Most prestigious regional British accents?

I learned today that in the UK, there are various accents people speak in depending on which region they are located. Curious to learn more about British accents

Additionally, which accents are the most prestigious in the finance industry?

19 Comments
 

Many more avenues for people to pick up the RP accent. It's a taught accent, it's not a "natural" one - like the old Transatlantic accent. It's the one that's taught in schools in Europe, for example, it's the one people see on the BBC, and so on...

Whilst native British people by and large will have some sort of regionalism to their speech, I've found that working here who come from elsewhere or came here a long time ago will have an RP accent, precisely because it is an engineered accent and not a natural one.

 

Do people who go to private school talk in RP accent? Thought RP accents are only spoken by a handful of people usually in the british royalty

 

Which British accent sounds the most similar to the American accent? I think American accent sounds nicer than the British accent

 

This is a dumb concept but if I was to indulge your question, you're basically asking which accent makes you sound richer/from a higher class Vs poorer.

Northern accents (with the exception of Edinburgh because that's basically the London of Scotland) are almost universally considered "lower class" than southern accents. That's a generalisation because there is no north or south accent but Im referring to accents from regions within the north Vs south. It is more nuanced than this though.

Received pronunciation as someone said is somewhat region-agnostic as it's a taught accent that you learn via being in higher class education and among higher class people. You'll find people from the north and south with this accent (possibly with a slight twang on certain words to reflect their regional accent). In it's most pure form, you only really find it on the news and from actual nobility/royalty. This is obviously the "most prestigious". 

Next would come any southern accents but especially those from Outer West/North London. Counties like Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire. These are some of wealthiest counties (after London) basically equivalent to like a Greenwich Connecticut in the US. West London also kind of has the same accent. This would be the accent that a typical white British person in finance would have. 

 

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