[gerdesj]

All countries/languages have multiple accents. My mother was from Devon (and the forties!) and could make herself nigh on unintelligible to me and my brother and I lived in Plymouth (Devon) for eight years.

You are probably familiar with the generic south west of England accent - "aarr me hearties" and all that fake pirate bollocks. Now listen to the greatest Cockney who ever lived - Dick van Dyke - "Cor blimey Mary Poppins. Very different accents. If you drift up north, why not take a detour via Wales - several accents, quite noticeable when put side by side. The midlands has the Black country "yam yam" and Brummie, go east and there is a whole host of the bloody things. Carry on up and you got "eee bah gum" - Yorkshire and more - bear in mind that Yorkshire alone has a larger population than each of the other nations of the UK and is rather more diverse than even many Yorkies think. Lancs, Mancs and Cheshire, oh and don't forget Liverpudlean (find a recording of the Beatles speaking - they are from Liverpool). Nip on up through Geordie land and Cumbria (Cumbric has only recently died out as another Brythonic language). The Borders, where England and Scotland blur somewhat and the it gets a bit tartan flavoured.

Scotland manages to deploy a lot of accents for roughly 5.5M people. Glasgow and Edinburgh are distinguishable for me and they are only about 50 miles apart. There's Aberdeeeeeen and Perrrrrth and many more!

Over in Ireland (the island) there are several accents. The Dublin "brogue" is considered the easiest accent for a foreigner to understand, which is quite ironic. The Republic of Ireland is home to multiple accents as is Northern Ireland (UK).

The accent that D van D deploys in Mary Poppins is generally known as "Mockney" and that pirate thing is a variety of "Mummerset". Mummer is an old word for actor and Somerset is in the south west of England. This comment is getting lengthy, so I won't delve into Cockney rhyming slang, which is worth looking up if you fancy a right larf, me old septic 8)

[yafbum]

In the English speaking world, high tolerance for accents does seem to be the norm. My experience is that there are also countries outside of it with a much stronger normative accent seen as the "right" way to speak the language.