re: #141 aatharuv

Great Britain itself has many more regional dialects and accents (and also Scots which is really a separate language), which are more different from their standard English than American dialects are from General American. Of course, this happened over the 1700 years or so since the Angles and Saxons migrated to Great Britain, took over and imposed their language on the locals (and intermarried with them), and developed changes due to distance.

Some of the different British English dialects also have influence from Old Norse (due to Danish rule over large parts of Great Britain — the “Danelaw”).

And immigration has had a huge influence even on Britain’s English. London’s Cockney English has borrowings and influence from Yiddish and Romani.

And then there’s Indian English, which is at least 200 years old at this point, and the various other Englishes of the former British Empire which are used as either a native language, or as a lingua franca.

Years ago I was on a tour that also had a number of ‘Brits’. Based upon their accent, it appeared to me that all the other Brits were able to identify both the region where each member came from and each’s general socio-economic class.

Meanwhile, I had a hard time even figuring out who was from South Africa versus Australia versus the Isles. I was, however, able to pick out the Canadians because they mostly sounded like Northern Midwest Americans to me, though.

Of course, it also took me decades before I was able to pick out some of the regional Southern accents.