Hoity-Toity Posh People

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I don't know why but I always only associate posh people with English people

I don't think I'm being a racist when I do this but please excuse my ignorance if it comes across that way

Do posh people exist outside of England

I'm not talking about rich people here because you don't have to be posh to be rich. I'm on about hoity-toity posh people

I'll bite....

In Australia (roughly speaking) if your parents are from money and you went to a private school and you hang around in the same social circles, you will have a "posh" accent which (yes) sounds superficially "British", especially to a foreigner.

there is also a further divide between west Vs south Vs east coast

A lot of British/English migrants came to western Australia so people from the west have (overall) a more British sounding version of an Australian accent (more enunciation of each word). South Australians voices sound like a jumping kangaroo going up and down. And all along the east coast all the way up to northern Queensland and Northern territory have a typically nasal "Paul Hogan" accent which you typically hear in Melbourne and Sydney. this typical Australian accent comes from a mix of English cockney and London Irish (which ironically was also the source of the American southern accent however they sound completely different today because the American accent was from an earlier form of mass settlement of English from the 1600s and 1700s whereas settlement of Australia was much later in the late 19th century.

But this "posh" Australian accent still has a twang and to somebody from Britain still sounds "Australian" and likewise I can't discern all the different English dialects other than broadly "cockney" Vs queen's English likely cultivated from posh British boarding schools resembling Hogwarts in Harry Potter.

I don't know if this has anything to do with accents. Of course, most of us wouldn't recognize the French or German version of a posh accent so we associate the concept with England. I personally don't care for posh English accents. It's my understanding Margaret Thatcher went to some sort of school to acquire one. I don't know why that didn't make her unpopular. I guess it's an English thing I'll never understand.

I spent an autumn in France and learned that when somebody has a certain sort of name e.g. du Merle or de la Verendrye everyone recognizes they're of noble background and sometimes they are made to feel conspicuous if they go into a shop or other business and are required to give their name. The same is probably true in Germany. However, I wouldn't say there was any particular accent associated with that. Most people in France speak a standard version of the language. The only sort of accents they have are regional but there aren't really any dialects any more. If you're a foreigner learning French, you'll probably understand most French people no matter where they're from, or you'll learn to in very little time.

In the US, there's the concept of being Preppy (or being a Blueblood) which relates to having a certain arrogant attitude and a sixth sense about a certain type of fashion that allows you to fit in. In many cities, there tends to be a certain group of families who were landowners at the time of Independence who maintain (or at least used to maintain) society visiting lists that identified which families belong. It seems like a pathetic attempt to emulate the idea of European nobility however people at least used to take that seriously. Apparently the 1920s writer F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to be accepted by Baltimore Society then left when wasn't. The other thing that has disappeared over the last 100 years is the "mid-Atlantic accent". You will hear this if you listen to recordings of the Roosevelts especially Eleanor. That was once considered the American version of a posh accent but it's a thing of the past. It didn't seem to discourage the Roosevelts' working-class constituents from voting for them. Of course they grew up talking that way. They didn't learn it in a school.

I found this, which seems to be the latest version of the Baltimore Society Visiting List although it may not be obvious to a casual observer.

https://societyvisitinglist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Media-Kit-2020.jpg

It may be possible people without impeccable ancestry can now be listed there, no idea.

Anyway the idea of poshness in England doesn't seem to have diminished in the slightest.

I used to have a posh accent as a child and teenager. Decades of SMI related social drift has changed that.

Everyone views British people that way.

Yeah I was talking about accents

i can't pick out a posh accent from any other English speaking country

I'm also talking about accents.
Posh/educated = British queen's English which is distinct accent from Cockney/dialects and broad Aussie accents.
prior to the 1970s in Australia if you wanted to work in broadcasting tv or radio or university or private school teacher it was expected you were educated in Britain and/or had a British accent.

Its all a matter of exposure. If you live in England you will be exposed to a different accent if you drive several miles into a different village.

I'm not sure about Canada/Canucks but Australians and New Zealanders (whom we affectionally call kiwis) still cringe at really broad local accents which is considered "working class" and "unrefined". In Australia we collectively associate broad working class accents with folks who live in certain postcodes, drive particularly loud vehicles, wear t-shirts sporting beer logos, tattoos and get into fisticuffs at public bars as bogans.

While the demarcation lines are blurring, bogans are still going strong.

In Canada and especially the USA, everyone thinks British people sound "posh". But thanks to an obscure British children's show I've realized the UK has many different types of English accents and dialects.

It doesn't seem to matter where you live, if you speak with any kind of heavy accent, people automatically think you're Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel.