Your accent?

[Rob Houghton]

Yes - I think 'nippy' is fairly wide-spread - but with the 'ay it' on the end, it always sounded strange!

I think I've mentioned one saying the older members of my family always used, before - and that is 'behopes' - as in 'behopes he gets home before it rains' or 'behopes you enjoy it' etc. I'm not exactly sure what it means as a direct translation - 'best hopes'?

[number 6]

Where I live we pronounce water as "watter" and potatoes as "taytees". Nobody can murder the English language better than someone from Lincolnshire.

I didn't realise 'watter' was a Lincolnshire pronunciation. We had a caravan at Fradley Junction, South Staffs, and many people came from the Dudley/Walsall area, and they also tend to say 'watter' instead of 'water'. One man always used to say 'nippy a it?' (meaning it was a bit chilly!) - and as the caravans weren't plumbed in at that time, he often said 'I'm goona fetch some watter'

'Watter' is also used widely in Nottinghamshire. As is Shot= Shirt, Trolleys= Trousers, Tab-hanging= Listening to other people's conversations, Clobber= Clothes; The list goes on & on & on!! To say we're a small Island, the dialects are so incredibly diverse.

[Daisy]

'Watter' is also used widely in Nottinghamshire. As is Shot= Shirt, Trolleys= Trousers, Tab-hanging= Listening to other people's conversations, Clobber= Clothes; The list goes on & on & on!! To say we're a small Island, the dialects are so incredibly diverse.

I know 'clobber' from the above list but had not heard of the rest.

I think I've mentioned one saying the older members of my family always used, before - and that is 'behopes' - as in 'behopes he gets home before it rains' or 'behopes you enjoy it' etc. I'm not exactly sure what it means as a direct translation - 'best hopes'?

I wonder if it's a contraction of "it is to be hoped that..."

[Rob Houghton]

I wonder if it's a contraction of "it is to be hoped that..."

Ah yes - that makes sense! My Great-aunt was always saying it!

Also 'Its black over Bill's mothers' - which I think is quite a widespread saying. Funnily enough though, when my mom was a child she heard people saying it and used to wonder why it was always black and stormy over her dad's mother's house, as his name was Bill!

[Daisy]

I first met the "Black over Bill's mother's" when we moved to Staffordshire from Kent, so I assumed it was a local phrase - but maybe a fairly wide-spread Midlands saying would be more accurate.

[Wolfgang]

I don't have much feedback about my accent when speaking English, but as far as I know it's considered German, though it's not too thick.

[Chrissie777]

André was perfectly able to understand you when we met at Mespelbrunn Castle 3 years ago, Wolfgang.

[Rob Houghton]

I first met the "Black over Bill's mother's" when we moved to Staffordshire from Kent, so I assumed it was a local phrase - but maybe a fairly wide-spread Midlands saying would be more accurate.

That's interesting! I'd assumed it was a widespread saying, but maybe not!

[Courtenay]

I'd never heard of "black over Bill's mother's", so I looked it up just now to see where the saying originated and found a few more beside... England's oddest phrases explained

[Fiona1986]

Nippy is used where I am too. But never heard of catching pips!

I would have to say that Katharine, Eddie and Daisy all have accents to me. None of them strong but different enough to what I'm used to to be noticeable.

I think the prevalence of certain accents on TV helps in making them understood to more people. We have moved away from RP being necessary for newsreaders but major channels usually have well-spoken accents, and if they're regional ones they are quite toned down. We were talking about Neighbours on the other thread and if you'd spent a lot of time watching that it would probably be easier to understand an Australian in real life for example.

[sixret]

Thank you so much to all of you for the inputs. They help me to understand better. I really wonder which accent that British people consider as posh? I know the meaning of posh but I do not know the example of posh accent. If possible, please share a youtube link of a person who speak in “posh accent” so that I can listen and understand better.

[Rob Houghton]

I'd never heard of "black over Bill's mother's", so I looked it up just now to see where the saying originated and found a few more beside... England's oddest phrases explained

A few of those are very familiar to me - 'couldn't stop a pig in an entry' is the usual phrase in Birmingham, and we have always said 'going all round the Wreckin'. That's something still very much said today. Of course, even Enid Blyton knew the phrase 'being sent to Coventry'!

[Rob Houghton]

Thank you so much to all of you for the inputs. They help me to understand better. I really wonder which accent that British people consider as posh? I know the meaning of posh but I do not know the example of posh accent. If possible, please share a youtube link of a person who speak in “posh accent” so that I can listen and understand better.

I think your idea of posh alters depending how posh you are, lol! My idea of posh is probably someone who speaks with a classic BBC received pronunciation accent.

[Courtenay]

There was one dear lady at my church — she passed away just recently at the age of 93, bless her — who spoke with what you might call an extreme RP accent, the way the Royal Family spoke in the 1950s and earlier. The really, really posh upper class accent that you hardly ever hear nowadays, that is. Even the Queen doesn't speak like that any more — if you listen, she's toned it down quite a lot in the last few decades! But our friend Margaret, though she was really quite down-to-earth, never toned down her accent at all... I wouldn't have dared to giggle at it in front of her, of course, but it was hard to resist. In particular, she always pronounced "lost" as "lorst" — so you get the idea. (Oh yes, and "often" as "orphan"... frequently. )

As I was saying, that's one accent you don't hear very much now at all outside of films and old newsreel footage, but a few years ago I did hear a surprisingly young-looking chap speaking like that into his phone as he was walking through the barrier gates at Victoria Station — "Ay'm oenly goeing from hyah to Cleppem Junction." Ever since then I've nicknamed it the Hyah to Cleppem Junction accent.

[Chrissie777]

Thank you so much to all of you for the inputs. They help me to understand better. I really wonder which accent that British people consider as posh? I know the meaning of posh but I do not know the example of posh accent. If possible, please share a youtube link of a person who speak in “posh accent” so that I can listen and understand better.

Hugh Grant.