What is a "Posh Accent"?

<<Canada? The vast majority of people in Canada speak in a manner that's more similar to Standard American English than most Americans do.>>

I was thinking that Canadians (being more closely attached to the UK and also better educated and more worldly in general), might have greater exposure to UK accents on TV, etc. Perhaps they are more used to that type of Scottish speaking?

>> might have greater exposure to UK accents on TV, etc. <<

Not really.

>> Perhaps they are more used to that type of Scottish speaking? <<

I'm sorry, but nobody is used to that type of Scottish speaking.

it's not that only Scottish is difficult. Accents of Liverpool, and Newcastle are hard to understand too. Speaking of southern England, speakers from Bristol or Birmingham can be difficult to understand.

Birmingham is hardly in Southern England! It's slap bang in the middle of the English Midlands, neither North nor South.

Bristol definitely is technically if you think solely on North/South lines on the England map, but it's much more often referred to as being in the West of England, the largest city in the English West Country (with due apologies to Plymouth if the people there think they are the capital city of the West Country) - the West Country generally being the term applied for the area of South West England covering Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol city, Gloucestershire and, I think, Wiltshire as well.

Both Brum (Birmingham) and Bristol have their own very distinct accents, both quite umistakeable, with Brummie being the most universally well known though. Bristolians have this very weird habit of adding an "l" to words that end in a vowel. For instance, they don't go to the opera, they go to the operal. How strange is that.........

<< Having been a Cambridge graduate, he had more of an 'oxbridge' accent, of course, that of his generation. Nowadays you can hear lots of different accents in Oxford and Cambridge, so it's not restricted to English English RP only. >>

Before the 1960s, most graduates of the "ancient universities" would, almost unconsciously, adopt the form of RP used by the professional classes at the time. The same process could be seen in grammar schools, with their alumini adopting the accent generally used among the middle-class inhabitants of that particular area (which might still carry significant regional influences).

A strong Glaswegian accent is a wonder to behold. I had a student from Glasgow once, and could hardly understand a word he said. (He probably had difficulty with my Aussie accent too.)