What city is the best for learning English?

As this thread is undoubtedly America-centric I took an additional interest in all the Americans reporting on the current round of American elections on our UK media, and paid particular attention to the accents from over there. No matter where in the USA the commentators were located thay all sounded exactly the same to me - and the USA is one vast country, geographically. I suppose it's little different from standard RP reports from many areas of the UK, except Scotland and Wales, and maybe northern areas of England.

Anyway, among all the Americans there was one guy, especially, whose accent immediately sounded "different" from all the others - in fact, it was actually a wee bit more appealing in that it was generally a lot less rhotic, and had many characteristics of southern English English. The guy is Richard Wolffe, the Newsweek correspondent on White House affairs. Bearing in mind this thread I wondered where exactly in the USA he had "learned" his English.

So I googled the guy - he "learned" his English in ..... England! He is British born and trained for his journalism career in Brighton, Sussex. :-) There's little doubt, though, that he has now been in America quite some time....

He reports in the second half of this YT vidclip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEGHEHRZeTY

The matter is that almost all of the TV journalists here speak General American, even in the case of local ones. Even in the local TV news here, I at most hear more northern variants upon GA, if not GA proper. The same applies to national advertising (both TV and radio) as well. However, this is in drastic contrast to a lot of local advertising here, which is very often (and often quite noticably) in the dialect here. This has the result that one can easily tell local and national advertisements apart just from the pronunciation by the people in them, even before one actually hears what the advertisements are for.

<<Obviously you haven't been to the Upper Midwest...>>

I've been to southern Wisconsin, northern Indiana, and Michigan, and I wasn't suggesting that they sound like General American, just that, to me at least, they seem a bit clear, which of course would be helpful to a foreign student trying to learn English.
Sorry for the confusion...

<<There's little doubt, though, that he has now been in America quite some time.... >>

Why do you say that? I hear him on MSNBC a lot, and I've always wondered about his accent. Thanks for the info.! (Sorry to sidetrack the thread)

Damian (or anyone from the UK),

Are there towns or regions in the UK where people speak close to RP? My impression was that RP was "acquired" by people regardless of location, although the pronunciation was originally based in Southeast England. (And the younger folks seem to be getting away from RP--to Estuary English?)

Is this correct, or are there really places one would recommend that have a more "standard" pronunciation?

>>I've been to southern Wisconsin, northern Indiana, and Michigan, and I wasn't suggesting that they sound like General American, just that, to me at least, they seem a bit clear, which of course would be helpful to a foreign student trying to learn English.
Sorry for the confusion...<<

Here in southern Wisconsin, how "clear" people sound varies heavily, and particularly by the age of the speaker in question. In general, the older people are the "clearer" than younger people in that there is generally less elision or assimilation in their speech, On the other hand, many younger people are likely to have far more elision and assimilation, especially in cases like flap elision and elision of postvocalic or intervocalic /n/. This has the effect of making younger people sound less clear than many older or middle-aged people.

Let's find Native Korean and find out what city he chose last year! I think it was between SF and the windy city. I wonder why he doesn't post here. Oh, maybe he does.

<<So I googled the guy - he "learned" his English in ..... England! He is British born and trained for his journalism career in Brighton, Sussex. :-) There's little doubt, though, that he has now been in America quite some time.... >>

Maybe this merits a thread of its own, but I've often wondered about how British expats change (or don't change) their accents after living in the US for a while. A few days ago, Language Log contributor Geoffrey Pullum, said "From 1980 to 1994 I never even visited Britain. I worked as a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, learned plenty of American vocabulary and acquired post-vocalic [r], and saw very few British newspapers"... Yet other English people seem to have spent a lifetime among rhotic speakers and firmly retain non-rhoticity...

Choose Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne and learn nice Australian.

I don't like Australian. It sounds too Cockney.

***Yet other English people seem to have spent a lifetime among rhotic speakers and firmly retain non-rhoticity...***

I would imagine none of those English people had strong West Country accents in the first place! :-) Isn't that where the American accent originated anyway...the West of England?

Seriously, in response to your comment - it seems that the vast majority of Brits who go to live in the United States (or Canada!) make a very concerted effort to not only avoid acquiring any kind of rhoticism but also to ensure that no trace of the American accent infiltrates their own British accents. If you want confirmation of this check out the many related threads in the British Expats in the USA (or Canada) website. If they suddenly find themselves using American type expressions, quite involuntarily, or starting to pronounce certain words in the American way, or even discover there merest hint of a drawl creeping into their speech, they find themselves going into sharp reverse by exaggerating their Britishness and their native accents a wee bit too extremely. Or else seek out their nearest fellow ex-pats for a good old "British night out" and all speaking in the tongues of good old Blighty, which, to them on occasions like that, sadly seems so very far away across the sea........ :-)

I suppose some Brits who have lived in America for very many years do end up sounding just like their new neighbours, but even so, I read that no matter how long they've been away from the UK, and have never been back even on a visit in the interim period, they still retain some of the characteristics of their native accents. A neighbour of ours is a lady of 75 whose sister (born in London) has lived in California for almost 40 years. I met her once recently when she came "home" (probably for the last time) and she sounded, to us, very American in the way she spoke. . But to her neighbours and friends back in the USA, and to people she meets over there for the first time, she still sounds distinctly British. It's all relative, and I suppose it's difficult to actually resist environmental influences totally.

Guest2: There is no such thing as an "RP town or region" in the UK. RP is spread more or less across the board in the UK and it depends on different factors, such as educational level, social status and background generally. It's true that it's particularly linked to Southern England (bearing in mind that we are dealing only with England here.....in Scotland here it's a different picture altogether), as standard RP is largely Southern English English based, but you will find a lot of people using RP in all parts of England - again linked to the factors I have just mentioned. Most of the local TV and radio stations across England have announcers, presenters and broadcasters generally who use standard English English RP which would make it hard to determine for which part of the country they originate. That doesn't mean you won't find traces of Brummie or Scouse or Geordie or West Country in some of the voices, but it will never been all that extreme at all. They just wouldn't accept very broad local accents, but those are slowly dying a slow and painless death anyway, an as you say, younger people are using Estuary to varying degrees, again depending on circumstance. It's when you get all the calls into the phone-in programs that you hear all the accents the UK has to offer, in all their glory! Even so the presenters there remain mostly RP.

>>I would imagine none of those English people had strong West Country accents in the first place! :-) Isn't that where the American accent originated anyway...the West of England?<<

Well, even though the Mayflower did finally set sail from Plymouth, which as you would know is in the West Country region, NAE as a whole is really basically Southeastern English in origin, being closest genetically to the dialects of the Home Counties and East Anglia. The only exception to this is Newfoundland English, which has very heavy influence from Irish English, but whether one can really call it NAE at all in the first place is another story.

What the Google is NCVS?

<<It is not unknown for some British people to adapt their style of speech, and, would you believe, their accent, to suit their surroundings and the company they are part of at the time. I think that is much more of an "English" thing. It doesn't happen here in Scotland, that I know of, and I can't ever imagine any American doing this sort of thing. >>

No, Americans will sometimes do it, especially if their "real" accent is going to be a problem in some situations. We simply place less emphasis on accents that Brits do -- they seem to go a little overboard for our tastes!

I have heard West Country accents on a few occasions, and they are rivetingly like American accents --not quite, but very close in many ways. I understand the actual relationship between the two is disputed, but trust me, to my ears they sound very similar!

<<I suppose some Brits who have lived in America for very many years do end up sounding just like their new neighbours, but even so, I read that no matter how long they've been away from the UK, and have never been back even on a visit in the interim period, they still retain some of the characteristics of their native accents. A neighbour of ours is a lady of 75 whose sister (born in London) has lived in California for almost 40 years. I met her once recently when she came "home" (probably for the last time) and she sounded, to us, very American in the way she spoke. . But to her neighbours and friends back in the USA, and to people she meets over there for the first time, she still sounds distinctly British. It's all relative, and I suppose it's difficult to actually resist environmental influences totally.>>

I have read that when people move abroad, they modify their own accents just enough to have to keep from having to repeat themselves all the time to their listeners -- they figure out just which pronunciations are hard for other people to catch and only modify those. So their accents do get slightly hybridized.

However, their listeners can only judge accents relative to their own, and pick up only on the parts that differ from their own norm -- so a hybrid English accent still may still sound very English to American ears, because we hear the lack of R's and the strange A's and the extra T's but don't even notice the elements that have been modified, whereas in England, they never notice the R's and A's and T's, but instead pick up on variations in vowels or emphases that they have picked up while abroad. So everyone is listening for different things -- or touching different parts of the elephant, as it were.

I think Chicago is the best place to go
It is interesting