this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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You're kidding, but the "posh" accent of the British upper classes is to a greater or lesser extent trained rather than merely acquired when one is learning the language as a child.
Also people with regional accents often actively make an effort to change their accent to RP (aka the BBC accent) when they move to places like London, though I supposed that's pretty common the World over when people whose regional accents are from places deemed "provincial" move to the big cities in more prosperous regions.
Oh, and immigrants, I almost forgot immigrants: many people with foreign accents do make a lot of effort to speak the local language with the local accent. In fact, for many immigrants in Britain this joke is pretty close to reality.
So there's actually a drop of truth in the joke.
in statesia, a lot of what people consider a "southern" accent is just a rural drawl. when you move to the city you talk like the people you see on TV
Doubtless accurate, even here in the US I grew up in an area that pronounces water "wuhter", and had to unlearn that when I moved to a city where that would confuse people. That said, I also picked up "y'all" from a friend in college, so it's a mixed bag.
But when I visit home for a week and come back, definitely some "wuhter"s slip out before I get back into full city mode.
When I went to live in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) as an immigrant from Portugal I actually picked up the version of the Dutch "good morning" ("goedemorgen") from the south of the country even though I was living in Amsterdam (totally opposite side of the country) because some colleagues in the first company I worked in and were I started to learn Dutch, said it like that (it was pretty much the first Dutch word I learned).
After a while there learning the language and Dutch customs I eventually figured out I was saying good morning with basically a farmer accent from the south, by I just kept doing if for fun plus by then I abused the shit out of what I called the "foreigner excuse" (you can have tons of fun knowingly humouristically "misunderstanding" local expressions and "misusing" their language and if the joke falls flat get away with it because the locals hear your accent and think "just a foreigner, doesn't know our language well").
the linguist in me wants to to make a map of how everyone pronounces wohter now
From Ohio, I pronounce it wahr
that would be a good map. Especially if you had the IPA on it
done properly you could probably trade it for some kind of linguistics degree at a university. i do love making mockery of processes.