memes

At which point they sound like a Canadian pretending to be Australian

Just bout to relax by drinking a quard of mown doo.

More true than many realise.

Innit.

knew they were faking it, must be that syndrome that changes people accents after a TIA.

You're kidding, but the "posh" accent of the British upper classes is to a greater or lesser extent trained rather than merely acquired when one is learning the language as a child.

Also people with regional accents often actively make an effort to change their accent to RP (aka the BBC accent) when they move to places like London, though I supposed that's pretty common the World over when people whose regional accents are from places deemed "provincial" move to the big cities in more prosperous regions.

Oh, and immigrants, I almost forgot immigrants: many people with foreign accents do make a lot of effort to speak the local language with the local accent. In fact, for many immigrants in Britain this joke is pretty close to reality.

So there's actually a drop of truth in the joke.

Something I noticed recently about languages is that there's three main sets of "settings": the alphabet (or how letters map to sounds), the vocabulary (how to string letters together to form words that map to meanings), and grammar (how to legally combine words to express thoughts).

An interesting part about the alphabet is that there's two angles to it: the writing part and the spoken part. Many languages share most of the writing part with english (eg french, spanish, german) but sharing the spoken part is rarer. In fact, different regions that speak the same language can use different letter sounds. That's what an accent is, or at least a big part of it (cadence and emphasis can also make the same language sound different).

Anyways, this felt profound to me when I realized it but now I'm curious if this was obvious to people more inclined to the language side of learning for why people have accents.

I feel like this mainly applies to Scottish people. I mean the mere fact that they spell the way they speak means that they're aware that they're pronouncing everything incorrectly, yet they still do the accent anyway.

The way they have to put so much effort into every word they pronounce seems extremely tiring and stressful on the vocal cords; I wouldn't blame them for dropping the act once they're safe and sound at home.

Provided they've got their "relaxing" licence, of course

I had a friend who worked at a wine shop. He was also 1/4 french, though with no accent at all.

Some other friends went in to see him at work. They found it hilarious that he had this excessive french accent. It turned out he did it as a joke 6 months before, and got a good reaction from customers. His subconscious apparently ran with this, without his notice. The more he racked it up, the better the customers respected his opinions on wine. He was, however, completely unaware he was doing it!

Funny thing is, there are thousands of UK accents that are as different from each other as they are from the generic American accent. Granted, there's variety in the US as well, but the concentration is higher in the UK, as we've had towns and villages for thousands of years within 20 miles of each other that had their own unique way of speaking that often only locals can understand without effort.

So yeah, when you say 'British accent' that means basically nothing to anyone in the UK.