This woman does 17 British accents (well, she cheats a bit and jumps over the Irish Sea a couple times). I’m an American, and a Yankee at that, so I’m a poor judge, but a few of them sounded a bit off. Also, I know she isn’t hitting all the variations: there were people all over the UK who’d say something to me in a particularly thick local speech variant, and it just sounded like Dutch being gargled through a misfiring diesel engine, to me, and that was just Alan Moore.
See? All quite mild and pleasant and not hard to listen to at all.
I’m English (from Alan Moore’s hometown) and live in Wales, and she gets worse as she goes north. She’s ok on Devon/Cornwall, but the rest of it is a shambles, to be honest.
Eleven!
Sorry – I’m British -born in Manchester and now live in Dorset. All those accents were shite.
What a load of tosh. (And no, she didn’t get the west-country on e right either, contrary to #1.)
Maybe it’s because she’s speaking to camera, but none of those accents sounded particularly natural.
Alan Moore’s accent is perfectly understandable to me, but then I grew up on that side of the country. Some of the old lads who were still alive when I was a kid in Lincolnshire were almost entirely unintelligible to my ears, though. I think radio, and later television, did a lot to mellow everyone’s accents.
Without even watching that video, I gotta admit that I am totally lousy at understanding British accents. I love British humor (Monty Python, Are You Being Served, I.T. Crowd, Yes Prime Minister, Moone Boy, etc.) and drama (Holmes(Brent), and whatnot: Sherlock (Cumberbatch)) and such (Graham Norton), but when I watch on TV, gotta activate the CC, in order to read what they’re sayin, cuz my ears are so trodden with Merican Language (fraid to even call it English).
I know it is a false aphorism, but in my ears: all too relevant: “Britain v. America; divided by a common language.”
Considering her examples (Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey) was she even trying to do actual accents or were those movie accents?
I don’t know about English accents, but when movies/series do dialects over here, they only ever resemble the actual thing.
And then there’s Scots. I was working in Geneva when Ken Loach’s My Name Is Joe, set in Glasgow, came out. At the movie theater where we watched it, it was screened with the original soundtrack. I swear that most of the Glaswegian would have been entirely incomprehensible to me without the help of the French subtitles.
Mind you, the translations weren’t always literal. At one point, Joe tells the female lead something like “You’re the lady who thinks the sun shines out of her arse”; the subtitle, translated into English, was something like “you think you were removed from Jupiter’s thigh” (presumably a French idiom…).
Yeah, no. Particularly unimpressed by her geordie. And where was the estuary?
leerudolph #8:
Dionysus was supposed to have been sewn into Jupiter’s thigh as a foetus, and then born from there. So the term is equivalent to ‘God’s gift,’ in English.
se croire sorti de la cuisse de Jupiter
I think that I can do all those accents as well as her, and I’m not good at it at all. I’ll bet my shirt that she can’t do most Scottish accents,. r I have relatives in rural Aberdeenshire.,and I’m afraid that I cannot communicate with them at all – they might as well be speaking Icelandic to me. A Geordie accent (from Newcastle), thought by many to be difficult, is a model of clarity compared. All her accents are a bit of ‘Dick Van Dyke cockney’.
Cringeworthy. Good job she left so many out.
Yeesh, I’m just an American who watches too much British TV, but right from the get go that was painful to watch. Even her RP is crap and it only gets worse as she tries to do the regional accents.
Oh, and I’ve never had any trouble understanding Alan Moore, or northern accents in general. Scouse is a totally different story.
Peter Sellers does it better
Try this one instead:
Amusingly, the youtube comments on the Peter Sellers effort are also all cussing him out for not getting anything right.
I once met a young woman at a party who did a sizable collection of accents from the South(ern USA). I couldn’t help but think: who gives a rip? Who is the audience for this, that can distinguish and appreciate the differences?
@14 dysomniak – Alan Moore’s is not a northern accent. He’s from Northampton which is East Midlands and a lot closer to London than any northern city. I try to use the Game of Thrones guide to regional accents but I think they’ve skipped Northampton so far?
It blows my mind how well some people can read accents. I’ve had people from New Zealand tell me I was from all over the UK with trans-Atlantic overtones and a distinct association with northern England. So accurate, and yet, due to said background, I can’t distinguish Mancunian from North Californian.
There are still many regional accents in Britain but they seem to be slowly dying off. When I go back home to visit my parents in rural Sussex, I notice that fewer people seem to speak the way they did when I was young. I suppose this is a consequence of globalisation in the same way that many languages are becoming extinct. I miss the old Sussex accent, but it’s fast disappearing. Now everyone speaks Estuary English.
I attended a baseball game in Toronto’s Skydome, and some other fans there asked if I was as Newfie.
It’s funny how in that Peter Sellers video (comment 15) he doesn’t even bother with Birmingham. He just kind of mentions it and seems to just think “well I can’t do that, I’ll just miss it out”. He’s clearly much more at home with the London accents.
I thought the original video was pretty good. Sure it’s a whistlestop tour of accents in the UK, but that’s all it ever claims to be. A party piece.
I would note that Northern Ireland is part of the UK. It’s just not part of Britain. Heck, that’s what the ‘united’ bit means. That it’s part of the kingdom despite being across the sea. The only bit where she cheats is when she crosses the border into the Republic of Ireland and she immediately acknowledges that one.
You’re not dissing the Geordies now, are you? I can understand them perfectly well. It’s only a few Glaswegians’ English I struggle with, and naturally on the rare occasion that I encounter a Scot who can speak one of the Scottish languages I can’t understand a thing.
Anne Fenwick:
Someone once confidently and triumphantly declared that I’m from Manchester when I was speaking Japanese. I was amazed… because I’m not from Manchester.
johnlee:
Yeah, I remember the Sussex accent fondly, because of my mother and her family. But I was down in Bristol today, and the Bristol accent still seems widespread there, so estuary hasn’t triumphed in the west country yet.
That wasn’t a Glasgow accent!
Once, years ago, my mom and dad took us to Europe and we landed at Glasgow. My dad rented a car but got lost in the parking lot–he couldn’t find the exit (don’t ask, we’re from Ohio). So he asked several locals for directions.
Incredible efforts at communication ensued, but all proved unsuccessful. *Those* were Glasgow accents.
(My baby brother eventually spotted the exit, and that is the only reason I am not still in Glasgow today.)
I love the intertubes but goodness me how people love to be nasty. I thought the video was pretty damn good, reasonable to good accents and nice humourous touches throughout. Four stars plus.
Alan Moore is from Northampton, same as me! Surely my accent is perfectly understandable … >:( Although he lives in the town centre and it’s a bit different in the suburbs.
Srsly, try this one (apparently the bloke doing it is a language coach?????)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8
I really want to know if youse lot think it’s better or not.
opposablethumbs #28:
The ones I regularly interact with, he gets pretty much right; though of course variations within those broad regions exist.
I wonder why they all seem to skip Brummy and the various other Midland accents.
I’m not British but have been watching British TV shows for years now and I could tell several of those were way off.
Also, does she call her Carol Cole instead of Cheryl Cole?
As long as I never have to listen to David Tennant do an American accent again, the Brits can go ahead and sound like anything they like. Oh, and how come nobody’s said “Lots of planets have a North”?
I’m from the Home Counties, so I don’t have an accent, PZ.
PZ, please read this and consider responding, I’m boiling over here !
You stated “well, she cheats a bit and jumps over the Irish Sea a couple times”
– before I even watched it, I thought to myself, she probably did an NI accent and an RoI accent and PZ has got this caveat wrong !
– watched it…yep ! She did a Northern Irish accent and an Irish accent (I am from NI, for me, stating ‘Irish accent’ ONLY EVER means from the Republic). So, in stating ‘a couple times’, you are wrong. To make the obvious explicit – Northern Ireland IS a part of the United Kingdom and IS a British accent. So your ‘couple times’ is wrong, it was ONCE she strayed from doing a British accent and did an Irish one.
Trivial in the scheme of things this certainly is, but to a NI boy as I am, and given the history there, this matters…a response would be appreciated…
In any case, take care, good man.
Nurnord, you do realize being part of the UK and part of Britain isn’t the same? The country’s official name separates them, as it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While it’s not incorrect to use British to refer to the Northern Irish (it’s commom usage for convenience’s sake), it’s not incorrect to exclude them either and use Britain or British to refer only to mainlanders. It’s a bit of a linguistic mess.
Speaking as someone relatively good at accents (I’m a natural mimic, and languages are porn for me), I don’t do Brummie because it’s hard to do at all well, so many vowel shifts.
And trying to keep the Yorkshire out of my Lancashire is tricky, while Cumbria is quite tough. Geordie and Weegie are the hardest, I find.
Scots accents aren’t that hard generally, but it’s not easy to keep myself out of Leith.
Gotten much, much better at Welsh since Dr Who and Torchwood started filming in Cardiff and environs.
It does, as noted above, make a pretty good party piece. :)
Do mind that accents are not dialects! Someone can speak a dialect and then speak standard English with an accent stemming from that dialect. The dialect may be hard to comprehend, but the accent itself, being merely a variety of Standard English, should generally be comprehendable!
@Daz#29, I thought they sounded reasonably recognisable too.
(Recommended viewing, perhaps, for anyone who happens to be curious and wants to hear a few accents – English only, though, except for one – Auf Wiedersehen, Pet? Let me see, they had Geordie (trans for non-Brits: from Newcastle), Brummie (Birmingham – well, Wolverhampton apparently; I’d never be able to tell), Scouse (Liverpool), South-West (I don’t know enough to be more precise; the sleeve notes say Bristol), cockney (London) … what else did they have? I can’t remember. Oh, and of course one Scot – the villain! How could I forget!)
opposablethumbs #37:
Yeah twas Brizzle. Ut gets more layd baack as thee moves wes’ard.
nurnord @33
Looking at my atlas I see two large islands west of the North Sea (or Germanic Sea if you’re Kaiser Wilhelm II). One island is labeled “Great Britain” (interestingly I couldn’t find an island called “Less Britain”) and the other island is “Ireland.” There’s a stretch of water between these two islands labeled “Irish Sea.” Upon closer examination of Ireland I saw an area in the north of the island called “Northern Ireland.” To get from Great Britain to Northern Ireland would involving crossing the Irish Sea. So it appears that you need to study geography a bit more since you seem confused on the physical location of Northern Ireland.
Al Dente, the part of the world you’re looking at there is formally “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
I love the idea that a west country accent is best typified by Samwise Gamgee played by a ‘mercan and Hagrid played by a Scot, both as fictional as her accent(s). I can do lots of accents too but somehow they all sound Scottish.
Moggie @40
Politically Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Geographically it’s part of the island of Ireland, along with a different political entity, Éire. nurnord @33 was claiming that one didn’t have to leave Britain (a wholly separate geographical location from Ireland) to hear a Northern Irish accent. I was pointing out xir geographical versus political confusion.
Oh dear, further ignorance in response to my point above regarding British accents ! You know, as stated, I am from Northern Ireland originally, I REALLY do know the ins and outs of these terms etc. !
—
1. Comment 34 Alan Boyle
a) “being part of the UK and part of Britain isn’t the same”
– ‘Britain’ has a number of interpretations and modern usages. It may only refer to the fuller name ‘Great Britain’ (England, Scotland and Wales). OR it may refer to the UK as a whole – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ! These 2 are both used and are considered valid.
b) “The country’s official name separates them, as it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”
– As you will (or should be able to !) note from point a), I know this very well. BUT, that does not have any bearing on how the term ‘Britain’ is applied.
c) “While it’s not incorrect to use British to refer to the Northern Irish (it’s commom usage for convenience’s sake), it’s not incorrect to exclude them either and use Britain or British to refer only to mainlanders. It’s a bit of a linguistic mess.”
– the only mess here is your invalid distinction and decree on what to use when ! But before I even correct you, do you not see the contradiction in what you stated here ?! You opposed my original comment on this article about British applying to Northern Ireland, yet right here you stated “While it’s not incorrect to use British to refer to the Northern Irish” I mean, sort your own confusion out before asserting others are confused ! Now then, let me respond to this statement. It is NOT merely used ‘for convenience’, it is used because it is the correct term; ‘British’ is the demonym for a native of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). And on this part “it’s not incorrect to exclude them either and use Britain or British to refer only to mainlanders”. Wrong again ! Well, for the latter term, British, that is (using Britain to refer solely to GB is valid, as I stated above). It IS incorrect to exclude Northern Irish citizens from the term British, because as already stated, British is the synonym for a native of the UK, of which NI is a constituent country !
Please read this through and realise your ignorance.
Oh dear, further ignorance in response to my point above regarding British accents ! You know, as stated, I am from Northern Ireland originally, I REALLY do know the ins and outs of these terms etc. !
—
Comment 39 Al Dente
“Looking at my atlas I see two large islands west of the North Sea (or Germanic Sea if you’re Kaiser Wilhelm II). One island is labeled “Great Britain” (interestingly I couldn’t find an island called “Less Britain”) and the other island is “Ireland.” There’s a stretch of water between these two islands labeled “Irish Sea.” Upon closer examination of Ireland I saw an area in the north of the island called “Northern Ireland.” To get from Great Britain to Northern Ireland would involving crossing the Irish Sea. So it appears that you need to study geography a bit more since you seem confused on the physical location of Northern Ireland.”
– ? What ?! NONE of my response to PZ was in regard to physical geography ! It was all about terms of usage i.e. ‘British’. He made a point about jumping over the Irish sea in regard to using British accents, here is the opening sentence “This woman does 17 British accents (well, she cheats a bit and jumps over the Irish Sea a couple times).” This implicitly suggests that in jumping to the island of Ireland, she did a ‘couple’ of non-British accents. My whole point was to spell out that doing a Northern Irish accent IS British !
Good grief, you are not even addressing the point made, never mind coming up with valid criticism !
Oh dear, further ignorance in response to my point above regarding British accents ! You know, as stated, I am from Northern Ireland originally, I REALLY do know the ins and outs of these terms etc. !
—
Comment 42 Al Dente (again !)
“nurnord @33 was claiming that one didn’t have to leave Britain (a wholly separate geographical location from Ireland) to hear a Northern Irish accent”
– Well I was NOT, actually, but as you brought that up, of course you don’t have to leave Britain to hear an NI accent ! But I need to spell out why to you, as you are very confused over all this.
– First, as there are several usages of the term ‘Britain’, “a wholly separate geographical location from Ireland” is NOT correct as an absolute statement. Read my comment 43 response to comment 34 to see your error here. BUT moreover, whatever the term applies to, do you think there might be Northern Irish in Britain by whatever definition and that therefore one does not have to leave there in order to hear an NI accent ?! I myself am evidence of that – from NI now living in England and so Britain, as used to apply to England, Scotland and Wales contains someone with an NI accent !
Once again, the ignorance stands corrected.
Does anyone else have a VALID point against ANY of my corrections ?!
Not sure I understand the objections to nurnord’s point. I’ve always included NI in ‘British.’ I agree the terminology is a bit mixed up, but in the absence of ‘Uk-ian’ as an adjective, there’s no other inclusive description available.
Al Dente @39:
Well, we could pedantic this to death, but geographically ‘the British Isles’ includes Ireland. Of course, the Irish don’t consider themselves British, but a lot of Northern Irish do. And they are British citizens. Usage needn’t reflect geography.
Sorry, but you said @33
You may argue that the Northern Irish accent, despite the name, isn’t actually an Irish accent but somehow is transmogrified into a British accent even though it’s spoken in Ireland, not Britain. That doesn’t change the fact that to get to Northern Ireland from Great Britain one has to cross the Irish Sea. That’s what PZ said and which I was arguing. I know you Norn Ironish were headstrong about being British (despite what those Ulster Catholics might think) but you are physically separated from Britain. That’s all I was saying.
Al Dente @48: What PZ wrote:
The ‘cheats a bit’ tells me PZ doesn’t consider either accent* British. Which is fine, but many people do consider one of those to be British. And that was, I believe, nurnord’s point.
*There are, of course, more than two Irish accents, but one nitpick at a time!
Her Yorks sounds like the Dales folk in All Creatures Great and Small, but not so much like my city-bred relatives up there (Bradford and Middlesbrough).
For a true West Country accent, listen to archaeologist Phil Harding on Time Team. He’s not an actor.
Billy Connolly has a real Glasgow accent, although I think when he’s at home with his mates, it’s a lot thicker than when he’s on stage. I also had a problem with her using Robert Burns as an example of a Highland accent. Burns lived all his life in Ayrshire. The Ayr accent is even less understandable than the Glasgow one, to me.
Comment 48 Al Dente
“You may argue that the Northern Irish accent, despite the name, isn’t actually an Irish accent”
– I did NOT argue that; I stated a personal distinction between Irish and Northern Irish accents in name, I (as a unionist) choose to only ever refer to Irish accents if spoken by someone from the Republic, not anywhere in NI.
“but somehow is transmogrified into a British accent even though it’s spoken in Ireland, not Britain”
– You are STILL not taking in what I wrote ! Read my comments about terms.
“That doesn’t change the fact that to get to Northern Ireland from Great Britain one has to cross the Irish Sea.”
– Again, geography is irrelevant here, I stated this already.
“That’s what PZ said and which I was arguing.”
– Jesus Christ ! I have made this clear to you already; my whole point is that crossing to the island of Ireland DOES NOT necessarily mean there are no ‘British’ accents there ! ANY Northern Irish accent IS, IS, IS British !
“I know you Norn Ironish were headstrong about being British (despite what those Ulster Catholics might think) but you are physically separated from Britain. That’s all I was saying.”
– and you are STILL wrong ! Read AGAIN the distinctions I made about terms, ‘Britain’, by one definition and common usage REFERS to the WHOLE UK ! By another definition and usage it only refers to England, Scotland and Wales. A THIRD way would include the entire British Isles, a term until now I have not introduced – that is both islands in their entirety.
– Now, in labouring your geography fetish, you have made no acknowledgement of its irrelevance to the original point I made about ‘British’ accents. Nor have you bothered to acknowledge much else of my responses to you. Ahh…so much ignorance, my head hurts…
Comment 49 Rob
Al Dente, you would be well served to read this bit “The ‘cheats a bit’ tells me PZ doesn’t consider either accent* British. Which is fine, but many people do consider one of those to be British. And that was, I believe, nurnord’s point.”
– indeed, it was ! BUT, it is NOT fine – if he does think this, that is factually wrong. ‘Many people’ part is irrelevant, facts are facts, just as ‘many people’ consider evolution to be a hoax etc., this does not make them right !
—
I would still welcome ANYONE finding a single piece of anything I said in any comment here to be inaccurate…
nurnord
Why don’t you use blockquotes?
Why do you put spaces before ! and ?
Al Dente
Hawaii is a Polynesian island group. Should Hawaiians therefore not be referred to as American? (A word just as useless as ‘Britain’ for politico-geographical purposes, but ho-hum.)
—————————————————————
nurnord
When quoting:
<blockquote>Paste quoted text here</blockquote>produces:Also please be aware that ALL CAPS is considered to be shouting, in most online interaction. To emphasise,
<em>this produces emphasised text<em>thusly; this produces emphasised text and<strong>this produces strongly emphasised text</strong>thusly; this produces strongly emphasised text.It’s worth bearing in mind that, in the U.K, it is a matter of regional pride that no-one else can properly replicate one’s accent. The more accurate you are in your attempt, the more minutely your speech will be dissected in the search for shibboleths. On the other hand, there is no such thing as a British accent. The Newcastle accent is as unlike a South London accent as it is a New Jersey. American attempts at a generic “British Accent” are often a bizarre mix of RP and cockney.
You people are not paying attention to what I’m saying. I’d appreciate it if you refuted what I say instead of some shit that only exists in your head. Let me explain again for the hard-of-thinking jingoists:
1. Northern Ireland is POLITICALLY part of the United Kingdom.
2. Northern Ireland is GEOGRAPHICALLY located on an island called Ireland.
3. The United Kingdom consists of the island of Britain, several assorted minor islands, and part of Ireland. Therefore Britain and the United Kingdom are not identical.
4. Most of the rest of the United Kingdom is on a completely different, physically separate island called either Britain or Great Britain (Daz still hasn’t told me where Less Britain is, but since geography doesn’t seem to be something Britons are too familiar with).
5. To get from Britain to Ireland involves crossing the Irish Sea.
6. Some Northern Irish, aka Ulstermen, are so adamant that they’re British, despite not living in Britain, that they whine when someone points out that they don’t happen to live in Britain.
nunord, you can have the last whine because obviously whining is important to you, the facts be damned.
‘Great Britain’ (not ‘Britain’) is the largest island of the British Isles. (The word ‘great’ is used in the sense of ‘large.’ )
‘Britain’ is, both politically and geographically, a useless term in any real sense, although in terms of usage it is pretty much synonymous with ‘UK.’
The adjective describing something having to do with the UK is ‘British.’
Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Therefore a citizen of Northern Ireland is British. And one may get from that part of the UK to the Republic of Ireland by crossing a land-border.
Comment 54 chigau
– because until I read the next comment I am responding to (Daz) I had no idea what that even meant let alone how to do it.
– spaces before ! & ?..Funny enough, until fairly recently, this is how I have always done it/seen it being done and always thought it looked ‘awkward’ and just wrong as!? instead of !? But then I started to see it as!? more and more mostly online and this now seems quite normal. But my ways are my ways, it still looks daft/awkward/wrong as!? rather than !?
Comment 55 Daz
– thank you…as for caps, well I suppose I was shouting, fuming !
I’ve run across old books where the printer seemed to have inserted a small space before some punctuation marks. (0.2 em, I’d guess, as that’s the width of the HTML thin-space.) Not a good idea online though, because if the text wraps to a new line at the end of the word, you end up with the punctuation mark occurring at the beginning of a new line.
Comment 57 Al Dente
– Point 3. is not ‘absolutely’ correct when you consider that the term ‘Britain’ (here I go again stating this AGAIN !) means several things, just read my remarks about this. By absolutely I mean in every sense that the term can mean. By one definition ‘Britain’ and the UK ARE identical…ah Christ, here it is for you once again…
Britain may mean
a) England, Scotland, Wales (aka Great Britain)
b) England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland (aka UK)
– Point 5. is therefore also not absolutely correct for the same reason; since Britain ‘can’ mean the UK and therefore NI, one must only take a few steps over the border to get to Ireland from Northern Ireland. Here, I am using Ireland to mean RoI, this is common usage especially in NI by unionists like myself.
Point 6. I simply have to quote first
“Some Northern Irish, aka Ulstermen, are so adamant that they’re British, despite not living in Britain, that they whine when someone points out that they don’t happen to live in Britain.
nunord, you can have the last whine because obviously whining is important to you, the facts be damned.”
– I already made this factual point, but here it is again – ‘British’ is the demonym for citizens of the UK, Northern Ireland is a constituent country of the UK, so they (I) am a British citizen. These ARE facts, your ignorant comment is what can be damned.
When I was a kid, I sometimes used to address envelopes of birthday cards (not mailed) thusly:
name & address
Glasgow
Stratclyde
Scotland
Great Britain
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The British Isles
Little did I know that one day it would form the basis for an entire thread of debate and pedantry on the Intertubes…
Comment 58 Daz
Just noticed after posting my above response that you covered some of it already…perhaps Al Dente can take the correction from someone else as he/she seems unable to comprehend what I present. Take care.
Right I have chicken breasts in the oven here, so I must eat !
What Tacitus said, plus:
Europe
The Earth.
Sol System
Western Spiral Arm
Milky Way Galaxy
Only I usually put it on the flyleaves of books, following ‘This book belongs to…’
Ah, nostalgia.
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
I learned this for myself 5 or 6 years ago by using a search engine.
Do they have those in UK/GB/NI?
That’s because it’s not an island. It’s Brittany, for good historical reasons.
Comment 67 chigua
Did it work ?
Search engines ? How do you find those ?
It worked, your sarcasm aside, I thank you once more…from the British Isles.
nurnord
You’re welcome.
Is this your first day on the Internets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine
…
‽
…
I spelled your nym correctly by copy/pasting.
Try it.
chigau – oh come on, ‘search’ engine & ‘find’ those ?! Get it now ?!
Ok, I see that you put !? in the same place (clever, how ?), but what does this mean ‘I spelled your nym correctly by copy/pasting.’
Try it. ?
nurnord
In your comment #69, you spelled my nym “chigua”.
That was incorrect and rude.
The overlaid ! and ? is an interrobang
hex 203D
Use a search engine, you’ll find it.
Thank you, David Marjanović @68, for explaining about “Less Britain.”
Comment 73 chigau
– well it was of course incorrect, but rude ?! Anyway, my apologies. A new word for me; interrobang, looked it up, thanks.
nunrord
The rudeness is because you can’t be bothered.
Well this is turning unfriendly…do you think ‘can’t be bothered’ is the only possible explanation for misspelling something ? Really ? I think this entire thread exchange is exhausted.
Blimey! Her ‘party trick’ is not very good, is it? She lost me at the London accent, which was more Dick Van Dyke (spit) than your actual Londoner.
Actually, here is a dialect coach who is far, far better:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01slnp5
chigau @ 74:
chigau @ 77:
Consider this a draw and lay it off.
We were watching Inspector Murdoch last night. Any guesses as to Sgt. Lewis’ accent? It’s noticeably broader than Murdoch’s (of course, I don’t know if that’s the actor’s natural accent, or if the character is supposed to have come from a particular locale).
An illustration of how specific British regional accents are: some years ago my father and I were talking with my mother’s neurologist (long sad story beginning with “P”). After we’d got through the medical stuff, the doctor turns to Dad and says, “Right then: United or Park Avenue?”, to which my Dad replies without skipping a beat, “Oh, United of course”, and the doc replies “Good man, good man”. What I had noticed was merely that the neuro had a British accent. What he and my Dad had mutually recognized was that they both hailed from Bradford; hence the question about which local football club Dad supported.
Bear in mind this conversation took place in Canada — to which my parents had emigrated almost 50 years earlier.
#57:
Isn’t that basically what Estuary English is?
It was an obvious typo. You can’t seriously expect people to copy & paste six lowercase ASCII letters.
Some people automatically imitate their conversation partners without necessarily even noticing, so, when they move, they soon sound native to the new place. Others don’t do that, but want to blend in at the new place and try hard, with varying success, to learn it. Yet others hardly notice the accent is different; yet others notice but don’t care. And of course the same people can behave differently depending on local attitudes – most obviously when they’re mocked for their old accent or are instead told it’s prestigious or otherwise desirable.
Looks like your dad didn’t care much, and neither did his neighbours.
@84: Looks like your dad didn’t care much, and neither did his neighbours.
English accents in Toronto, in the 1950s? Not an issue — it was a very WASP place. In fact, English accents in Canada in general have never to my knowledge been seen as “Other”. For many people, it’s the Mother Country. Now if we’d been Italian, or Eastern European….
Of course, I never noticed my parents’ accents until a few years after Dad’s death when I saw a videotape of him speaking at his retirement. Having not heard his voice for a while, suddenly he became a Yorkshireman to my ears.
I don’t think there’s a lot in common with RP. Estuary English is basically the London accent with the ‘aitches’ restored.
Yes and British folks who attempt a generic American accent usually over-pronounce words and talk through their nose: a bizarre mix of trans-Atlantic and valley girl.
@82 How specific British regional accents are: There was a striking example of this in the late seventies, when a serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose. A tape was sent to the police, purportedly from the criminal, and gloating at their inability to catch him. From the accent, dialect experts were able to identify this man’s birthplace to within two miles, they claimed. Eventually the tape was found to be a hoax, but both the hoaxer and the real murderer were eventually caught. The hoaxer did indeed come from Sunderland, just where the experts had said.
She is about average at doing accents. The accents she does are broadly correct, instantly recognisable to a Brit. She doesn’t sound native British though, even at the beginning. She sounds Scandinavian to me.
David Marjanović (#84)
I did that once with a Scottish guy. I can’t do any kind of Scottish accent if I’m trying, but I managed one so convincing on accident that even though I’d said I was from the US, the guy stopped our conversation to make sure I wasn’t really from Scotland after all.
#57 @mikeedwards is absolutely correct: we take great pride in splitting the differences of our regional accents.
Her Yorkshire was … right (generously speaking) insofar as demonstrating its defining characteristics. Oddly, it fell into the common trap of portraying the accent as replete with the glottal “T” everywhere except where it should be. This is a t’travesty and a t’insult because it t’shows that you aren’t following even the t’basic meaning of the t’sentence.
I like the way she finished her video with a Texan accent. (Texas, right? Or Minnesota, maybe?)
@91 Yeah, this is common in the way the Finnish dialect of my area is handled here. “They just put ‘H’ everywhere, it’s not like there’s a pattern or something, right?” But yeah, accents are hard. I know I can’t do them, so I don’t even try…