Some of the most sensual accents—those that get our hearts racing—are, fittingly enough, Romance languages: Italian, Portuguese, and French.
The French accent has been considered for many years as being the sexiest accent in the world.
Let's face it, most of us are suckers for a sexy accent. According to a recent survey conducted by the popular dating website MissTravel.com, over 2000 American men and women regard Australian accents as one of the sexiest in the world.
The New Zealand accent has been rated the sexiest in the world, and that's sweet as bro! With almost 7000 languages in the world and even more varieties of accents and tones, the Kiwi accent came out on top in an extensive poll conducted by Big 7 Travel in April.
Although Australians and Kiwis might sound comparatively similar to the untrained ear, research has shown there is a distinct contrast in the pronunciation of vowels. Australians tend to pronounce their vowels with more emphasis on the sound [ee], whereas New Zealanders make more prominent [u] sounds.
The British Accent
The Great British accent proved to be the most difficult of all the accents to imitate – along with the regional Yorkshire and Cockney pronunciations, in particular.
Evolutionary theory suggests we find foreign accents attractive because they suggest a more exotic gene pool. Anyone who has travelled will know that simply being foreign makes you an object of interest in many places.
Option 1: the American accent
The most popular English accent of them all. Spread around the world by American cinema, music, television and more than 350 million North Americans (including Canadians, eh), this is the easiest accent for most people to understand, whether native speakers or non-native speakers.
Their own dialect is unusual and phonetically bizarre. They are isolated from all other accents of English. Immigration from other English-speaking countries, until fairly recently, was limited . And yet, as whole, they are the most accent-proficient actors on earth.
Australians have an accent that is often confused with New Zealand's dulcet tones. However, for those in the know, they are as distinct as Canadian and American accents. Kiwis have a tendency to flatten their vowels, and Aussies have more of a nasally twang.
"Standard southern English came to be what is called RP, Received Pronunciation, Oxbridge, that kind of accent.
British. More than half of respondents (52%) said they like the British accent, a greater percentage than for any other dialect. The British accent in general was the favorite across those who identified as men and women, and was also ranked among the sexiest and most trustworthy.
And Swedish accents are thought to be the most “intelligent” and “trustworthy” (24 percent and 15 percent, respectively).
British is the most likeable accent globally, with 45% of respondents stating they enjoy hearing their native language spoken with a British accent. First nested list itemPoland is the only country where a British accent isn't the most popular accent - in Poland, the American accent is most popular.
But new research shows that they're not just taking it all in; they're participating. From the moment they're born, babies are, in their own way, communicating in the language of their families: Even before they have words, they have accents.
This ingrained linguistic prejudice has led to studies showing that people consistently rate those with standard accents or 'prestige' accents as being more competent, intelligent, effective communicators and better suited to high status professional jobs.
No matter where in the world they come from, visitors to Australia often remark about the difficulty in understanding the language. People from non-English speaking backgrounds who may have had the chance to study English at home still struggle to comprehend the Aussie vernacular and accent.
There's two types of english speaking accents, rhotic and non-rhotic. One reason the Australian accent is so hard to imitate is because it's a combination of these. An example are the words “can” and “can't”. We say can the rhotic way “caan” and can't the non-rhotic way “cahnt”.
One reason Swedish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn is the large number of cognates the two languages share (cognates are words in different languages that stem from the same ancestral language and look and/or sound very similar to one another).
Bro – ah, an absolute Kiwi staple. Bro is short for brother and is used to describe your best mates (as well as your actual brother). Probably one of the most used Kiwi slang terms and one of our favourites.
Use kia ora to wish someone well as a greeting or farewell, to say thank you, to affirm support, or to say a friendly 'cheers'. You can also use kia ora to answer the phone or start an email. It's really important to acknowledge a person.
Kia Ora is a greeting many people outside of New Zealand are familiar with. It can mean a lot of things, too! Kiwis use it to say hello, good morning, good luck, and take care. It's essentially an all-encompassing way to wish someone well.