Halifax

I've just gotten back from Great Britain where I've spent the last month. Being in a foreign country, I naturally got to thinking about language and how we perceive it. We in the US usually think of British speech as being somehow more refined or intelligent, at least when spoken properly. At least that's the stereotype on this side of the Atlantic.

I remembered, however, something I read a while back which claimed that British people, (or other English speakers), perceive American English, or at least the American accent, as intelligent and refined. I don't remember the source of this claim, so I'm not sure how much I trust it. I wonder, though, whether this is true, and whether anyone out there, outside the US, thinks the American accent sounds refined.

I'm talking here, of course, about the General American accent, (sometimes called "Standard Midwestern") as compared to the British Received Pronunciation. It's what you hear on the national news and other times that a professional, "regionless" American accent is required. Regional dialects are, of course, another matter entirely. It would hardly be fair to compare a thick Scottish brough with a Southern drawl.

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Philosopher-in-Training

“The present writer…writes because for him it is a luxury which becomes the more agreeable and more evident, the fewer there are who buy and read what he writes.”
—Søren Kierkegaard