Class based accents in other countries

[hubner]

Do other countries have class based accents?

[Auntie Helen]

Yes. In Germany certain accents have negative connotations of dimness. So I am told.

[Slave To The Viking]

Yes. In Germany certain accents have negative connotations of dimness. So I am told.

While staying with a German family near Münster, I heard a loud British tourist exclaiming how many steps there were in the cathedral. I mentioned something to do with their being from London (the accent was pretty obvious), and my host thought I must therefore know them. I explained, and he said his parents had an awareness of accent differences, but he didn't particularly.

I had a chat with his dad, who did an impression of a Bavarian accent and rolled his eyes, and I got the impression it would be like me doing a sort of country-bumpkin voice.

So there did seem to be a known set of differences, but not in quite the same widespread cultural way as in the UK.

Tiny sample size, granted, so maybe entirely misleading. But he was a drama-student and pretty bright, so I took it as likely that he'd have a handle on the performance of social differences.

[Ham]

Yes, but even when you can speak a language, determining accents in foreign language is astonishingly difficult. And, it tends to be regions rather than class, eg Valais inhabitants are the "Irish" of swiss humour, Breton or Picards serve in France  (I think)

[Slave To The Viking]

Yes, but even when you can speak a language, determining accents in foreign language is astonishingly difficult. And, it tends to be regions rather than class, eg Valais inhabitants are the "Irish" of swiss humour, Breton or Picards serve in France  (I think)

Region and class are partly linked though. It would be unlikely to hear an accent that was both archetypally Northern and archetypally posh.

[Ham]

Yes, but even when you can speak a language, determining accents in foreign language is astonishingly difficult. And, it tends to be regions rather than class, eg Valais inhabitants are the "Irish" of swiss humour, Breton or Picards serve in France  (I think)

Region and class are partly linked though. It would be unlikely to hear an accent that was both archetypally Northern and archetypally posh.

Have ye visited Edinburgh, the noo?

[rogerzilla]

The movie Das Boot gives the U-boat crew a wide variety of German and Austrian accents and some of the rougher characters have accents from less salubrious areas.

[T42]

It's nice to be a Preuß but it's higher to be a Bayer.

[Ian H]

I recall Sarkozy being mocked for his grammatical errors.

[Cudzoziemiec]

In Polish there is an accent known as "ą ę" based on pronouncing those two nasal vowels distinctly from "a e", which is associated with poshness. There are also archetypally rural, but non-regional, accents and grammar.

[rafletcher]

Yes. In Germany certain accents have negative connotations of dimness. So I am told.

For instance, those from around Magdeburg.

[FifeingEejit]

Yes, but even when you can speak a language, determining accents in foreign language is astonishingly difficult. And, it tends to be regions rather than class, eg Valais inhabitants are the "Irish" of swiss humour, Breton or Picards serve in France  (I think)

Region and class are partly linked though. It would be unlikely to hear an accent that was both archetypally Northern and archetypally posh.

Have ye visited Edinburgh, the noo?

Ye'll have had yer tea!

TBF the rest of Scotland rips the Edinburgh and Far North accents for sounding too posh.

[arabella]

I did discover that the "upper class accent" and "approved/correct" grammar were an artificial concoction of a group of "public" ie private schools back in Victorian times.  Prior to that all inhabitants of a region had the accent/vocab/grammar for that region - aiui this is still the case in France, don't know about elsewhere.
The side effect of the above is treating of "regional grammar/vocab" as being "bad" in posh circles.  eg "that'll learn you" which isn't the verb "to learn" (meaning to acquire knowledge) but the verb "to learn/larn" meaning to teach - see also german "lehren" as cognate - and therefore perfectly correct; and so on. 

[Ham]

RP is not an upper class accent, although it is often taken to be, I've always thought the upper class drawl (for want of a better term) was possibly adopted as a form to counter RP, in the early 20's when it became possible to hear people from other districts, and RP was on the radio. Until then, your local toff spoke in a local accent, in all probability.

[CAMRAMan]

My Swedish was honed in Västerbotten in the north and southern Swedes do laugh at my accent in a mildly mocking way. The accent in Skåne in the far south is, to my ears, more Danish than Swedish and is generally mocked by anyone further north.

[Auntie Helen]

The movie Das Boot gives the U-boat crew a wide variety of German and Austrian accents and some of the rougher characters have accents from less salubrious areas.

My chap comes from the Kurpfalz region near Mannheim and there is a character on Das Boot who speaks with exactly this dialect. Klaus gets really excited about it every time we watch Das Boot.

Klaus now speaks normal-sounding German with a neutral accent but when speaking with his father slips back into dialect - different endings on verbs etc. it’s really interesting to hear.

Hannover people speak posh, Bayern are country bumpkins and Niedersachsen people just sound funny, apparently.

[Pingu]

There's the probably apocryphal tale of the Germans refusing to let Arnold Schwarzenegger do the dubbing for Terminator 'cos he sounds like a teuchter.

[Rod Marton]

The movie Das Boot gives the U-boat crew a wide variety of German and Austrian accents and some of the rougher characters have accents from less salubrious areas.

My chap comes from the Kurpfalz region near Mannheim and there is a character on Das Boot who speaks with exactly this dialect. Klaus gets really excited about it every time we watch Das Boot.

Klaus now speaks normal-sounding German with a neutral accent but when speaking with his father slips back into dialect - different endings on verbs etc. it’s really interesting to hear.

Hannover people speak posh, Bayern are country bumpkins and Niedersachsen people just sound funny, apparently.

Standard German is based on the Hannoveraner dialect, which is why they sound posh. Having said that, not everyone from Hannover speaks standard German.

Back when I spoke German fluently, i.e. well enough to pass as German in Austria and Switzerland*, I found the Oberpfalzer dialect most difficult to understand. Though that really is in the back of beyond, even by Bavarian standards. However there are even more difficult dialects outside Germany, and of those the Südtiroler dialect is definitely worst of all. Imagine German spoken with Italian intonation and you begin to get the idea.

*In Germany people generally thought I was Dutch. English and Dutch accents are very similar, and I spoke German too well to be English.

[Mr Larrington]

The movie Das Boot gives the U-boat crew a wide variety of German and Austrian accents and some of the rougher characters have accents from less salubrious areas.

My chap comes from the Kurpfalz region near Mannheim and there is a character on Das Boot who speaks with exactly this dialect. Klaus gets really excited about it every time we watch Das Boot.

Klaus now speaks normal-sounding German with a neutral accent but when speaking with his father slips back into dialect - different endings on verbs etc. it’s really interesting to hear.

Hannover people speak posh, Bayern are country bumpkins and Niedersachsen people just sound funny, apparently.

So-called “German-speaking” regions of Switzerland speak something so far removed from German As She Is Spoke that even Miss von Brandenburg could barely grok what they were banging on about.

And as for Austrians…

[Ian H]

RP is not an upper class accent, although it is often taken to be, I've always thought the upper class drawl (for want of a better term) was possibly adopted as a form to counter RP, in the early 20's when it became possible to hear people from other districts, and RP was on the radio. Until then, your local toff spoke in a local accent, in all probability.

Here's an historical gem which throws some light on the origins of 'RP'. https://twitter.com/antoguerrera/status/1585413880687333377

[Jaded]

I say!

Oh, and a very well deserved bonus point for the correct use of ‘an’ by a Regional Person.

[Ivo]

Just for clarification for the non-initiatied.
As a speaker of a regional language (yes, several regions have languages officially recognised via a EU regulation), speaking a regional language has nothing to do with social class or level of education. This is a very common misconception. Both myself and other Limburgers at the Amsterdam University experienced baffled locals who couldn't imagine someone capable of speaking Limburgic being capable of studying or having even finished studying at a university.
Within regional langauges there sometimes do exist various versions according to local class but they aren't unique. It's perfecty possible for the same person to speak the various versions, depending upon occasion.
(And, yes, this is a very touchy point)

[rogerzilla]

I say!

Oh, and a very well deserved bonus point for the correct use of ‘an’ by a Regional Person.

That particular use of "an" should have been killed off years ago.  We should do what the Germans did after reunification and simplify some of the sillier rules of English.

[hubner]

Just for clarification for the non-initiatied.
As a speaker of a regional language (yes, several regions have languages officially recognised via a EU regulation), speaking a regional language has nothing to do with social class or level of education. This is a very common misconception. Both myself and other Limburgers at the Amsterdam University experienced baffled locals who couldn't imagine someone capable of speaking Limburgic being capable of studying or having even finished studying at a university.
Within regional langauges there sometimes do exist various versions according to local class but they aren't unique. It's perfecty possible for the same person to speak the various versions, depending upon occasion.
(And, yes, this is a very touchy point)

Quite. Most of the replies were talking about regional variations, not class accents within a particular area. Are there places where the working class has a completely different accent than the middle class?

Taken to the extreme, Russian royalty used to speak French, a completely different language.

[Cudzoziemiec]

As did the English aristocracy, while the rest of the population gradually shifted from Anglo-Saxon to the new English.