Just randomly, and thinking of no-one in particular *cough* James: “accents are a British obsession. I know of nowhere in the world where so many people are annoyed by hearing another person pronounce or intone words differently from the way they do.” BBC
Chof! It’s in a totally different context. My point was, generally, that if you’re in a different country and you’re doing something peculiar to your birth country that the inhabitants of your host country don’t like it for whatever reason, you can either a) keep doing it and put up with their derision (possibly in the hope that they will change their ways and become more tolerant through exposure to different cultures) or b) stop doing it and try to fit in.
It’s got nothing to do with The Good Life at all!
Ha! Mark spends all his time telling the Americans how badly they mutilate the English language. You can imagine how popular he is.
Think ‘knifeblock popular’.
As for me, I speak in the manner of my upbringing, born and bred in Australia with English parents, so I’m a hybrid of cultured ocker. Always good for confusing dumb Americans, who guess my accent as (go figure) either; Irish, English, South African, New Zealand, but rarely ever Australian. Oh well, they still swoon, and I get to manipulate them with my accent and a big Aussie smile 😉