Scouse is losing badly in this poll.
I saw a study some years back which showed how much our feelings towards accents are the product of social factors, rather than the sound itself.
In brief: recordings of 10 distinct British accents were played to four different audiences: inhabitants of the British-Isles * Anglophone people (ie US, Cananda, Aus & NZ) * Non-majority Anglophone (Singapore, HK, India) * & Rest-of-the-world. They were asked to rate them according to how much they like them.
The results for the British Isles audience went something like:
1. British Standard English (ie: the modern prestige spoken english - formerly RP / BBC-English)
2. Lowland Scottish
3. West Country
I cant remember how the middle order went, though a strong Ulster accent was in there somewhere, but the bottom three were...
8. Cockney
9. Birmingham
10. Scouse
When the voices were played to non-British Anglophone listeners, 1 & 2 were the same; the other results changed
a bit, but Cockney got promoted from 8 to 3.
For HK /Indian listeners something similar happened, but the bottom 8 became much more mixed up; and for the non-English speakers (ie, those likely to be judging just on auditory only terms - ie how much the sound appealed to them; only No. 1 retained its place and
Scouse came in third most popular.)
The conclusion was that the less someone knew about the socio-economics of the British Isles, the more the results showed variability from the native British view. In other words: people from the British Isles associate Scouse, Brummie and Cockney accents with low social prestige because they are/were deprived areas. A Canadian or New-Zealander will probably catch the BBC occasionally; is exposed to lots of British heritage TV & film and so will associate positive qualities to some well-represented accents (think Michael Caine & Bob Hoskins & Del-Boy's cockney), but less to others (West Country accents tend to be used in film to project honest-but-simple-minded characters).
This effect continues to the point where a Japanese who loves The Beatles and Sherlock, but can't actually speak English, assumes that Ringo and Benedict Cumberbatch must come from high status backgrounds, and someone who has had no real contact with English at all - say some Papa New Guinean highlander - who knows nothing about Wolverhampton's industrial decline, nor Black Sabbath, can think that Ozzy Ozbourne sounds more mellifluous than Richard Burton.
Anyway- so much for the theory. But
I have trouble with Scouse too.
Give me the sound of Mr Bean anyday.
