My dad grew up in Nuneaton - where the accent is somewhere between Black Country and Birmingham. His family spoke like that, but he doesn’t. He sounds “normal” - that is, he sounds like he comes from the same place I grew up in.

Apparently, when he was at teacher training college in London, he was asked by one of the tutors if he could record him speaking (apparently, this person liked to collect recordings of accents). Anyway, the story I was told was that they had a conversation that was recorded. Then the recording was played back, and my dad was asked “how do you expect to get on in teaching sounding like that?’. So they worked together to soften my dad’s speech, and he lost his accent completely. He says that he can’t revert, and he and the rest of my immediate family are known as “the posh lot” because of this. None of us sound remotely like we have roots in the Midlands.

My mum had to unlearn her Essex accent (that would be the proper Essex accent, not the North East London Drawl that is popularised as coming from the county) when she went to grammar school because the attitude there was that it was a working class accent, but that was more of a peer pressure thing.

My accent is all over the place like most Belfast folk. Low pitch, lot of bass. Until we get excitable, then we sound like an amateur playing a violin

I have quite a 'non accented' voice in the main, but I'm told my native (Lancashire) accent comes to the fore when I get angry. Plus I get the odd accented word dropped in very occasionally - one of my friends takes the mickey out of me for my pronunciation of 'tape measure', which is apparently incredibly Lancastrian. Both my parents are from Liverpool and despite never living there, I'm also told I drop the occasional scouse sounding pronunciation in there too. And even more oddly I tend to swear in Welsh, having lived in Swansea for a few years and learned a few choice phrases, as that means very few people around me know what I'm actually saying and therefore aren't offended.

So basically mine is all over the place .

Working at a University I tend to try to keep my voice as accent neutral as possible, given there's a very decent likelihood the person I'm talking to isn't a native English speaker anyway so an accent is going to give them problems.

I find my accent often drifts and I pick up the mannerisms of the people I speak with. This is something I do unconsciously. I expect that my accent has picked up a fair bit of Platt now, compared to my original home counties accent, although nearly everybody here picks me out as an American or Englishman.

I certainly find it harder to speak English these days, or rather to speak it fluently. Most of the people I speak with are non-native speakers, so I end up speaking slowly and exaggerating my pronunciation. That combined with the fact that I probably speak around an hour of English a month on average mean that my English feels stilted when I talk to my family.

My mum spoke a local patois as a child. In the 60's, the government decided that only proper French could be spoken in schools and she got punished for speaking it. Our regional language nearly disappeared as a result, very few people can speak it these days.

Accent wise, I try to soften mine as much as I can, and only Brits seem to pick up on it these days.
I do however have an South English accent in French.


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In English, my accent is stridently east Lancashire
In German, I can choose between High German, Saxon and Ore Mountain accents
In French, I can choose between Franglais and "WTF is that?"

I've been told by patients they struggle to identify where I'm from because they can't detect an accent. Except for when I pronounce certain words and the Brumminess comes out.

Defiantly a "none" SE accent from me although I can do Brum and Sheffield / S Yorkshire as lived long enough in both places to pick up the accent

When I go north of the border I start getting a Scottish accent

Doncaster from birth to 19
Coventry 19 to 23
Nottingham 23 to today

I have no idea what my accent is but I'm guessing it's all over the place.

I don't think I have a terribly strong accent however I am aware it tends to adapt to wherever I am at the time after a little while.
When I'm speaking to friends from back home or my parents the North Glasgow accent comes out a bit more, as it does when I've had a few to drink.
If I get phoned by friends they think it's hilarious because I start with some sort of posh generic English accent and it drops almost immediately back into West Central Scotland.

One set of grandparents were from Newcastle so I can do a passable although fairly soft Geordie accent but if I try to force it it tends to go a bit wrong.

While I was at university I managed to hold a passable conversation in a pub in Utrecht in the Netherlands for a couple of minutes before running out of Dutch and the person I was speaking to had no idea I was Scottish.

Londoner born and bred and both my parents spoke 'properly'. Occasionally I would detect the Southern Hampshire twang in certain words from my Dad.

My mother was Belgian but spoke English much better than most English people so that nearly everyone thought she was posh rather than foreign.

South Yorkshire accent*, but without any of the "thee" and "tha" Hovis vocabulary. However, I still maintain there is no R in bath or glass etc..

*unless I speak to my parents or siblings, where I lapse into a Scottish accent, quite unknowingly.

North London accent here, but I managed to expunge some of the excesses when I left school. I’m sure there are better accents to have.