canadian accent

The Canadian accent has been ranked one of the best in the world

Today in "WHAT? really? why?... but seriously, how?" we have the results of a survey in which about 2,000 Americans were asked for their thoughts on international accents, including the apparent "accent" of people from Canada.

The popular online tutoring website Preply took on the task of polling U.S. residents for this purpose earlier this year, asking respondents about everything from which accents they find the sexiest, smartest and trustworthy to which they found the least intelligent, least appealing and most annoying.

Canada somehow cleaned up in multiple departments, despite being a geographically enormous country with hundreds of different regional dialects.

Are Americans stupid enough to think that all Canadians speak the same way? I mean, I wouldn't blame them based on hokey pop culture portrayals, but... I would definitely question the judgement of everyone who helped bring "Canada" to spot number four on Preply's list of sexy accents.

"There are more than 7,100 languages spoken around the world. And on top of that, each has a variety of accents and dialects," reads Preply's report on the survey.

"You've probably heard of that 'homey' Southern accent, 'sophisticated' British accent (although there's more than one of those), and the 'sexy' French accent. That's no accident; a majority of people in a survey we just conducted say an accent has impacted how attractive they found someone."

And here I was thinking that women liked Drake for his money and sensitive lyrics.

Preply asked all survey respondents to weigh in on accents in the following categories: Most pleasant to hear, sexiest, most trustworthy, smartest, and most annoying.

Based on the portrayal of Canadians I've seen in most American media programs, I'd put ours somewhere on the list of most annoying, and definitely at the very bottom of the list for smartest-sounding.

And yet, the 2,000 Americans surveyed did not agree, ranking Canada in the top 5 for the best accent, the sexiest accent, the smartest sounding accent and the most trustworthy.

The Canadian accent took spot number two on Preply's list of the most trustworthy, with two in five (or 38 per cent) of Americans deeming this accent reliable. About 15 per cent said that someone speaking in a Canadian accent would seem more trustworthy to them than others.

We came in at spot number four for the best overall, behind England, Australia and France, which does explain a lot in terms of where Americans are at in judging accents.

Canada also took fourth place for the sexiest accent, though it's important to note that American men find Canadian accents sexier than American women do.

For the least-sexy accents, Welsh, Korean and South African took the top three spots, and the most-annoying accents were awarded to China, India and Germany.

Strange enough, the Welsh accent was ranked number 1 for "least annoying", despite also ranking number one for both "least intelligent" and "least trustworthy."

Lead photo by

James Tworow


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