The English Accent Spectrum

I spend a lot of time thinking about accents. I've done this since I was a kid and went to school in the states. Other kids would ask me to 'talk British' and it would terrify me - I spent most of my time trying to blend in and I managed to do this to the extent I wasn't sure I could actually 'talk British' any more. Later, moving back to England and going to the local middle school, my brother and I very quickly picked up the local accent and I think our parents actually preferred the transatlantic twang that we had while we were in the states. At Cambridge, I came across some of the poshest accents I've ever heard - and it made me again extremely conscious of my own accent. On holidays doing factory work, however, I was permanently trying to revert back to my school accent. And, as a languages student, I lived in Argentina and spent a fair amount of time adapting the Castilian Spanish I'd learned to a fair imitation of Porteno...

So I am slightly obsessive about accents. Mostly, these days, it comes back to an old English accent = social class fear - with an odd twist. My main concern is with whether it is more pretentious to adopt an American accent, or more pretentious to stubbornly maintain my English accent.

My youngest brother believes that you shouldn't vary your accent depending on who you're talking to. If my dad talks slowly to foreigners, it sends him into a fit of embarrassment. He's right that it's important to be yourself - but there are some times when you need to adapt your accent to be understood. The word I struggle daily with is 'water'. I draw out the 'a' and I pronounce the 't' - and these two features of my accent render the word incomprehensible to most Americans. So should I not enunciate the 't' and cut the long 'a' to be better understood? Or will my attempt at American pronunciation just make me sound all the more ridiculous? It's a daily dilemma.

I try to ask my American friends about this all the time but accents don't seem to carry quite the same baggage as they do in the U.K. The conversation then generally ends with me trying to explain the difference between 'posh' and not posh accents. So I'm attempting to develop a spectrum here - both to help my American friends, and to fuel debate among the Brit readers. What do you think? Do I have the order right?

1. Most posh:

The Queen



Queen Elizabeth II is obviously at the top of the spectrum. Hell, her accent is so posh it is practically copywrited - you can't embed any of her official videos...

2. Very, very slightly less posh:

Boris Johnson (Mayor of London)



If you say 'er', rather than 'um', that's definitely a sign of a slightly posher than normal accent. Or at least, an education that eroded 'um' from your vocabulary.

3. Still pretty posh:

BBC News presenters



'Received Pronunciation' apparently isn't used anymore by the BBC and the presenters are free to use regional accents but the majority of them still sound posh to me.

4. Marginally less posh:

John Cleese



Yep. Public school and Cambridge probably were contributing influences in Cleese's posher-than-your-average accent.

5. Middling

Eddie Izzard



Eddie Izzard's accent probably seems most middling to me because it's that vaguely South England kind of dull accent that I grew up with. Diversity of English accents decreases with social class - but this varies somewhat depending on region. The south has less variation - even between posh and not posh - than the north.

4. Would Like To Be Less Posh:

Jamie Oliver



Pukka! He's not fooling me with that accent...(You know what I mean?)

3. Closer To Not Posh:

David Beckham



Becks... I'm not one of those girls that swoons over him, but I do actually really like his voice. To me, everything he says sounds genuine and it has something to do with his accent. It's just not fake.

2. Not posh

Lady Sovereign



I'm a fan. But someone has to be not posh.

1. Really Not Posh

I struggled here. I wanted to find a real person, but it just seemed too cruel. Any suggestions?

There have been so many English comedy sketches involving variations on the chav/townie/pikey theme. For me it was a toss up between Little Britain's Vicki Pollard and Catherine Tate's Lauren. I went for Lauren because I SWEAR I went to school with at least four different Laurens, whereas as Vicki Pollard is a bit more fun and a bit less real...