The Kiwi accent is quite different. It's certainly closer to your typical southern English accent than a US Midwestern one, but the vowel qualities and rhythm of speech are completely different from both. As somebody from Ireland, I don't have issues picking out somebody from NZ. I could understand getting a New Zealander mixed up with an Aussie if you don't notice with differences in vowel pronunciation between the two countries, but that's about it.

That said, both AU and NZ have their own "TV accents", which in AU is referred to as "Cultivated Australian", which is relatively close to British RP (though not the same), and I expect NZ has their own equivalent, but most people would have something close to what you would generally think of people from that part of the world sounding like.

Honestly, if a genie in a bottle gave me three wishes, one would be that all women speak with Australian accents.

I dunno. Aucklanders sound different to Christchruchians. Maori sound different to Pakeha. etc.

That's just more exposure tbh, many people haven't even met someone from NZ.

In tech you'll run into at least a few during your career. If you lived in Asia, you'll probably see more than that (more common than Australians for some reason).

I'm in tech and have lived in Asia. I ran into 0 until I visited Sydney.

I ran into a few in Beijing. I guess it might just be a unique coincidence?

Per Wikipedia, about 5% of people in Australia were born in NZ.

Southern English here means southern England. Like London. Contrast that with something like Manchester.

Not the US south.

Oh ya, that makes more sense. The south of the USA doesn't, although supposedly they have similarities with accents in England somewhere.

I think the parallels that people draw with the American south are typically the northern UK, like the Scots Irish.

In terms of US-UK parallels, there's also the effect that geographical isolation has in making a sort of language "time capsule" where colonies stick with dated pronunciations or vocabulary. I've heard an attempted reconstruction of London accents from the early 1700s that sound a lot like General American or Canadian English. The same source had an early 1800s reconstruction that sounded rather Australian to my ears. One imagines that English people colonize either place at a given time, leave some trace of their time and place in speech patterns, and their relatives in England go on to evolve speech patterns in different ways.

Non rhotacism (lack of pronunciation of R) also left some traces in the American south (and northeast). That feature began in southern England after colonization, so I believe it was generally fashionable people keeping up with the latest English trends who brought it west.

No, their accent is quite clearly identifiable as Kiwi to us Brits.

They're easy to understand, they enunciate when they speak but the intonation and inflections and general sound is very different.

As for "a British accent". Would an American say there's "an American accent"?

There is no single British accent, we have, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and others with their own languages (and thus accents), then in England, we have widely varying accents, many clearly identifiable to a Brit; Newcastle (Jordie), Birmingham (Brummie), Liverpool (Scouse), London (Cockney), Essex, Yorkshire, etc.

I think when people say "British" like the article in OP, they really mean what we call "posh". We do it ourselves at times, but most people don't actually speak that way.

> As for "a British accent". Would an American say there's "an American accent"?

Of course, just the same as British. "American accent" for foreigners usually means "Southern Foghorn Leghorn" e.g. Daniel Craig in Knives Out, but can also mean New York, Boston, Chicago, Dakota (aka Fargo) or some other variation. To Americans it really means "unaccented" Midwestern English, aka broadcast (radio or TV) voice.

Americans know "American accent" from "British accent" by the same standard, the British "unaccented" voice is called RP and sounds posh or overly fancy to most Brits, but Americans don't distinguish RP from Cockney, Yorkie, Jordie or any of the other variants. RP is the broadcast voice.

To be clear: I used to be the same. "British" was one accent that Michael Caine, the Queen and Chris Ramsay all spoke. (For Americans: "Robert DeNiro, Harrison Ford and Dolly Parton have one accent" is equally wrong and hilarious.)

Geordie.

Thank you. I looked at it a few times, knew it was wrong, but couldn't for the life of me find a G.