Do you have a British accent?

[nobby]

Got me as East London which is were I was born and lived for just eight years.
I've been in Wolvo for 50 years but still cor do yam yam, our kid.

[bobb]

Come on, own up - who the fuck calls a snail a Dod Man?!!

[Jurek]

This is tosh.
It has me down as West London.
I'm not having it.

A few years ago I was visiting friends in Toronto.
I met with an Englishman. A thespian and something of a recreational linguist.
We chatted about this and that.
Within half an hour or so, by my accent, he'd pinned me down initially to South London and, a few minutes later, to Southeast London.
It was quite uncanny.
As well as being accurate.

Other than the year I spent living on Corfu, and 8 years in Harrow, I've spent the rest of my life in Londres Sud.

[αdαmsκι]

Being dyslexic it can fuck right off.

"Do you pronounce the 'a' in chance the same as the 'a' in ran?"

I don't fucking know.

Like being back in an English class at school.

*shiver*

[Cudzoziemiec]

The test would be more credible if it could record your voice and then make a guess an assessment.

This, though given most ASR (automatic speech recognition) it would be even crapper.

[Mrs Pingu]

Sunderland??? That's pure dead bollocks that is.

[graculus]

Apparently I sound like I come from Yorkshire which will come as a shock to anyone who has heard me (All of my life in Wolverhampton except for 5 years in Manchester for uni and first job)

[Ian H]

Apparently I'm from West London and sound like Kate Winslet...

Me too.  Except it was Middlesex when I was born.

[hubner]

Don't people read the posts in this thread? 

The the test is using the result of "West London, Kate Winslet" to mean received pronunciation (RP), or near-RP, ie southern England educated middle class speech, so-called BBC English, not that you're actually from West London or have a "West London" accent. Does Roger Daltrey sound like Kate Winslet?

I'd guess:
Sunderland for NE England
East London for SE England working class.

[FifeingEejit]

Weegie land...
Awa an dinnae tak pish.


Edit...
By ra way.

Apparently I sound like Im from Glasgow (Byres Road / West End surely). 

Suppose its not too bad given I was born about 20 miles away so at least the same country & I suspect that the algorithm probably only has limited nuance for Scotland.

At least it wasnt Sunderland. 

"Draw rings" FFS. 

Of the small sample of Bairns I ken, and I suppose they're really from Bonnybridge; you're the least weegie sounding.

[MikeFromLFE]

I'm a Kate Winslet groupie too. If that means I've elements of RP in my speech then I'll buy it.
Although I've lived in Leicester for the last 35 years I was brought up in North London, and am frequently asked if I'm a Londoner , so it seems that I do have a bloody awful speaking voice.
I recall that as a teenager I used to visit a second hand record shop in Shepherds Bush, so that's the West London connection.

[nobby]

Come on, own up - who the fuck calls a snail a Dod Man?!!

Alfred Watkins in his book about ley lines mentions them as a country folk's name for snails because they resemble the ancient surveyor with his two staffs who was a dod-man.

[Guy]

Yorkshire, with a picture of some bloke I've never heard of.

Not bad, considering my dad was from Lancashire, my mum from Letchworth, and I've lived all my life a few miles from Biggleswade.

At least I'm not Danny Dyer

[Jakob]

Sunderland...although in reality it's a mix of London-ish+Danish+PNW.
Most here think I'm from the "UK", but Canadians aren't exactly connoisseurs of foreign accents.

[Ben T]

This is tosh.
It has me down as West London.
I'm not having it.

A few years ago I was visiting friends in Toronto.
I met with an Englishman. A thespian and something of a recreational linguist.
We chatted about this and that.
Within half an hour or so, by my accent, he'd pinned me down initially to South London and, a few minutes later, to Southeast London.
It was quite uncanny.
As well as being accurate.

Other than the year I spent living on Corfu, and 8 years in Harrow, I've spent the rest of my life in Londres Sud.

It's put me as west london as well.
It's asking what are essentially yes/no questions to "do you have this particular element" and the more you answer yes, the more the area that you could be from expands. West london possibly just happens to the centre of "the whole UK" by population density.
e.g. when it says how do you pronounce the "th" in "three" - like "tree"? it's essentially asking "are you irish"?

[jsabine]

It's using Yorkshire as a generic 'North, but not Sunderland' - born near Manchester (and still feel my origins are in the bit of the West Riding that, west of the Pennines, was lost to local government reorganisation before I was born), brought up near Edinburgh, and been in London for longer than I care to think.

[Ben T]

It's using Yorkshire as a generic 'North, but not Sunderland' - born near Manchester (and still feel my origins are in the bit of the West Riding that, west of the Pennines, was lost to local government reorganisation before I was born), brought up near Edinburgh, and been in London for longer than I care to think.

You’re not one of these that thinks Manchester is in Lancashire then are you or is that a can of worms 😁

[bobb]

I just tried it again carefully answering all the questions as if I was from a different region for each. If you do that you get..... you guessed it - Kate Winslett.

[hubner]

The quiz seems to based on a Cambridge University study/app:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-36388364

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/do-you-say-splinter-spool-spile-or-spell-english-dialects-app-tries-to-guess-your-regional-accent

At the end of the 26 questions, the app gives its best three guesses as to the geography of your accent based on your dialect choices. However, while the Swiss version of the app proved to be highly accurate, Leemann and his colleagues have sounded a more cautious note on the accuracy of the English dialect app.

Dr Leemann said: “English accents and dialects are likely to have changed over the past decades. This may be due to geographical and social mobility, the spread of the mass media and other factors. If the app guesses where you are from correctly, then the accent or dialect of your region has not changed much in the last century. If the app does not guess correctly, it is probably because the dialect spoken in your region has changed quite a lot over time.”

At the end of the quiz, users are invited to share with researchers their location, age, gender, education, ethnicity and how many times they have moved in the last decade. This anonymous data will help academics understand the spread, evolution or decline of certain dialects and dialect terms, and provide answers as to how language changes over time.

“The more people participate and share this information with us, the more accurately we can track how English dialects have changed over the past 60 years,” added Dr Leemann.

Without that information, the BBC quiz is useless as research, but it still says:

Quiz developed by Verve Search. Please note that Google Analytics is being used on this interactive; anonymised demographic results will be shared with the academic we consulted to help them with their research on accents and language.

[Davef]

The quiz seems to based on a Cambridge University study/app:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-36388364

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/do-you-say-splinter-spool-spile-or-spell-english-dialects-app-tries-to-guess-your-regional-accent

At the end of the 26 questions, the app gives its best three guesses as to the geography of your accent based on your dialect choices. However, while the Swiss version of the app proved to be highly accurate, Leemann and his colleagues have sounded a more cautious note on the accuracy of the English dialect app.

Dr Leemann said: “English accents and dialects are likely to have changed over the past decades. This may be due to geographical and social mobility, the spread of the mass media and other factors. If the app guesses where you are from correctly, then the accent or dialect of your region has not changed much in the last century. If the app does not guess correctly, it is probably because the dialect spoken in your region has changed quite a lot over time.”

At the end of the quiz, users are invited to share with researchers their location, age, gender, education, ethnicity and how many times they have moved in the last decade. This anonymous data will help academics understand the spread, evolution or decline of certain dialects and dialect terms, and provide answers as to how language changes over time.

“The more people participate and share this information with us, the more accurately we can track how English dialects have changed over the past 60 years,” added Dr Leemann.

Without that information, the BBC quiz is useless as research, but it still says:

Quiz developed by Verve Search. Please note that Google Analytics is being used on this interactive; anonymised demographic results will be shared with the academic we consulted to help them with their research on accents and language.

They are gathering data about how you answer the questions and have a fair guess from google analytics about your location, ethnicity etc.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm sure this very same "survey" has come up before on these august pages.

[ian]

It's data-harvesting clickbait, which I assumed everyone knew from the get-go. They're not really interested in the efficacy of their accent detection.

[Tim Hall]

It's data-harvesting clickbait, which I assumed everyone knew from the get-go. They're not really interested in the efficacy of their accent detection.

Do you pronouced "data" like "dart-a" or "day-ta". EMNTK.

[MikeFromLFE]

Apparently I'm from Sunderland, too.

So's Mrs M - who has an Irish background (and apparently it can be heard in her speech) and was brought up in London.
Highly suspect!

[pcolbeck]

Apparently I'm from Sunderland, too.

So's Mrs M - who has an Irish background (and apparently it can be heard in her speech) and was brought up in London.

That's quite common. My BiL is half Irish but born an brought up in York but sometimes he sounds Irish. Its the patterns of speech absorbed from his dad reinforced by working for years with Irish navies rather than the accent I think. Same for my aunties and uncles because my grandad was Irish though with them its less frequent.