This fits in a bizarre fashion, what with (antihero)'s letter, and the horrible speech I am accustomed to listening to daily.
__________________________________________

- Why Can't the English?

Henry: Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter,
Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered.
By law she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.

Eliza: Aaoooww!
Henry imitating her: Aaoooww!

Heaven's! What a noise!
This is what the British population,
Calls an elementary education.

Pickering: Oh, Counsel, I think you picked a poor example.

Henry: Did I?
Hear them down in Soho square,
Dropping "h's" everywhere.
Speaking English anyway they like.
You sir, did you go to school?

Man: Wadaya tike me for, a fool?
Henry: No one taught him 'take' instead of 'tike!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now,
Should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir,
Instead of the way you do,
Why, you might be selling flowers, too!
Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse,
Hear a Cornishman converse,
I'd rather hear a choir singing flat.
Chickens cackling in a barn Just like this one!

Eliza: Garn!

Henry: I ask you, sir, what sort of word is that?
It's "Aoooow" and "Garn" that keep her in her place.
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction by now should be antique.
If you spoke as she does, sir, Instead of the way you do,
Why, you might be selling flowers, too.
An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other
Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian; the Greeks have taught their
Greek. In France every Frenchman knows
his language fro "A" to "Zed"
The French never care what they do, actually,
as long as they pronounce in properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards,
which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Why can't the English,
Why can't the English learn to speak?
______________________________________

Question for the Brits; can you tell where someone is from in Britain by their accent?

Very usually. The Aboive is an extrme example of it. We can usually work it down to couties or even cities.

For example I'm form Newcastle upon Tyne. I live 1 hour and a half away from york and an hour away from scotland. There are differences between all 3 accents which would allow you to tell them apart. The Geordie accent is a combination of gutteral sounding words usually borrowed form the scandinavians

Wen ya gannin yem?

is a phrase menaing When are you going home. if you pronounce it phonetically you can almost here the true english in the sentence.

Are ye tekin im yem? Are you taking him home.

Now this is an example of how accents can change in such a short area. 15 miles awya from Newcastle is the local rival sunderland we're called Geordies after our favouite son the inventer George Stephenson. They get called Mackems because of their accent Where we sach make or take they sack mack or tack meaing the same thing so the above setence would be

are ye tackin im yem.

So as you can see in 15 miles the accent has changed subtly but enough for someone who knows what they're looking for to be recognisable.

Then if we head south in yorkshire the accents noticibly change again. or to the west in liverpool for example the beatles don't sound anyhting like Micheal Caine.

If you listne to oasis who are slightly southeast of Liverpool in manchester there are noticble if subtle differences between the Mancurian and Scouse accents.

Neon

Niiiiiice

I would love to learn to do that... .

Personally, as long as you guys speak as cool as that, it's all good as far as I'm concerned...



(My personal fave is the 'cultured' English voice, such as those with Shakespearian leanings...i.e., acting at the Royal Shakespeare Academy...but again, just me.)

None of you people can place my accent only good thing about being a army brat.

Hell, I can do a mean English accent (I can't place where ), but I can't do it on call; it just "takes over" much like my Italian accent.

So you're on tour, Red? Can I print up the shirts?

A Red tour would be compared to Stalin way too much for my liking.

Never had a problem w/accents or languages. Can do an English accent at the drop of at hat (mebbe 'cause I'm a half-Brit. Half-Brit...half-wit, get it? Oh, nevermind...) Even fooled a couple Londoners in London as well - a very proud moment. Then again, it was late, we were in a pub drinking....

Damn.

Most people in Hull drop their H's which is amusing! I wish I had a cooler English accent....although I find it hard to translate my cousins Geordie accent, in fact, in some parts of England you can't tell what they are saying at all!

*loves her scottish accent*

<------ haves a kind of Birmingham accent. Got called a yamyam yesterday as well because I call from a town in Staffordshire called Cannock and quite a few people round here speak very common to put it nicely. I have a kind of posh accent from the town I come from because I was brought up to speak properly and therefore speak wierdly for a person round here. The thing is people say stuff like "yo am" meaning "you are" " I am gooin to teack the babby faw a walk" meaning "I am going to take the baby for a walk", "You aint neva doin that" "You are never doing that" ( had a problem there because we also use double negatives here for some reason with the accents). Its just weird. I quite like talking posh for where I come from as if I spoke as common as some people do I would sound really bad when I went to places like camp and stuff like that .

I'm half Geordie half Yorkshire lass - no-one understands me