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Guardian

Guardian

Southerners among worst at spotting fake English accents, study finds

Guardian
Summary
Nutrition label

81% Informative

Researchers at the University of Cambridge tested how well volunteers in the UK and Ireland could spot people faking accents after hearing two to three second audio clips.

Volunteers were asked to judge sentences constructed to emphasise differences between seven accents.

For example, “He thought a bath would make him happy”, reveals southerners who turn “bath” into “barth”.

VR Score

86

Informative language

87

Neutral language

55

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

50

Offensive language

possibly offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

long-living

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