Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post

Americans don't seem to be able to distinguish the MASSIVE difference between how educated and non-educated British people speak. In the video that Alex links to, they are only imitating the working class accent, but saying that the person sounds intelligent.
Hanna, Puleassssse... yes we can. It was a FUNNY bit. Americans just like the British or Australian sound, good or bad. You can have a person with a British accent in a commercial and us Americans will go out and buy the stupid product. Have the same commercial with an American from the deep South with a thick Southern drawl and the people up North will probably never buy the product because they will think THAT person is dumb as bricks. I've mentioned before that people in New York always thought less of our office here in Maryland because, we were IN Maryland (which to them is the "south" and a few of the employees had a touch of a southern accent). It didn't matter that our office had three people who passed a industry related senior exam certification and the New York office had none. We were the stupid ones.

So, to Americans, just hearing a British/Australian accent makes them sound smart, doesn't matter how bad the accent is or well educated they might be or where they come from in the UK. We don't care.

And most Americans of my generation or older do know of this video as well.