Do you think the common English accent is being more Americanized by television?

Question

why or why not?

Answer 1

Not a chance.

I think we have so many accents in the UK that this will never happen.

We blame television for far too much, I reckon.

Answer 2

Come now...seems like us English can't make our minds up who we want to be, accent wise. Remember the sixties - we either wanted to be Liverpudlians or Michael Caine...can't remember the 70's all that well, but the next decade was humourous, with Estuary English telling us the Thatcher me-me-me generation had arrived, with yuppies and dears with more money than sense. Then along came the nineties...Madchester, with most impressionable young'uns wanting to sound 'Northern', with oldies thinking they were still 'with it' (id est; 25-45) and Oasis pulling up the rear toward the end of the decade...and what about the mockney circus of late - people from Bob Hoskins - born Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk to Madonna - born bay City, Michigan, USA getting a piece of the oral action, in a manner of speaking, along with chef Jamie Oliver (pride of Rotherham schools) and others who had jumped on the bandwagon, thinking 'money' rather than how they will be seen by the public thereafter.
If the influence of 'Americanization' is making inroads, would it not be down to the bastardisation of Jamaican patois and Afro-American (Compton, Los Angeles rather than Harlem, New York) by blacks/Asians of certain parts of England - and again with a surreal group of white kids who have an eye on the 'intimidatory' edge of it - not through the telly...but music. If white folk (middle class upward) are taking it on, could it be a case of Londoners...again, with their eye on impressing others, not through intimidation, but the tiresome craze all capitals of the world tend to do, much to the humour/disbelief of folk outside it?

Answer 3

Yes and no. Famous Brits like the BBC news people have very American accents. But a British friend I have has an extreme British accent. So I say yes and no, I guess it depends on what kind of tv they watch.

Answer 4

Just the odd word, but hey listen to Madonna,s accent!
English people have a very good way of reverting back to their proper non Americanizing especially if up against authority.

Answer 5

I don't think so. I'm Spanish and I can easily tell the difference between an American accent and a British one.

Answer 6

Wot is american accent, Blair more like Yank dan Condomlisa Right or Gorge Bushes.

Answer 7

Half the English now pronounce the word "Wrath" as "rath", instead of the correct "roth" and the other day I heard one of our own say "aluminum" instead of "aluminium". But its a cross cultural thing.
What really gets my goat is the mispronunciation of the letter "H".
It is correctly pronounced "ache" (as any dictionary will tell you), but even some English Tutors wrongly pronounce it as "hache".
It is not a question of choice. You are either correct or incorrect.
I duly expect thumbs-down a-plenty from the uneducated.

Answer 8

Generally no, but some points of pronunciation are changing. It's a diary moment when I hear somebody pronouncing schedule as shedule as opposed to skedule, or either as eye-ther instead of ee-ther. It's so rare these days.

Answer 9

Nope

Answer 10

geez, I hope not. It's depressing enough to visit London and see McDonalds and Pizza Hut everywhere.