Which accent among English language speakers is the WORST?

Long Island

Glaswegian. Incomprehensible to anyone not from Glasgooooooooo.

American Deplorable.

Southern Cal with upspeak and vocal fry.

Any of the British cities where you get a weird adjectival form for the accent moniker:

Glaswegian

Mancunian

Geordie

Liverpudlian

The Scottish accent is often indecipherable.

Glasgow Dunnaedodaedat

South West of England oooo AHH my lover

Essex babes

London innit

My freshman year at college was spent rooming with a dumb, entitled, and rich South Korean girl who spent 6 years being educated at prep school in North Carolina. Her southern accent was atrocious, very pronounced, so much so that it made her sound mentally deficient. I grew up in heart of Silicon Valley in California so I thought that type of southern drawl sounded so annoying and dumb at the same time.

Indian

Valley Girl

OP, Sharon Osbourne is from London and has a London accent. Ozzy is from Birmingham and has a Brummie accent. They are totally different accents.

Any accent affected by the "Northern Cities Vowel Shift," mostly the Midwest.

Those flat midwestern accents that go, "Oh my Gaad. It's so haat!"

Boston accents on women are especially hard on the ears.

so many reasons to hate, via datalounge. thanks guys and gals.

r11 We were passing through Rapid City, South Dakota when I heard a woman bellow out to her family: "Hey! You want HAAT DAAGS?' I lost it. On the other edge of the same state, in Mitchell, my husband said to me, a we heard a subpopulation of touring seniors, "What do you make of those accents? i bet you hadn't heard those." It's true though. If I go far enough inland in the US, the locals watch my mouth move, they can't get over my accent.

They don't hate it: it's just too novel and foreign for them to make out.

My accent is Pacific Northwest, with occasional inflections of eastern Ontario.

Canadian

Brooklyn...or should I say Bwooklyn. Think Bernie Sanders and the like.

I have a hard time telling Southern accents apart. They all sound equally bad.

R9 but I've heard other people from London who don't sound like Sharon. Are there different London accents? Hers is really unpleasant

Whatever Johnny Depp and Madonna are doing.

She's common, R17.

Australian is a bit annoying to hear. Sorry Australian friends!

The chav accent in the UK.

We have a lot of accents in the UK, the worst are from Liverpool and Birmingham, Essex cockney in London isn't very pleasant but only a few miles down the the road and you have the likes of accent George michael spoke with. I'm close to Manchester yet my accent is a world apart from being Mancunian. Billy Connolly is from Glasgow if anyone has heard him stateside where he lives.

R17, yes, there are different London accents, based on neighborhood and one's social class. Sharon is Brixton working class mixed with harridan.

Nasal accents from Wisconsin and Illinois.

Fran Drescher

South African English

Southern Black. In most instances, I've had to request to speak with someone else, because I simply can't understand them.

The gully accent from SC is really hard for me to understand.

North Florida, Southern Alabama is extremely hard to understand.

[quote] Whatever Johnny Depp and Madonna are doing.

Affected.

Rhode Island mixes the worst of Brooklyn with the worst of Boston

Geordies and Brummies.

R22, Liverpool accents are sexy. In fact, most of these accents in this thread are hot (Brooklyn, Long Island, New Jersey, Staten Island). Anything working class means great fuck.

Jesus we’ve gotten this far and no one’s mentioned Baltimore. Everyone there sounds like trash.

[quote]cockney in London isn't very pleasant but only a few miles down the the road and you have the likes of accent George michael spoke with.

What was George Michael’s accent, anyway?

I lived in Seattle for two years, and was not able to perceive any particular accent among the natives. The only thing I remember is that they would bring their groceries home in a sack instead of a bag.

Scottish accent, sorry Scots I love you.

The midwestern accent mentioned in r10, r11, and r13 is my least favorite American accent, but no one makes me want to tear my hair out like Bangalorean customer service agents who work for Amazon. Digital sonic jizz does not help. It's even worse when you complain, so they turn up the volume. Sorry, Ravi.

Boston and whatever place in New York with that harsh accent.

Northern New York state.

Jamaican and American. I don't mind American accents in films and music but listening to an American talk in real life is a whole other experience. I'm guessing the version you hear in most films is seriously toned down because it doesn't sound nearly as annoying as it does in real life. I think the reason it sounds so awful is because Americans speak from the back of their throats which creates a very distinctive sound that most non-Americans aren't used to hearing and find it super annoying.

R41 Jamaican English have two accents, the country and the city English.

As an American who lived for several years in London, I soon came to love the northern accents. Liverpool. Blackpool. Bring it on. The posh London accents and the standard BBC pronunciation are off-putting. They are purely a tool of the class system there, designed, from start to finish, to be used to put others in their place. They are dry and lifeless and oft times repellant.

A Liverpudlian accent can be absolutely musical. Of course, it carries the connotation of a working person and that alone is enough to get you ostracized in a society that has ossified around its class system.

New Jersey, upper midwest, Maryland, deep south areas.

Kourtney Kardashian, violent fry uptick

[quote] Southern Black. In most instances, I've had to request to speak with someone else, because I simply can't understand them.

I'm sure your request went over well, R27.

Whatever the accent is that Ryan Phillippe has

Ryan Phillippe is from Delaware. Is his accent similar to the Maryland accent? I lived in DC for 20 years, btw, and I have no idea what a Maryland accent sounds like (and DC was Ebonics).

There are two women I know from Long Island, NY. They have voices like scratching on a chalk board. It’s probably a class thing as well. They sound like Eliza Doolittle pre-professor Higgins.

[quote] The gully accent from SC is really hard for me to understand.

That's "Gullah", not gully.

[R43] I agree! Those posh accents sound so snooty and self-congratulatory. Some Americans idolize them and think that they are the creme de la creme , which makes them even more annoying. I like Scots and Irish and Northern English accents. They sound like the round, green earth. In America, the fading east Virginia accent is pretty, but only the elderly have it. It’s almost disappeared. You say “shu-gah” instead of sugar.

That fake British one that Madonna had.

I find all stereotypical accents annoying, no matter where they're from. But my personal tops are the stereotypical accents in the US are New Yawuck, Bahstun, Wisgaaanson, & Chicooahgo. In the UK I can tolerate most accents except the ludicrously affected ultra posh ones. The ones where the "ou" sound always comes out as a long "i". "There's a mouse in the house and I'm feeling like a louse" comes out as "there's a mise in the hise and I'm feeling like a lise". People who speak like that make me want to commit a crime against them. And then there are the vocal fry broads. The "Martha Stewart" types. That guttural sound coming from a female is vile. I've never been able to figure out how those dames think that makes them sound attractive.

My experience as a lifelong US citizen is that intelligent people don't have strong accents I've lived in NC and had a vacation home in rural western NC. On occasion people would peg me as being from NY, but it wasn't often. I had an in-law relative who lived in the Kentucky county with the lowest literacy rate. Nobody in his town moved there. Everyone was a life-long resident. Blue collar guys who were on the ball had accents, but not that pronounced. And that includes my relative who was born in the 1930's. ANY pronounced US accent sets me on edge. I can't differentiate between UK accents, but if I can't understand you, I assume you are an idiot. For fuck's sake, we have had television for a long, long time. If you are unintelligible, you are a moron.

r54 is so irritating I had to block him.

Minnesota

Australian and South African. Their accents make it seem like they have some form of mental retardation.

R54 sounds like a lovely person.

R48 the states around DC have a very strong but very different pockets of accents. When people say a “Maryland accent” they usually mean Baltimore and the country areas around it. The best example of it is the school principal on The Wire.

Philly has a similar accent but more subdued, Ryan Phillippe’s is an even more subtle version of Philly.

DC has a totally different accent, which back in the day was like southern mixed with the old mid-Atlantic accent (Katharine Hepburn) with some weird pronunciations.

Northern Virginia has no discernible accent (appropriate for what a sterile place it is). Richmond has a very distinctive and strong southern accent that sounds very countrified. There are some pretty southern accents (Memphis, New Orleans) and some not so pretty (Richmond, Atlanta), imo.

[R59] Old timer Washingtonians pronounced it “Wiersheeington” . Some black Marylanders pronounce it “Meerlynn”. Even with lifelong exposure, some AA Maryland accents are really hard to understand. There’s a lot of mumbling. “The Wire” is good for learning the regionalisms. Even northern Virginia still has little pockets of it, amongst the 70+. You hear it in the few blue collar bars that remain.

OMG! Baltimore is horrible.

Lucy Worsley aka posh cunt English.

I have an old friend from Baltimore. He calls it "Ballmer". And he pronounces the word water as "wutter". He's been out of Maryland for 50 years and I've told him he needs to stop that shit.

R63 I grew up in DC and was never more insulted in my life than when someone told me I had a Maryland accent. God help me

True story. I was in Crete on a post college backpacking trip. My buddy and I teamed up with these two Scots. Loved them. Nicest, drunkest guys ever.

For the two days we were on the same route? I have no idea what they said. It was a running joke. And I'm of Scottish ancestry.

There's a harsh, nasal accent I heard in southern Missouri, but only here and there. It was similar to the accent Reese Witherspoon used in [italic]Election[/italic], which is set in neighboring Kansas I'm not sure what it is, but it's ugly.

Boston wins this entire wicked pissah thread.

Do white people still live in Baltimore? And is the original Baltimore accent still around?

I guess I would have to agree that the Boston accent is not pleasing to the ear, IMO. Australian is also unpleasing, IMO. Especially the ending of words that end in the "R" sound, like "however." How-e-vaaah!

The accent in the area of Pennsylvania where they can't say words with "ow" in them correctly.

"Hey, let's go downtown" becomes "hey, let's go dinetine".

Ignint, just plain ignint.

Aussie and cockney are really similar because one comes from the other. They're both ugly, but you haven't heard truly unlistenable until you've heard some Masshole from Southie try to give you directions.

John Waters' films have made the Baltimore accent intolerable (in real life, I mean).

But the absolute worst is Australia/New Zeland. Fingernails on a blackboard, every single time.

[quote]Australian and South African. Their accents make it seem like they have some form of mental retardation.

There are variations in both. Nicole Kidman for example speaks with a more subtle Australian accent. And South African also has its subtle/posh variation which sounds British. Think Elon Musk.

India

I have a soft spot for the Boston accent. Most of my family on my father's side is from there.

R68 ya hon but right now dere donny oshun

The Northern Irish, in particular Belfast, accent is extremely harsh and grating.

Eventually, all English speakers will stop speaking with an accent and speak like Midwesterners.

Adding another vote for Baltimore. Where the hell did that come from? I actually enjoy most American accents. Supposedly, I have one of those nearly indistinguishable Middle American accents, and it actually buoys me a bit when my younger inflection forces itself to the surface. And, I swear to God (this will never happen, so it's a safe bet), if I were ever allowed to live in the UK, I would make a point of learning all the native languages: it astonishes me that the British Isles are still home to several distinct languages.

I didn't realize where he was from until I just now looked it up but the current CNN reporter and former ABC reporter Nick Watt's accent really sets me off, I have to change the channel as soon as he starts speaking. He is originally from Scotland and I tend love the accents of Scots, although they can be hard to understand. I actually thought Watt's accent was Australian until I looked it up.

That bizarre New York/Hamptons Long Island that Jackie Kennedy and Little Edie both had.

* New York/Hamptons Long Island accent

That lawn guyland accent makes me want to punch the speaker. It sounds thuggish, uneducated and ignorant.

But I do like the Scottish and Irish accents. Most accents I like and I don't mind the Canadian and northern Midwest accents.

North Jersey, specifically Bergen county. Sounds like a Jewish NYC accent yet somehow even more nerdy.

Anything that’s a southern “twang” as opposed to the more attractive yet still ignorant sounding southern “drawl”. VA, WV, KY and parts of TN are horrible.

Also anything New England.

There's this Australian girl on TCM whom I can't stand. She stretches and flattens all of her vowels. She sounds like someone from Boston who is really high. The rest of the Australians I like. Especially the Hemsworths.

[quote] Philly has a similar accent but more subdued, Ryan Phillippe’s is an even more subtle version of Philly.

A good online friend of mine from Philadelphia heard my accent when I submitted a "gap show" to cover his absence during his radio slot. He marvelled at my accent, then, when I spoke French to introduce some Charles Trenet for my Francophone friends/listeners, he was "blown away."

This would interest me about accents: if you speak English with a regional accent, do you speak another language with that same accent, or do you speak it from where you learned it, if you learned the language away from where you learned English? I've heard a German speaker comment that my accent is very thick when I try his language; the Japanese pretend they don't hear me at all. French I don't get comments about, even in Montreal.

Accents are weird, I have had aunts and uncles move from the mid-west where supposedly we don't have accents to the deep south and with-in two years they all had southern drawls to their speech like they had been raised there. However I have worked with people who have moved to the mid-west from Tennessee and Arkansas and lived in the mid-west for decades and they haven't lost one bit of their accents.

The northern New Mexico accent is awful and obnoxious to listen to.

[quote]And South African also has its subtle/posh variation which sounds British. Think Elon Musk.

Charlize Theron doesn’t have any discernible accent.

Although she grew up speaking Afrikaans and learned English as a teenager.

r87 yeah I had some great-aunts who moved from Saskatchewan to BC to areas of the United States and they all sounded Saskatchewan. Where I lived for 23 years, I have been asked twice where I was from, and one of those times was because I was speaking metric, the other the listener had an amazing ear for accents.:

"I'm from one avenue over. I'm a four-minute walk away."

"No. Before that."

My accent is not strong. I live 100 miles from where I mostly grew up, in another country, but the language is 94% the same. But where I acquired my English language is known for strong accents, and my mother, who grew up 100 miles from where I live now, taught me to speak. So when I was very young I didn't sound like I belonged where I was born, and when I'm around 'hospitality industry' people who hear dozens of arrivals a day, they can detect differences. I went away for a week fairly close to where I grew up, and my husband reports that when I came back my accent was so thick (i.e. I went "native") that he did his best not to snicker.

The Madonna British accent is insufferable.

I had a southern hill accent when I moved to Michigan as a teenager, but I gradually lost it. My dad had an accent so strong it could knock you over. I think the difference is if you have an ear for sound your accent would easily change if you moved out of your region.

When I was working in Germany, one of the admins helping me navigate the paperwork had a British accent. The BBC kind. I asked her if she was British and she said no, that's just how she was taught English.

Which really amused me.

California is about to break off into the ocean.

r94 = the mystics and statistics

Accents come largely due to the chameleon effect of subconsciously wanting to be part of the people in their surroundings, its our mirror neurons at work which we mostly have no control over, the fact that we don't like certain ones is purely down to a difference of opinion/likes and dislikes just as in colours, food or fashion... You don't know why you like.. You just do

[quote]California is about to break off into the ocean.

It's about time. San Franciscans and Los Angelosians are insufferable.

R87 adults who move to a different region and take on the accent of their new locale are doing it intentionally. It is never a natural change. The accent is pretty much cemented in a person by the time they're in their teens. People may start using the regional terms when they move elsewhere, but that's all.

Non southerners who move to the south and change their accents are simply trying to fit in. Plus to some people from outside the south they find the accent rather fun. But those people are in the minority. Most people who move to a new area with its own regional accent never change how they speak.

[quote]Los Angelosians are insufferable.

What is insufferable is your ignorance of what people from LA are called.

I'll say this. The sexiest men on the planet are educated southern men with deep baritone voices speaking with a southern accent. That drawl fairly drips with sex.

These two hillbillies from western North Carolina are funny. The thing about southern rubes like these good-ole-boys is they don't put on airs. They don't try to be anything they aren't. I find that very endearing.

Ever since Phil Donahue was on, I kinda hate Chicago accents.Some asshole with a perm would always stand up during audience question time and ask the controversial guest, "Do you believe in GAHD? Cause if you believed in GAHD, you wouldn't DO THAT!" (THAT being wear a dress--if a man, adopt black babies, be a stripper, whatever.)

It's not the accent but the damnable hybrid trash that is English wherever it's spoken. Italian - now that's a melodious language.

This is a pretty cool interactive map of accents and dialects in the UK:

Omg.

I dislike the strong Strine accent. It grates on my ears.

Pacific Northwest accent - annoying!

Watch some the CA earthquake coverage if you want to hear more accents that will make you cringe.

I've lived all over the US, and I've been told that my accent is more Nebraska/Iowa -- bland and somewhat like a newscaster. One good thing is that I can be understood wherever I travel.

Like most non-natives, I speak French with an accept. My HS French teacher was from Oxfordshire, and I was an exchange student to the southwest of France (near Auch). My French is still strong and it's nice to NOT be pegged as American when I open my mouth. I've been told on many occasions that I speak French with a Dutch accent.

Keanu's English accent. The moment he opened his mouth in Dracula, the whole theater erupted in laughter.

[quote]What is insufferable is your ignorance of what people from LA are called.

Honey, I know that people from Los Angeles are Angelenos. I do know how to use Google. I deliberately used the wrong word and you fell for it.

The New York City accent can sound pretty ugly when its exaggerated. Sorry for using this particular video (it's racist), but it's a great example of an over-the-top New York accent.

Most Australian accents put my teeth on edge. Their weird vowel sounds make my ears bleed.

R98, I don't entirely agree. There are people who have wandering accents. They easily pick up the regional accents of their surroundings or of the person they are speaking with. These are accent mimics. They aren't doing it intentionally, but subconsciously, stemming from what R96 described as the chameleon effect. Accent mimics tend to be people who have an ear for music, or have had musical training. They hear changes in pitches and tones more readily and can easily slip into the rhythms of another accent or dialect.

South African (Afrikans). Hands down.

[quote]from the mid-west where supposedly we don't have accents

You have accents. They’re just boring, like everything else about the Midwest.

[quote]Eventually, all English speakers will stop speaking with an accent and speak like Midwesterners.

Again with this shit. It’s impossible to not speak with an accent of some kind, in any language. Midwesterners have an accent, it’s just a boring one.

R101, who gives a fuck what their accent sounds like. The one with the goatee is hot!

[quote] The posh London accents and the standard BBC pronunciation are off-putting. They are purely a tool of the class system there, designed, from start to finish, to be used to put others in their place. They are dry and lifeless and oft times repellant.[/quote]

I disagree. I love Emma Thompson's accent. I don't know if her accent is the one known as "Received Pronunciation" or if it's just from her region of London. But it sounds elegant and beautiful nonetheless.

[quote]The posh London accents and the standard BBC pronunciation are off-putting.

Those are the only UK accents I can stomach. What does that say about me?

This lady’s.

R101 what airs could they possibly put on?

Jamaican

R54 is a bitter pill and R43 sounds like a real Mary.

Jamaican seems to scream Homophobia

I'm not a big fan of the pitchy Estuary English that David Beckham and Paddy O'Brian speak. These are handsome guys, but when they open their mouths, they sound comical.

Aussies

People from North Carolina---I always hated Cahrlie Rose---he was a horrible interviewer but I also found his accent annoying.

People from Dayton, Ohio-----people from Cincinnati, 50 miles away sound much more refined

Why is this thread so intensely racist?

The northern New Mexico accents are awful.

The Scottish lad at R5 has the biggest BDF in Scotland!

Jersey

Like, um, Valley Girl

Boston

Bloody Australian, especially those in the shithole Outback.

Cockney

It's funny I moved from the northeast U.S. to the south. People down here, particularly the women LOVE my accent. It isn't as brash as the NY accent but it's damnably close.

But non existent deity - the accents down here some of them I cannot decipher.

R39 do you think this New York accent is harsh? I think it's hilarious!

Subtle BBC/London accents fine... up to the point where they completely and intentionally *mangle* foreign words. Especially French words, for which there's simply no excuse. Then, they sound like an old woman from Ohio mangling Spanish. I don't mean words that became part of English & diverged from French, I'm talking about words that aren't used in English, but anyone in southern England has heard spoken correctly thousands of times before adulthood... and nevertheless, are knowingly and intentionally mispronounced.

[quote]Why is this thread so intensely racist?

New to DL aren't you? Few are the threads that don't bring out the racists

Australian by a mile, South African, British then Scottish.

Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing South African from Australian. What are the key indicators that would help one decide?

Indians all sound like domestics.

Americans all sound like idiots

OP[quote]Can be from anywhere where English is the first language.

Their reading comprehension skills are truly lamentable

Australian men have high-pitched chav voices because of their hideous accent.

Totally onboard with the anti-Australia/NZ contingent. Many of the accents listed are aggravating, but those accents are INTOLERABLE.

Worst - Northern Midwest.

Best - Western Ireland. Affluent Hindus in Bombay and its region.

[quote]anywhere where English is the first language.

[quote]Affluent Hindus in Bombay and its region.

omg how can people be so fucking stupid?

English is the first language in a growing number of affluent urban Indian families.

R124, fuck off, Batty Boy!

Brooklyn New York accent is the worst.