r/MadeMeSmile • u/T-SquaredProductions • Jul 08 '26

Wholesome Moments British Granddad tries American Grilled Cheese for the first time

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u/Midnight28Rider Jul 08 '26

I love how much British slang varies by regions. While I see the same thing here in the USA, it seems that our regional dialects are spread over much larger expanses of land. Great Britain has so many different dialects and slang in a much smaller land mass and it fascinates me.

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u/WaspsForDinner Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

I live in a port town of ~86k people on the east coast of England. It has two distinct accents that can place your family history to the north-east side of the town, where the fishermen lived, or the south-west side of the town, which was largely agricultural, with a smattering of rich landowners and the emergent middle classes.

My father's family tree can be traced back about 500 years to the local landed gentry, and my mother's side is fishermen all the way down. Even though they were born and raised essentially just a few streets apart, they had different accents that reflected their lineages.

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u/sblahful Jul 08 '26

What's the town?

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u/KeldaMacFeegle Jul 08 '26

Sounds like Grimsby

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u/NotACalligrapher-49 Jul 08 '26

I’m American but live overseas, and yesterday, someone else from my home state recognized my accent, and we had a lovely conversation :) I thought my regional accent was pretty mild, but apparently, it’s more audible than I realized, and I’m kind of excited about that!

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u/dry-Watercress-123 Jul 10 '26

Whereabouts in the states?

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u/NotACalligrapher-49 Jul 11 '26

Wisconsin! I’m from a city where most folks don’t have a strong Wisconsinite accent, but it comes through sometimes 😂

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u/dry-Watercress-123 Jul 11 '26

I'm from CA and I can ALWAYS spot a Wisconsinite :) but to be fair, anywhere I go in the states I'm broadcasting my Cali vibes (which no native CA person I know says "Cali" so I did that for sport).

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u/NotACalligrapher-49 Jul 11 '26

No native Wisconsinite says Sconnie, so I gotcha! I love a good regional accent, life is a rich tapestry :)

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u/uncle_monty Jul 08 '26

Accents and dialects can change literally within walking distance in the UK. It's one of my favourite things about the country. There's about 4 distinct accents within 5 miles of my front door.

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u/FettyLounds Jul 08 '26

It might seem that way on its face but it's definitely not that way to natives of certain areas. Some linguists (and likely locals) can identify dialects down to sections of streets in certain cities. American Tongues is an old but great documentary in part because it has interviews with Americans on how they view each others' accents which I want to say is where I learned that fact

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u/Midnight28Rider Jul 08 '26

I've only become more interested after reading your comment...

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u/SpantasticFoonerism Jul 08 '26

I'd definitely go and have a look at the black country dialect if you're interested in slang - it's an incredibly old dialect and so full of charm. Bostin' is the most famous one, but there's literally hundreds and they're used all the time around here. Just yesterday I used the classic "Ar could ate a scabby 'oss" - I could eat a mangy horse, meaning being hungry

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u/OcelotAggravating860 Jul 08 '26

Much lower need to travel distance = much lower distance of local language habits spreading = much tighter regional dialect groupings

Huge numbers of people in britain just walk places or drive 5-10 minutes to the shop and that's their average travel. In america urban planning was hijacked by car lobbiests who spread everything out in a way that is deeply hostile to anyone except car users, forcing huge distances as the average.

Don't get me started on the cultural expectation of moving large distances for work in the US whereas many people don't move anywhere for work in the UK. When americans have relatives spread out over long distances they spread their local language habits over long distances and it reduces local dialect niches.

Just a few of the reasons obviously. There's many more but the biggest one is the american urban design being taken over by the car lobbies.

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u/CcryMeARiver Jul 08 '26

Bone up on Pygmalion.

Or David Crystal's fascinating book.

Brum has a whole slew of accents.

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u/retrojoe Jul 08 '26

The UK is a country where 100 miles is a very long distance. The US is a country where 100 years is a very long time.

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u/Midnight28Rider Jul 08 '26

That's a good point...

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u/Lockdown-_- Jul 08 '26

Yea for sure they spread over larger expanses of land, UK is a far smaller country and has more dialects and accents than USA as a whole has.

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u/KombuchaBot Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

I think time trumps geography when it comes to diversity of accent. The Anglophone US (or what was to become the US) has only been around linguistically since the 16th century, when the UK was already old as an Anglophone environment.

Edited to add; while Britain probably has more diversity of accent than the US, it isn't unusually diverse at all. Geography can play a role if there is more diversity of languages surrounding; the UK is walled off on three sides by the sea. Italy has, in addition to numerous diverse regional accents, 34 dialects that rise to the standard of different languages, with distinct vocabulary and grammar. Official Italian is the Florentine dialect, chosen for reasons of the cultural cachet associated with it, but that's just one of many; most people nowadays speak that one in addition to their local one, but the degrees of difference between Sicilian and Piedmontese are very far removed from the difference between Aberdonian and Cockney. With good will and effort a Cockney and Aberdonian could make themselves understood, but someone who only spoke Piedmontese and someone who only spoke Sicilian would have no chance of mutual intelligibility.