h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a Northern Oirish accent, but now living in Luxembourg, and working with people from many differnt language backgrounds, I find myself modifying my speech and accent in order to be more clearly understood by them.

And that does veer towards RP, yes. If I say say something that is greeted with perplexed looks, I will rephrase using as close to RP as I can manage.

As an Australian (with an 'ozzie/ocker' accent) studying in Switzerland, I was faced with the similar problem of people not understanding what I said. I tried my best to modify my Australian speech up to the BBC-style standard spoken by my English teacher, only to find out when I got back home to Aust. that I sounded more like an Afrikaan's-South African trying to speak English!

Hi,

good point, it's a shame i didn't think of that. I live in Strasbourg, where most of my friends are French and mostly my day-to-day conversations are in French. When an English mate whose French is not so hot turns up in my local, all my French pals complain that they don't even recognise the strange dialect that we are speaking...

So, a widespread and helpful use of RP is when speaking English to a foreign speaker of limited ability.

thanks for that, and indeed, for reading and commenting.
cya
spiff

I find myself doing this in Germany, although my accent soon comes back when I watch an episode of Shameless or watch films like East is East.