Do you want people to think you are intelligent within seconds of opening your mouth? Bettina's McMenemy Seminar on Wednesday would have helped you out! But just in case you weren't there ... it's all in the pronunciation.
Bettina has conducted a number of experiments assessing how intelligent people are considered to be when speaking English with the following accents: BBC English or RP, regional English accents, English spoken by native German speakers and English spoken by Native Greek speakers. All listeners of the three nationalities rated people speaking BBC English as more intelligent. Moreover, the closer the accent of a non-native speaker is to BBC English the more intelligent they were perceived to be too!
However, other studies have shown that people with rural English accents are rated as much more trustworthy than people with RP accents. So it's your choice - would you rather sound intelligent or trustworthy?
No comments:
Post a Comment