Scottish/Irish Accents

[Sherry]

I started out thinking this was a silly thread and have ended up ordering Scotspeak!

I'll try to do a review of it later on

Graham, did you order it from here, http://www.countrybookshop.co.uk/bo...tfor=1899920013 , or did you find another retailer?

I look forward to your review.

Sherry

[Archangel]

going to agree with the learn one place at a time, Glasgow's not so bad for the accent, it's that they have a different language. Scottish accents can be separated by city blocks, let alone regions.
Mum's an actress, trained old school for radio before stage and coming to Canada. She does any accent and will have three character discussions by herself, with characters from different parts of UK. Her accent now is fairly neutral.
We'll get caught in pronunciations of words we don't often use. My daughter caught me last year when she asked me what CCR stood for and I realized that I've never said that out loud. She still starts laughing out loud remembering that.
Of course, she tries to have an accent and sounds like the lady in that Sean Connery Irish movie, I thinks she think she sounds like the lady in Thomasina.
Restless Natives accents make me nostalgic.


btw, I listened to the spoken Bible link and can only say I've never heard any one speak Scottish (accent) that slowly who wasn't near death. Any confirmation for contemporary Scotland.

[Graham]

Graham, did you order it from here, http://www.countrybookshop.co.uk/bo...tfor=1899920013 , or did you find another retailer?

I look forward to your review.

Sherry

yes Sherry, thanks for the link. Like you, I did a search and they seem to be the only place that sell the book and CD.
I'll let you know what i think of it.

[highlander_Daz]

he is speaking slowly presuambly so people can understand, and in a lot of places people speak fiarly slowly, again thats a Glasgow thing to speak very quickly, its a good opportunity for any to study becasue he is speaknig verys slowly, howevr there is a very distinctive English "geordie" twang to his accent which you often find in border accents, again its yet another example of one of many Scots accents.
Archangel -the lady in 3 lives of Thomasina was Susan Hampshire who now plays "Molly" in Monarch of the glen. when Monarch first started Molly had an English accent you could have cut glass with , now she has an Edinburgh "lilt"

[Graham]

I just got an email to say that it's been shipped, took them long enough, I'll report back when it arrives!

[Jimmy Carbomb]

What an absolutely fantastic thread! Nicely done... and one that's interesting.

My Grandfather has the classic Irish/Canadian accent. Lord, was he hard to understand?!!!

There was a show on PBS around May that was all about American dialects and accents. According to the narrator, the producers had identified some 90 unique dialects in the lower 48 states. By "unique", that means that Brooklyn and Jersey City are not all that different to garnish their own dialect... but North Boston and South Boston were a distinct difference. The East Coast and the Heartlands carried the load.

[Macman]

This whole thing on accents is great. I like to try to mimic most accents I hear, but I don't do it that well. The one accent I couldn't even try to mimic was from a guy at an Indian take-out in Edinburgh; he spoke English with a blend of East Indian and Scottish that I can't even begin to describe.
I have a client who was from Newfoundland, but had no trace of the typical Newfie accent. He sounded like he was from Tronna, and I guess it was from living in Ontario that he lost his Newfie accent.
My wife and her brother were both born in Brooklyn. He has a big, loud, New York voice and accent that I totally love. She has no discernable accent, to me anyway. When she tells people here in Victoria, B.C. that she's from New York City, they can't believe it.
Of course, I speak English with no trace of any accent whatsover!;)

[davedove]

I felt sort of sorry for some of the working people in London when I visited. As anyone who's been to London knows, many of the lower paying jobs like waiters are filled with people from Eastern Europe. So these people have learned to understand english as spoken by people from the London area. Then someone like me shows up with my southern midwestern US accent and they could hardly understand me.

[An t-Ileach]

A few years ago I was in the Post Office on The Promenade in Cheltenham (long story) buying stamps. As I was sticking them on my letters, this voice said over my shoulder in a thick nasal Brummie accent "Can I have some First Class stamps, please?". I glanced at him, and to my surprise he was a Sikh!

[Schultz]

My wife was born and bred in the Highlandtown neighborhood of "Bawlmer, Murlin" (That's Baltimore, Maryland) and has no discernable accent, even though both her parents have the classic Baltimore accent.

The real odd thing is that Miranda has a tinge of a Pittsburghese accent nowadays, just from hanging around me and my family.

I love accents and the study of them.