History Main / AccentDepundent

* In the English translation of "Silent Night", the lyrics go "Glories stream from heaven afar / heavenly hosts sing Alleluia", which worked in the non-rhotic New York accent spoken by translator John Freeman Young but not in most other American accents.

# '''Spelling:''' Can "storey", as in "floor", be spelled the same as "story", as in "tale"?[[note]]Yes in the United States; no everywhere else.[[/note]]

** [[{{Paparazzi}} Rita Skeeter]] is a lot more fun to say in non-rhotic varieties of English (in which the two words rhyme) than in rhotic accents (in which they don't).

* In the English translation of "Silent Night", the lyrics go "Glories stream from heaven afar / heavenly hosts sing Alleluia", which worked in the non-rhotic New York accent spoken by John Freeman Young but not in most other American accents.

** Another episode is called "The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's"[[note]]As in "Ha-ha-ha!"[[/note]]. "Ha's" and "Oz" rhyme in non-Bostonian American English, but would make a queer pairing almost everywhere else).

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPo7HTNja1M This supermarket advert]] for Wine and "Bear" Week. The jokes don't make much sense without New Zealand English's beer/bear/bare merger.

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' contains a joke where the characters nickname Big Boss 'Vic Boss' (short for 'victory') due to him being TheAce. This works a lot better in the Japanese pronunciation of English loan words (where there is [[JapaneseRanguage no distinction between 'b' and 'v']]) than in the American English the characters are actually [[TranslationConvention supposed to be speaking]], making it come across in the English translation as bizarre.

** The sorting hat's song in the fifth book rhymes "Gryffindor" with "Ravenclaw". Twice.

* Music/{{Eminem}}'s increasing use of a [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent peculiar, vaguely-Hindi accent]] on ''Relapse'' was, apparently, due to a desire to rhyme things that would not normally work in his own Midwest accent. For just a handful of examples, on "3 a.m.", he's able to use the same vowel sound throughout the string "''Swallowin' a Klonopin while I'm noddin' in and out on the ottoman at the Ramada Inn, holding onto the pill bottle, then...''"

* A popular post on tumblr joked "''at the goth bbq eating corn on the macabre''", to much amusement from US Americans. As many US dialects pronounce ''macabre'' to sound like the name ''McCobb'' or ''muh-cahb'' (/məˈkɑb/), this was a great pun as it sounds a lot like "''corn on the cob''" (cahb, /kɑb/). The joke baffled other English speakers, such as British people (and a number of US Americans too), who pronounce it more like the original French, with an R at the end, something like ''muh-cah-bruh'' (/ˌməˈkɑː.bɹə/), meaning the pun didn't so much fall flat as make no sense at all.

It's been said that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America are two countries SeparatedByACommonLanguage. These days, that might truly be said of the entire Anglosphere. Despite the homogenising effects of mass media, different English-speakers continue to speak English differently. Some of the differences are:

* ''Series/TheITCrowd'': In one episode, Jen is dating a man who is almost perfect except that his name is Peter File, which in British English sounds almost exactly like "paedophile." Moss even [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that the problem wouldn't exist if they were in America (where the first vowel is a short rather than long "e"). You can also notice Creator/ChrisODowd's Roy phrasing it slightly strangely, because if he says it naturally, it doesn't quite work either.

** Another episode is called "The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's"[[note]]As in "Ha-ha-ha!"[[/note]]. "Ha's" and "Oz" rhyme in non-Bostonian American English, but would make a queer pairing almost everywhere else.

# '''Pronunciation:''' Does "caught" sound like "court" or "cot"?[[note]]In England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand, "court" and "caught" sound the same but "cot" is different; in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels#Cot.E2.80.93caught_merger Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada and some parts of the United States, "cot" and "caught" sound the same]] but "court" is different; in other parts of the United States and Republic of Ireland, "cot", "caught" and "court" all sound different![[/note]]

** Diagon Alley is a play on the word 'diagonally', but this is missed by many non-UK readers; for example, the 'ally' in 'diagnonally' and the noun 'alley' sound nothing alike in American English. Knockturn Alley is a play on 'nocturnally', which is missed for the same reason. The films make the pun a little clearer, particularly in ''Chamber of Secrets,'' when Harry mispronounces Diagon Alley as "diagonally" (though with the AccentOnTheWrongSyllable) while using the Floo Network.

* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'': The whole joke about Bob Boblaw's name is that it sounds like "bah blah blah", which doesn't work in accents where "o" and "aw" are pronounced very differently.

* ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'': Dolores rhyming with a part of the female anatomy, or anything else, depends on regional pronunciation.

* An interesting inversion of this trope occurs in ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' with the character Lord Farquaad. In a rhotic American accent (or a Scottish accent like Shrek's), his name sounds perfectly innocent, but in non-rhotic accent it sounds indistinguishable from "fuckwad".

* An interesting inversion of this trope occurs in ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' with the character Lord Farquaad. In a rhotic American accent (or indeed, the Scottish one put on by Creator/MikeMyers as Shrek), his name sounds perfectly innocent, but in non-rhotic accent it sounds indistinguishable from "fuckwad".

* ''Series/RupaulsDragRace'' season five competitor Courtney Act. Pronounced with Courtney's native Australian accent, it sounds like "caught in the act"; for most North American accents, not so much.

* Motoring organisation, the AA, launched a campaign for its breakdown rescue service with the tag-line ''Aask the AA''. Looked good in print with the reinforcing emphasis on the "AA" part. Spoken, it wasn't so sensational outside the South of England: the ad agency failed to take into account the fact that the word "ask" is spoken with a ''very'' short "a" OopNorth. In Scotland and Northern England, the ad campaign went down like a lead balloon.

* Several puns in ''Literature/MythAdventures'' kind of depend on the reader hearing "ah" as an "o" sound (Klahd, Aahz, Jahk). This works in most North American accents due to their [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_open_back_vowels#Father%E2%80%93bother_merger father-bother merger]], which merges these two sounds, but is lost on readers from elsewhere in the English-speaking world where the two vowel sounds are always kept separate.

* Several puns in ''Literature/MythAdventures'' kind of depend on the reader hearing "ah" as an "o" sound (Klahd, Aahz, Jahk). To a British reader, it reads as if Skeeve is a Claude, rather than a clod.

* Several puns in ''Literature/MythAdventures'' kind of depend on the reader hearing "ah" as an "o" sound (Klahd, Aahz, Jahk).

* Apparently, in South Africa, sex is whet you cerry coal in.