3 Responses to “Smart Accent”

1. fillyjonk
   January 25th, 2008 - 12:34 pm

   I wonder if anyone’s ever surveyed the various British Isles “accents” (and there are many: I think someone once told me there are 40 distinguishable-to-Brits variants) in terms of their attractiveness.

   And I wonder what social class has to do with things. (I suspect the poshest accents would not be the most attractive because they’d telegraph “snooty” to most American women, and the most working-class accents might be too impenetrable.)

   Of course, it might be that American accents work better on British women, and vice versa.

2. Ken Miner
   January 26th, 2008 - 5:52 pm

   Fillyjonk, if it’s still in print — John C. Wells, _Accents of English_ (2 vols), Cambridge University Press, 1982. It actually covers the entire English-speaking world (well, almost).

3. Andrew Ironwood
   January 28th, 2008 - 2:31 pm

   I rather suspect (and I’d be *more* than perfectly willing to receive a large grant to study this and confirm my hypothesis [grin]) that a large part of what American women find attractive in a British accent has to do with the rhythmic cadence of the speech, which would {I would think] be a more challenging aspect to synthesize (but then, maybe that’s just me, of course, of course…)