I can't remember how but the other day I stumbled across this website. It's belongs to an American university and it's a project to record people from all countries reciting the same passage in English. The difference between them obviously being the accent - something that's always fascinated me. Naturally, it's not only different countries that have varied accent but also different regions of a country. Obviously not everybody in England sounds like the Queen or Hugh Grant. Sorry to disappoint you. Ozzy Osbourne is a fine example. I too am not exactly eloquent. Raised in a small ex-coal-mining town in the Midlands I've got quite a strong accent. Well, I used to have until I moved down south and discovered not everybody could follow what you were saying. My accent has since diluted to the point where friends at home in Mansfield accuse me of "talking posh".

Anyway, make your own mind up, here's a video of me talking to a friend. He happened to call round and was annoying me with the video camera when I was finishing building my desktop, Dogger. It's at my parent's house when I had moved back in a dry patch of work about 2 years ago. My dad makes an off-screen appearance as well. He has a really thick Mansfield accent. Notice the lack of the word the in his whole sentence. He swears as well. Sorry about that.

Beast.mov (QuickTime, 12.9 MB)

Just thought I'd share it with you. You know where I live, what I do and what I look like. Now you know what I sound like. Yep, a prize nerd...