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Why do we swoon over some accents and gag at others?
Carrie, an American reader desperate for advice, submitted the following question to the Non-Expert:
I recently started dating a British guy. I think he’s cute, but maybe it’s just that he has an English accent. How can I tell the difference?
Carrie did not know if she was actually physically attracted to her British beau or if she was blinded by his accent. The way a person speaks can change our opinion of him, whether it be in a negative or positive way. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, an accent is “a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region.”
Technically speaking, every speaker has an accent, but we generally perceive people who speak differently than we do to have an accent. Different standard dialects within languages can be considered different accents, although even within a particular country or city you can find dozens of different speech patterns and ways of speaking.
If you search “hot accent English,” the first hits to come up are American women discussing British men. Years of James Bond, the royal family, and American women’s fantasies of marrying rich British lords and residing in English country homes have bolstered the image of the sexy Brit. The Austin Powers movies totally play in to the stereotype that women cannot control themselves in the presence of men with British accents. The Non-Expert writes to Carrie:
When it comes to the attractiveness of British men, American women are simply incapable of rendering a proper judgment. Bad teeth, the unibrow, Guinness bloat, doesn’t matter; hell, we think Tony Blair is hot. Studies have proven that British accents are, in fact, the number one cause of hot women dating nerdy men.
Men are also in on the fact that American women like British accents. Author and NPR commentator Paul Davidson writes:
As just a normal American guy, there are just some things I can’t pull off. If I were to walk into a bar, spot a girl on the other side of the room, approach her and say, “You are quite fetching, so much so that I could just eat you up!” you would throw a drink in my face. But with an English accent? You would want to have my children. As just a normal American guy, if I were to offer to walk you across the street you would sack me in the face with your designer Kate Spade — but with an English accent? You would accept and then call all your friends to tell them the story about the debonaire English chap who proved to you that chivalry was indeed, not dead.
It seems well established in pop culture that American women just cannot resist the British accent. During my undergraduate days at UMass-Amherst, fellow linguistics major Galina Lastovkina and I decided to do some sociolinguistics experiments to see which accents UMass students found sexy.
Photo: Newsbie Pix
We recorded samples from native speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, German and Russian. Using focus groups and questionnaires, we had groups of men and women between the ages of 18 and 28 listen to the samples and rate how attractive they thought each speaker would be based on the recording. We also asked the listeners to guess the native language of each speaker and tell us what accents they thought were sexy.
What we found was interesting. Both male and female listeners consistently gave higher ratings to speakers who sounded more native-like. For the speakers who were rated as “most attractive,” listeners often guessed them to be from countries like Canada, England, or the United States where English is a native language.
For the male listeners, four of our five female Asian speakers came in as the four “least attractive.” While the men were not very successful at guessing these four women’s native languages, 90% of the guesses offered were for Asian languages. There was a high correlation between the perception that a speaker was from North America or Europe to a high attractiveness rating.
When asked what accents are sexiest, 80% of the women included Australian in their lists. One focus group was quite upset that a survey of sexy accents did not include Australian, British, Scottish and Irish men. They informed us that there was a Scottish boy in their dorm whose accent was “much hotter than any of those [the samples].” The Romance languages cracked the hot accents list with 20% of the girls each mentioning French and Italian.
Galina and I expected the women to be wild about the British accent, but it seems we are moving from seeing prestige and attractiveness in men with manor homes in the U.K. to wanting men to be from the more “adventurous” country of Australia. American women prefer mountaineers, world travelers, surfers and crocodile hunters to polo players, so Prince Charles better get ready to step aside.
The men rated Russian #1: egor.gribanov
Are Australian men the new cowboys for American women? According to UMass college students, they are. With Australian backpackers starting to make their way around and have more contact with American travelers, the accent and the men are gaining popularity. Australian men may also gain some points by addressing every woman they meet with terms of endearment such as “love.”
Among the men, there was no such consensus. The focus groups referenced certain pop stars or actresses when giving their answers: “British definitely. I love those Spice Girls, especially Posh.” For the guys the accent seemed like it had to trigger a visual representation of the girls. One guy said he thought Hispanic/Latina accents had a hot reputation because “you can picture scantily clad women…going out dancing.” The female focus groups didn’t even talk about looks; they only talked about how sexy the men sounded.
So what makes us think a certain accent sounds sexy while another accent is revolting? In our study, people rated accents that sounded more familiar and native-like as attractive while they rated accents that were markedly more foreign (and more difficult to understand) as less attractive. Perhaps this stems from our desire to communicate intimately with those we have romantic relationships with, but perhaps these ratings also tie in to our own preconceived notions and stereotypes about different ethnic groups.
What about you, which accent do find sexiest in English? Which accents do you find unattractive? Do you think we tend to find accents closer to our native languages as attractive?
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I thought it was the truth universally acknowledged that Scottish is the best accent ever!
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I can tell you from experience that those sexy British accents can totally make anyone seem smarter/more interesting. Proceed with caution (or just enjoy!).
I don’t find Tony Blair hot but Michael Sheen AS Tony Blair? All over that.
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I would have to say the British and the French. They sound so intelligent when the speak. And their English sounds very rhythmic. It’s like listening to a song.
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I’m happy to see Aussie accent doing so well. I love the Irish accent- I thought that would be in the poll, for sure. I swoon when I hear that. Also I like English South African accent. I have a very soft spot for that one!
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I would have to say the best accent I ever heard was an Austrian man speaking in English. Totally out of the normal set, yes? But true.
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New Zealand! I don’t know why, but I prefer it to Australian. I’m British, by the way – probably different tastes!
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Scottish and Irish do it for me…
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Hrmmm, being from the southern U.S., I didn’t see American Redneck..I mean what else can make someone melt than that long, southern drawl. It can all be summed up in the 3-syllable word sen-su-ous . Like “Hiya darlin’, sensuous up, could you grab me ‘nother cold ‘un.”
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Nonetheless, think I’ll take Australian…
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Men who speak Swahili and then learn British English can have the best accent. It’s meltinyourmouth delicious, especially when paired with a naturally deep voice.
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I have to say that there are some accents in America that I find uber sexy. This would include Cajun accents. Southern accents of all kinds, really. Also, whenever I hear a Haitian accents I positively melt, they are incredibly sexy. Just sayin’.
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Great article. I would say, in terms of voice only, I’m attracted to Eastern European and Russian speakers. Can’t explain it.
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Slavic men speaking english!
Also British, Irish, Scotish, Australian, New Zealand, and some Southern American accents..I’m french canadian though, maybe that makes a different. They all sound very exotic to me.
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This may paint me as a walking stereotype, but I love the posh, dry, Mr. Darcy-type English accent. On the flip side, gritty Scottish is pretty hot too…
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Stereotype or not, if only there was a place I could buy that accent! I also love the Caribbean accent. It just sounds like they are having so much fun when they talk.
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When I first met my current boyfriend, I thought his accent was the funniest ever, and not at all sexy (Kiwi accent). The accent is really not important, and soon you’ll be so used to it you don’t even notice it.
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I’m half English, half Welsh, and I think that far and away the sexiest English-speaking accent is a soft, mellifluous Scottish one.
On a related note, Australians speak English? Thanks for educating this dumb Brit ; )
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South African, preferably Eastern or Western Cape, hands down.
When people hear my boyfriend over skype (oddly, men and women) they comment on how beautiful his voice is – it’s similar to a very soft English accent, manly and unpretentious. And SA men have the rougher-tougher crocodile wrestling/surfing/rugby playing thing in common with Aussies, along with manners and chivalry that has fallen by the wayside in what I’ve observed of UK society.
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Thanks for all the comments and votes! I was originally going to add Irish, Scottish and South African to the poll (as I anticipated they’d get some votes), but my list of accents was getting out of hand.
Apparently the standard American accent is the UN-sexiest accent out there…
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Every body knows that American accents are the all time undisputed sexiest. Our invocations come in 99 flavors American English fluctuates for 3,000 miles every 2nd county. Something for everyone!!
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I think Irish, Scottish, & South African should have been added to poll over a Canadien Accent. I bet most Yanks, Kiwis, & Aussies couldn’t tell the difference between a USA and Canada accent. What about Welsh, Cockney, Affikaner accented English, Kiwi, Pakistani/Indian/Bangledeshi, etc?
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I started doing that, but the poll was getting longer than the article so I decided to go with the “other” choice instead. It’s far from a scientific poll, since there are hundreds of accents even within the US and the UK. I’d love to do another more scientific sociolinguistic study on this!
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New Zealand! I cant believe you left that off of the list.
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I do love me a very slight Asian accent on a young, attractive, well-dressed man… it can be very sexy.
Others – South African, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Scottish, Irish, Australian.
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I used to say Scottish and Irish, although these days when I hear my Peruvian boyfriend speaking English I wonder why we always use Spanish. Sexiest. Thing. Ever. Although one could argue for a touch of bias.
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Pretty surprised not to see Irish here!!! Irish accent totally number one！ Followed closely by the English though it’s gotta be a gentlemanly English accent! Oh and of course you can’t go wrong with the Spanish or Italians in any language they speak!!!
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I’d say Filipinos speak English best! It’s not our mother tongue but I think our accent sounds cute and sweet
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Thanks for responding Heather! Always look forward too your posts/articles here on Matador. Article about difference between various forms of Arabic and Urdu/Hindi as one language was great. Had read something about that somewhere else. But your writing was much more informative.
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Thanks for the compliments Jed! Language is one of my favorite things to write about.
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Scottish!!
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Hi there, um, err, I like to stumble when I speak, and umm, type, because, you know, it makes me, umm, err, you know, a little more like that English fellow from four weddings and a something or rather. What’s his name, Hugh umm, Carey, no, no, not the old Hollywood legend, the floppish haired guy who dated that woman who married someone else…. him. Hugh Jackman, no no not an Ozzie, but Hugh Grant. Oh God, finally, I type some sense.
However, what I was trying to say is that, well, one would prefer it if they added the Swedish variety to that list because, one is a man who is terribly fond of the icelandic blondes persuation of speaker. Terribly so, it’s bloody fantastic. Jolly good, ta ra for now.
Hughie x
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Minnesotan, for sure. Just joking.
Anything non-American for me. I guess whatever is more “exotic/foreign” is more desirable.
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Irish accent would be my choice. It sounds gentle and confident and sweet too. However I dislike Singaporean accent (Sorry, Singaporeans!). I don’t know it sounds too weird for me laahh :p
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I Love South Korean Accents! ^_^
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1. New Zealand
2. Aussie
3. IrishIn a heartbeat nearly any girl or guy with those accents can make me melt, swoon and hand over my apartment keys simultaneously. I and most other people I know would be a lot more lenient in the looks department if the person had a sexy accent, without a doubt!
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