

People tend to think a foreign accent is more interesting and more sexy, says Guy Winch, a psychotherapist from Britain who's long been based in the United States, “because in general we tend to value what's less common.” Americans associate a British accent with someone being “more intelligent, more sophisticated and ...

Americans are the most worried of any nation about the perception of their accent abroad, with 54% stating they feel anxious about their accent when speaking in a foreign language. 34% of Americans express a desire to shed their accent when speaking a foreign language.

The Birmingham accent is considered the least attractive accent in the British Isles – and Southern Irish the most appealing. A quick analysis of English dialects shows that there are roughly as many in the British Isles as there are in the whole of North America – including Canada, Bermuda and Native American dialects ...

Of foreign accents, the British accent is the #1 most liked, chosen by 69% of respondents. In addition to being the general favorite, it also ranked among the sexiest and most intelligent.

Our accent is how we express ourselves as individuals; it helps us quite literally voice our identity. The term accent needs to be distinguished from dialect; accents exhibit variation in pronunciation only, whereas dialects also include differences in grammar and vocabulary.

According to a 2010 study by a research group at the University of California, Riverside, people subconsciously mimic other accents due to a phenomenon called "the chameleon effect". The chameleon effect describes our human instinct to “empathise and affiliate” with other people.

When someone says you have an accent? ›

For example: when we say someone “has an accent,” we typically mean that they speak English in a way that is different from ours. “She has a New York accent.” “He has an Italian accent.” “They have British accents.”

Speaking with an accent is one way to keep the language alive, dynamic. Just as with adaptations in the animal kingdom, the world of English-language speakers benefits from the different backgrounds that people bring to it. Accents can be sexy, they can set you apart from all the other people learning the language.

The results showed that accents did not have an effect on listening comprehension; however, the questionnaire revealed that native accents were more desirable. The findings would help test developers and teachers make an informed decision whether to include non-native accents into listening materials.

The capacity for accent change among adults has been well-documented by linguistic researchers, over both the short-term (temporarily in the context of a single conversation) and the long-term (slowly evolving based on exposure to other accents over a period of years).

Unlike perfect pitch, accents are not influenced by a person's genetics. Generally speaking, the way we pronounce words can be molded by regular interaction with people in our environment.

British accents and dialects

Language change is influenced by social and political factors, such as migration, changing lifestyles and new technologies, as well as less obvious means.

It's called accommodation, and it is the practice of adapting one's speech – either consciously or unconsciously – depending on whom one is speaking with.

When people settle in different geographical locations, they tend to create their own cultural codes in language. Think of language as a living thing, something that evolves and changes over time; speakers adapt it to their needs and naturally mimic each other's speech.

According to a study from 2017, it's common for people to change the pitch of their voice depending on who they're speaking to. The study, from researchers at Scotland's University of Stirling found that people change the pitch of their voice in accordance to how dominant they feel in the conversation.

35% of Americans say British accents are attractive, while only 6% say they are obnoxious. To American women, the attraction is even greater. 39% of them say a British accent is alluring compared to 31% of US men. 49% of Americans are unphased by British tones, saying the accent is neither attractive nor obnoxious.

Which American accent is closest to British? ›

The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a consciously learned accent of English, fashionably used by the late 19th-century and early 20th-century American upper class and entertainment industry, which blended together features regarded as the most prestigious from both American and British English ( ...

Preply.com reports British accents were favored among foreign accents for both men and women. The study reported more than half of the respondents (52%) said they like the accent, with it also topping the list of sexiest and most trustworthy accents in the world, according to American respondents.

The British Accent

The Great British accent proved to be the most difficult of all the accents to imitate – along with the regional Yorkshire and Cockney pronunciations, in particular.

The French accent, previously considered the sexiest in the world, has been dethroned by the British accent, aka the Queen's English, in a global study carried out by Time Out in over 30 countries.

That's because dialects developed in different parts of the United States, as they did in England. People from different parts of England came to different parts [of the country], particularly the East Coast, seeding some of the differences in dialects. …

According to a recent poll in the Independent, the British accent has been chosen as being the most attractive accent in the world, beating the French accent which was once know as the loveliest accent.

Embracing your accent can be a smart move if you are learning English. It can help you meet people, create a positive first impression and improve your job prospects. It can even help you find a date! A great way of learning to embrace your accent is to talk regularly with other English learners.

Option 1: the American accent

The most popular English accent of them all. Spread around the world by American cinema, music, television and more than 350 million North Americans (including Canadians, eh), this is the easiest accent for most people to understand, whether native speakers or non-native speakers.

It's not exactly clear why people with British accents sound smarter to Americans, but several studies show that Americans who have not lived outside of the United States tend to rate British English speakers as having higher intelligence and social status than non-British English speakers.

Who finds the American accent attractive? ›

That's right. Europeans find the accent of Americans who live in the Deep South the sexiest, followed closely by the New York accent. These rankings indicate overall attractiveness, but the accent in the top spot changes depending on the country of the survey respondents.

The idea that there is one accent that is the most neutrally American has been around for a long time, and it is usually called “General American.” The term was coined in 1925 by the descriptive linguist George Philip Krapp as a way to describe the accent he thought was becoming the norm in the United States.

The first is isolation; early colonists had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the colonists came into contact with Native American languages, mariners' Indian English pidgin and other settlers, who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish.

To be able to understand others and communicate intelligibly, a language learner needs to come into contact with different accents and be sensitised to the differences in pronunciation, so that they can cope in the real world where they will constantly be coming into contact with different accents.

Accents have a significant role in everyday life. They enrich the cultural identity and legacy of an individual. A person might pronounce each sound clearly, but the difference is the way that person speaks the words.

It is important to learn how to improve your voice and accent, as it helps you leave a lasting impression on your listeners and boosts up your confidence while giving interviews. Also, you end up developing a good personality if you possess great voice accent skills.

Speaking with an accent is one way to keep the language alive, dynamic. Just as with adaptations in the animal kingdom, the world of English-language speakers benefits from the different backgrounds that people bring to it. Accents can be sexy, they can set you apart from all the other people learning the language.

According to a 2010 study by a research group at the University of California, Riverside, people subconsciously mimic other accents due to a phenomenon called "the chameleon effect". The chameleon effect describes our human instinct to “empathise and affiliate” with other people.

We can't hear our own accents, or even the way our voices sound to others, because we can only hear ourselves speak within the resonance chamber called our skulls. You can only hear your voice as it really is by recording it and listening to it.