Are accents important?
Yes they are.
But only sometimes.
We all have accents.
This link should be of interest to native English speakers and those learning English.
and add your comments and opinions. 
8 Answers
I understand all of the accents there because I watch a lot of movies and news from BBC. I like each of one, but especially the RP. (Received Pronunciation) I just think it's beautiful.
This is a great site for those learning English too and it's free.
I'm wondering if the questioner meant "tildes" or written accent marks. I did a whole study on that for the group about a month ago, If she means that, maybe I or someone else can go dig it up.
The short answer is: Yes they are, and they are an important part of the spelling in Spanish.
The accents of the educated professional middle classes of capital cities do tend to be well reputed, e.g. London, Madrid, Paris etc. However, I'm not sure if they do actually constiture clearer versions of the languages that they represent, or if they only possess these reputations by virtue of the prestige bestowed upon them by capital city status.
Certainly in the case of English, I would argue that the Southern English accent is harder for many foreigners to learn to pronounce because of the many unusual sounds that it contains, including many vowel diphthongs and the funny final 'R', which to the ear of a Scotsman sounds as though these Southerners don't really know what to do with 'R'. In Scotland, by comparison, folk use a 'trilled' or 'rhotic' 'R', making it much easier for us to emulate, for example, Spanish, Russian and some German accents. Of course, we also possess the palatal fricative sound found in our word 'loch' ('lake'), which many English find hard to copy, yet which makes it much easier for us to pronounce 'j'/'g' in Spanish, 'ch' in German words like 'Nacht' or 'g' in Dutch (and it's also similar to the French 'R' in some French accents).
Scots vowels tend to be quite pure and non-diphthong, making them easier for foreigners to emulate. We use fewer vowels than exist in standard English, hence, for example, we pronounce 'full' and 'fool' the same (most Scots can recognise that the English use two quite distinct sounds here, but we find it almost impossible to replicate them).
In one recent survey it was concluded that of all the inhabitants of the British Isles the Invernesians (inhabitants of Inverness in the Highlands) speak the purest, easiest to understand English.
Of course, against this, there exist in Scotland numerous dialects and much non-standard vocabulary. Scots English is recognised as a particular dialect, whereas Scots (not the same as Scots English) is regarded by some scholars as a separate language and by others as merely a distinct dialect of English (Scots was the language in which Rabbie (Robert) Burns wrote, and should not be confused with Scots Gaelic, which is indisputably a foreign language, belonging to the Celtic family like Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish & Breton (sadly Scots Gaelic is dying; there are only about 80,000 speakers left, and of those not all are fluent)). Whatever, many Scots use a mixture of both Scots English and Scots, and this does often confuse foreigners. For example, the Glaswegian dialect has a particular reputation for being hard to follow (to be frank, even I struggle at times, and I was born in Glasgow ¡!).
Please follow the link below.
A lady from the deep south of the U S A came to visit in South Africa. We were watching a TV program in South African English. She asked me what language they were speaking. ha.
I love accents all of them but sadly I do not have one myself me myself I . 
Quite interesting.
I've been trying to find a video of a TV advert/commercial that was broadcast in the UK in the 1980s of 1990s featuring a young Englishman conversing with an elderly mechanic in rural USA (I think the politically incorrect term would be 'redneck'). I can't find it. I think it may have been for a British chocolate bar called 'Drifter', which used the catchphrase, 'Catch my Drift ?' in its advertising slogans. The humour consists of the Englishman speaking very clearly in proper English, yet the old mechanic can't understand him, while nothing he himself says is comprehensible until at the end, he declares, 'Shpeak English, bwoahy !!'. However, here's another advert for Drifter along the same lines:
And here's one that compares various European languages with some perhaps rather unfair exposition of German:
If you're interested in the Scottish accent, you could do little better than the TV ads for Irn Bru (Scotland's other national drink), of which there are many (& they often get banned soon after initial broadcast):
When I initially saw the title to this post, I too, like Dani, thought it was a reference to 'tildes', although the linked video and subsequent comments would seem to indicate otherwise.
I do find tildes helpful in Spanish. However, I've known people to learn Spanish without learning how to use them, and one girl I knew, who had become quite advanced, expressed surprise when I asked about them, and even disputed me that they exist (presumably she had only learnt from audio discs and her Spanish boyfriend, without ever looking at a book).
I would be interested to know the history of their use in written Spanish. Certainly I would suggest they are very useful but not essential. English, like Spanish, is a stressed language, yet doesn't use them, and there are many example of pairs of English words that appear identical on paper, yet which are pronounced differently in the spoken language to render different meanings, e.g. record and record...
