I'm already ahead of you.

I was watching BBC America when an announcement came up:

Not even British people can follow the British accent one hundred percent of the time. Therefore... you, like me, might want to use closed captioning.

I smiled. My set's CC was already activated.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well, if what you call ´´British accent`` is the royal family's accent, I agree completely!lol!
Exactly what British accent would that be? The UK having more accents than any other English speaking country and itself being made up of 4 distinct countries it's difficult to define a "British Accent". Maybe we should be writing to BBC America to try and find out?
David said…
@leo carioca: Actually, I can understand the royal family quite easily whenever they speak. Of course, I only hear them during their speaking engagements when the need to speak clearly and a good pace.

@japanesewhispers: I think that it is the case that when most people think of the American accent, they do have a particular accent in mind. Namely the Mid-western which is pretty much de facto American Standard. Would you that it is true that when foreigners imagine a British accent, they are actually thinking of Received Pronunciation?

But yes, your observation in this case is on the money. What the commercial/announcement was about was a lead in to one of the BBC's series. One of those where the characters speak with heavy regional accents, use British slang, and do it all at a mile a minute.
Moncrief Speaks said…
I was just going to type the same thing. What on earth is "the British accent"? As if there were only one? Talk about a dumbing-down simplification!

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