What's a European accent then?

Yesterday's thelondonpaper included a story headlined "An army of squatters moves into MoD flats". This par particularly struck me:

The squatters, who are mostly aged from their early 20s to mid 30s, milled about the site today, several of them speaking with European accents.


What on earth is a European accent? Birmingham is part of Europe, so perhaps all the squatters came from Birmingham.

But according to The Guardian's version:

Marcin, a 28-year-old from Poland, said: "There are people here from all over the world, Italians, Spaniards, South Africans, Portuguese."


There you go – detail. Much better.

3 comments:

lynneguist said...

I hadn't realized that South Africa was in Europe!

The Ridger, FCD said...

Ah, the old Britain-vs-the Continent scenario!

Though, yes, South Africa?

JD (The Engine Room) said...

To be fair, thelondonpaper did say that several of them were speaking with European accents, not all of them!

So in effect the paper said 'some of the squatters sounded like they were from somewhere in Europe'. Talk about precision...