this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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It's akin to saying "the generic American accent," Which means absolutely nothing to anyone in the US.
There is one but you didn't notice it.
There is a generic American accent though. News anchors began using it heavily in the 80s because focus groups said it sounded the most neutral and hard to place. ~~I think it’s an older Northern California accent.~~ I must have misremembered
Yeah that's a midlands accent. It sounds hard to place, but you can tell where it isn't. It's not a Philadelphian, or a new Yorker, or anywhere on the east coast really (so many accents over there). Definitely not Californian or southern. So really it just sounds like the midwest (not Minnesota) or like it might be Pacific Northwest. The big thing though is it's easy to understand. Boston or Baltimore for example would be terrible accents to make the default for newscasters.
Really it's like how the BBC has an accent
Nah, the San Jose local accent is distinctive and it's not on any national news.
The newscaster accent from the '80s was a real thing but it was upper-midwest. Tom Brokaw is the canonical example.
Go tell that to any linguist and get laughed at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English
please don't hug them to death, but https://www.dialectsarchive.com/ is a very valuable resource for actors and linguists. if you want to contribute to the archive, i haven't looked in a while but they were accepting submissions
Thank you for agreeing with me, and providing sources to back up my point.
To repeat my point,
Stating that there exists a generic UK accent is as useless as suggesting there exists a generic US accent. The wikipedia article suggests that linguists by and large agree with me. So again, thanks.
You and your point maybe ought to take a little break from internet stranger fight time
That's so sweet of you to care so much 😘
There are more varieties of accents inside London than across the entire US. You understood their point, no need to be pedantic.
Their point is equally pedantic.
You guys are all shallow and pedantic.
Shallow and pedantic