US woman with the 'best South London accent' stumps Brits in viral video
A woman does a British accent so convincing, it's stumping actual British people.
A user on TikTok known as @_.itsmona went viral this week, earning 50,000 likes for her fake British accent. Normally, Americans can't easily fool a native from the UK, but plenty of English people have commented or reposted the video, commending her for her convincing tone and voice.
The British Accents and Dialects Reasearch Project has categorized over 450 regional accents in the UK, meaning that for those not native it can be hard to spot a fake. With so many regional differences, many Brits understand the subtleties of the language in a way others don't, making it hard for outsiders to do a true accent.
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A viral video is stumping Brits (_.itsmona/TikTok)
An American girl on TikTok wants to know if she does the best fake British accent (_.itsmona/TikTok)But Mona, as she's known on social media, said that as a Nigerian raised in America, she's been able to easily imitate the accent simply by watching television and listening to podcasts. "I've been watching television... and TikToks even... and naturally, I started copying them [the accents]," she says in the video.
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"Like, I don't know too much of the lingo, but just the way my voice is. I really like it. Especially when I'm watching hair videos and makeup videos, i'm like, oh, her accent is cute!" she continues in a British accent.
"As I listen to the UK podcasts, I start agreeing with them, and then I start talking like them. And my accent may not be the best, like, I live in Maryland... I just do it too often," she laughs in the video.
One user wrote, "Best south London accent from an American." Another said: "you cannot trick meeee, this girl is from SE16 for sure," reffering to a postal code in the UK.
Yet another viewer disagreed, commenting, "It’s shifting in and out of American and English." But most either laughed along or complimented her. "Me after a couple seasons of love island," joked another.
Just as much as Americans love to fake British accents, according to Telecoms firm 4Com, after they quizzed 1,002 UK office workers, they learned that Brits exaggerate their accents to sound more posh, over 40 percent of the time.
The poll found one-fifth of Brits admit to changing their accents at work to appear more professional. Londoners are the worst culprits, along with career-minded Glaswegians who row back on their dialect in case people don't understand them.
A poll found 44 per cent of office staff are self-conscious about the way they speak at work. And 13 per cent didn’t realise they were putting on a posh accent until a friend told them. Staff feel more self-conscious on the phone, with 27 per cent “speaking proper” on the phone. And 20 per cent say they change their voice in meetings to appear more authoritative.
The 2019 poll drew some mixed reactions from people. Spokesman Mark Pearcy said: “This is a form of impression management strategy, to make them sound more professional, educated or of a higher class. It’s a shame. Accent variety is one of the things that makes our country great."
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