Hard to say what an 'English' accent is.
But I've just been reading John Peel's* semi-auto-biography, and thought
these two extracts might be of some interest.

"..... I came across the first Geordie** I had ever met. When I first
heard him speak, I assumed that he must be part of the influx of
Hungarian refugees that had recently fled their country for ours.*** It
was to be several weeks before I could understand a single word he said."
Exaggerated? Perhaps, but there's a huge amount of accent variation
within England. I come from Leeds, which is about 120 km. from
Newcastle, and I have real trouble understanding Geordies.

[In Dallas, Texas, at the height of Beatlemania, an interviewer asked
him how long he had been living in Dallas.] "John replied that he had
been there for three and a half years. But as soon as he pronounced
'half' in his English accent, rather than as 'hay-aff' as the Texans
have it, a riot broke out again .....
After that, John's life involved being mobbed on a regular basis in
downtown Dallas by teenage girls ....."

* John Peel was a DJ. (Actually, that's a bit like saying "William
Shakespeare was a writer", but it wouldn't be relevant to go into
details here.)
** Geordie: 1. someone from Newcastle / Tyneside in NE England; 2. the
English spoken by them
** in the aftermath of the 1956 uprising in Hungary

Jonathan

pronsig_mod pisze:
>
> Hi folks,
> I've been thinking about the questions that came up from the
> newsletters and I will post
> about them soon, but I want to ask a perhaps more whimsical question now.
> If the Welsh speak English with a Welsh accent, and the Irish with an
> Irish accent, and the
> Scots with a Scots accent (the list could go on and on), then how can
> we say that RP or any
> other standard assigned on social or political grounds has any real
> bearing on the English
> language? The Queen's English is probably German after all, if traced
> back.
> What would Brazil's model of intonation look like if the Welsh English
> accent was the prestige
> accent of England?
> What is the relationship between the pronunciation of a language, and
> the language itself?
> (or as the Buddhist koan asks, what is the sound of one hand clapping?!)
>
> Just wondering, but please don't lose any sleep over this,
>
> Alex.
>
> PronSIG Mod.
>
>