
Ask HN: Is there a pan-English accent? - burritofanatic
On networks like Univision, anchors like to speak neutral Spanish, or otherwise &quot;pan-Latino&quot; is this possible in English? I started wondering this after reading the profile on Jorge Ramos in the New Yorker http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;the-man-who-wouldnt-sit-down
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notahacker
As a Brit, I'd say "General American" would be regarded by most English
speakers as the most neutral accent, being the most widely spoken and most
influential in media.

Us Brits might have conceived the idea of "received pronunciation" as a
location-free English accent and exported it via international schools (though
South Africa is the only place I can think of with non-trivial numbers of
people whose accent is defined more by RP-norms than local norms), but in
practice, very few people speak anything resembling the traditional RP, an
accent most Britons would see as _glaringly_ indicative of some combination of
the speaker's private-schooling, age and pretentiousness. The southern (or
subtly southern-ised) English accents that are most predominant in British run
media are quite starkly different from traditional "RP" or "Oxford English" in
terms of pronunciation and perceived social prestige.

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zhte415
"I have a very standard accent" said a new colleague, as I and also new
Australian and New England colleagues looked on in disbelief at these overly
extrudely nasal West Coast tones. "At least Keanu Reeves sounds cool" I
thought to myself.

There is no pan-English accent. There are plenty of projects to document this.
Perhaps try something like Forvo: Type your word, and hear the different
pronunciation via via speakers from different places in the world:
[http://forvo.com/languages/en/](http://forvo.com/languages/en/) for example
the word 'English'
[http://forvo.com/word/english/#en](http://forvo.com/word/english/#en)

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networked
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-
Atlantic_accent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent) was once
considered that but its usage declined after WWII.

~~~
mcnamaratw
Yeah, there are a lot of elderly folks in NYC who use something like the Mid-
Atlantic accent. Today it sounds made up, as if they learned English from old
movies.

~~~
osullivj
I imagine it sounds impossibly plummy to younger Americans, much like the
1930's aristo RP English spoken by, for instance, Deborah Devonshire (see
youtube interview) sounds to younger British people. I like the sound of that
mid-Atlantic though. It was always a pleasure to hear Gore Vidal interviewed -
so articulate, insightful and witty, all the time in those rolling
candences...

~~~
mcnamaratw
Right, Gore Vidal is a perfect example of the elderly-NYC mid-Atlantic accent.
Except for me it works better on TV than sitting across a coffee table. It
just sounds fake to me--some part of my brain can't believe that these people
really grew up talking like that.

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bootload
_" His English is fluent, if strongly accented. His Spanish, particularly on-
air, is carefully neutral—pan-Latino, not noticeably Mexican."_

Yes. From a migrant country like Australia, if you flick on SBS TV News, you
get the same phenomena. Fluent English, accented but neutral foreign tongue.
You can hear the English equivalent on BBC World News with the announcers
speaking RP. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation)

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drmarkrbaker
It's worth noting that the concept of "all accents being equally valid" is not
true in informational terms. Google "vowel degeneration" if you want to know
why some people speak in what appears to be an over formal, over enunciated
accent. Rather than showing off education or age, often they are simply
distinguishing key sounds in the language.

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kasey_junk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American)

Is not pan english in that it is mostly attached to the US. But given the vast
scope of the US media penetration its probably as close as you get.

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AnimalMuppet
I would say there are two, and they are not too far apart: BBC English and
Hollywood/US network news English. (That is, I would say that notahacker and
bootload are both right.)

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osullivj
Any Americans care to comment on JFK's accent? Was it mid-Atlantic? Or New
Englandish?

