It seems that the Scouse accent is seen as being the most unfriendly - according to an ITV poll.
Link to ITV:-
tinyurl.com/npd4knc
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I married a scouser and she stole my house.
With my foreign wife I had to completely dumb down my Salford accent or else she can't understand a single word I say. When I'm back in Manchester it takes a couple of days for my accent to return.
I love the Geordie accent, it makes girls so do-able. All Geordies walk backwards, as demonstrated at the end or that article.
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>> I love the Geordie accent, it makes girls so do-able. All Geordies walk backwards, as
>> demonstrated at the end or that article.
>>
That was Middlesbra, or is it the same place?
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>> That was Middlesbra, or is it the same place?
>
Yeah, same place as Sunderland init.
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They're Scots with all the generosity wrung out of them...
:-)
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I wonder what will top the dialect polls in 50 years time! - doubt any traditional British ones will survive much longer than that.
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I love the Norfolk accent, when I first met my wife I had to really concentrate on what she was saying as the accent foxed me rather alot, as did the words and expressions that I had never heard of - now I have adopted a fair few of them myself!
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>> I wonder what will top the dialect polls in 50 years time! - doubt any
>> traditional British ones will survive much longer than that.
No reason at all why not.
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>>No reason at all why not.
Red Squirrel syndrome perhaps?
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Oh I see
Clearly you have never heard second generation Pakistani youth with broad Bury accents, or East End cockney speaking chinese, how about Sikhs with broad Glasgow accents, (just like the Italians before them, But I guess they don't count in Devonite world or racism do they, because they are white)
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 28 Sep 13 at 16:32
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I do find myself speaking a bit differently depending on who I am talking to. I have to talk a bit slower than down south!. Interestedly though Londoners and people from the south East can generally understand every word I say, but people from the south West tend to struggle.
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Wrote a piece about British accents in French about 30 years ago. It started with Mrs Thatcher's and Edward Heath's accents and ended (something like)
"When two Englishmen, gazing into the distance, appear to be discussing the weather, each is listening not to the comments of the other but to his soul, via the architecture of his vowels. This characteristic must date from a time before history, before language itself, when beings who were not yet fully human were still uttering simple cries, like apes or parrots,' followed by a reference to the linguistics professor who had first commented on Mrs Thatcher's accent.
I still feel a bit smug about that after all these years. The Frogs adored it anyway.
Regional accents are great in my book. Of course they mutate over time - faster and faster - but they will still be there into the future. I really hope so anyway.
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I have a Geordie accent don't know why only took a flight from New Castle a couple of times.
Another strange thing when I have a cold no accent.My natural accent in dutch is the Rotterdam one.I like the way the Amsterdammer speaks easy going must be the pot smoking.
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>> I have a Geordie accent don't know why only took a flight from New Castle
>> a couple of times.
>>
>> Another strange thing when I have a cold no accent.My natural accent in dutch is
>> the Rotterdam one.I like the way the Amsterdammer speaks easy going must be the pot
>> smoking.
Used to work with a Dutch bloke who married a Jock lass from Greenock. He turned into someone who sounded like a mix of Johan Cruyff and Rab C Nesbit.
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I don't want to sound like Cruyff he lost his marbles a while back.>)
Last edited by: Dutchie on Sat 28 Sep 13 at 20:20
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The regional accents as they were are probably gone already. I have less of an ear for others than for my native West Riding, which has become very modified amongst younger adults and children. Dipthongs and southern vowels abound where they were never heard.
The Black Country accent seems very diluted now compared with that a chap from Cradley Heath I was in digs with 40 years ago. I expect much the same has happened with others.
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Travelling all over the country for work, I've found it easy to pick up a variety of regional accents - I find myself matching the person I'm speaking to a lot of the time but occasionally I let slip with an "oop" in place of an "up" when conversing with my Hertfordshire relatives.
The accent of my adopted part of the world is derived from the Yorkshire miners who settled here over 100 years ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Midlands_English
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>>The regional accents as they were are probably gone already. I have less of an ear for others than for my native West Riding, which has become very modified amongst younger adults and children. Dipthongs and southern vowels abound where they were never heard.
The Black Country accent seems very diluted now compared with that a chap from Cradley Heath I was in digs with 40 years ago. I expect much the same has happened with others.<<
This is exactly what I was getting at! - nothing to do with Devonite world, racism or just being white! - but as the multicultural population develops and increases, so does the language and the accents. In 50 years you cant expect a 2040 born person to sound like an 1890's rural farmer, which as stated in the article is where rural accents are best preserved.
T'wud (Cumbrian dialect) be like comparing a model T to today's Mondeo.
Red Squirrell syndrome covers all this with just 3 words !
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I could loan you my Quest For Fire DVD Sire, it is set in a time of 80,000 years ago when human language is a system of grunts, groans and gestures, not unlike today really :)
www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/
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A few years ago, I used to enjoy watching Rab C Nesbitt, but I had to have the subtitles on, because otherwise I simply couldn't what they were saying!
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He played a great character funny,one of my jobs was on a small tanker barge as a young lad.
Skipper was a similar type,wouldn't let me clean the cabin or deck, ship was a total mess.But we had some good laughs strange man do.
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I love the Irish accent and we have some Irish drivers here this weekend.
Getting them to part with their money for charity is a joy....
I just tell them to keep talking because I love to listen to their accent and sure enough the wallet comes out;)
Must try it on the Scots today!
Pat
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I spent the first eight years of my life with a 100% Irish accent which gradually disappeared as I became an East Ender. It's still programmed into me though, and I find that after a few minutes talking to an Irish person I revert back without even realising that I am.
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Interesting..I have a friend who wrote an academic paper on Code Switching - i.e. the enhanced ability to hold a conversation in different languages without an apparent effort. Guess accents might work in the same way.
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When I was at school I had a couple of friends from black families. They were either born here or came as toddlers and spoke with cockney accents when out of the house. When I visited their homes I was always surprised how they immediately reverted back to strong West Indian dialects when talking with their families, sometimes addressing me in one accent and their parents in the other during the same conversation.
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>> Interesting..I have a friend who wrote an academic paper on Code Switching - i.e. the
>> enhanced ability to hold a conversation in different languages without an apparent effort. Guess accents
>> might work in the same way.
My cousin's son does this. His father usually speaks to him in German and his mother in English. They have each spoken to him in their own language since he was born, even though my cousin works as a German/English translator and his German father has very good English.
Good idea that has endowed the son with complete fluency in both languages which will be very valuable to him I suspect.
Doesn't stop him playing computer games at the same time either.
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>> the enhanced ability to hold a conversation in different languages without an apparent effort.
My children do this, and it is truly effortless for them. I can do the conversation in different languages but I cannot switch quickly - I get totally confused. Equally since I speak both Portuguese and Spanish I often forget which word comes from which language - the children never do.
Makes the girls great at translating for others and me rubbish at it.
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>> I spent the first eight years of my life with a 100% Irish accent which
>> gradually disappeared as I became an East Ender. It's still programmed into me though, and
>> I find that after a few minutes talking to an Irish person I revert back
>> without even realising that I am.
Glad it's not just me then. I was born in the West Riding and lived there until 18/19 when my Civil Service posting required me to work in London. I retain flat vowels etc but my kids rag me incessantly about 'getting the Northern accent out' in Sheffield Leeds or Scarborough.
The odd colleague at work used to notice it too. He could tell when my phone conversations were with someone from God's own County.
Generally though, accents and dialects are becoming lost or weakened under the onslaught of TV etc. I can still tell Leeds from Sheffield or North Yorkshire. Hebridean Scots is very diferent from Central Belt with Lewis (harsh consonants and sibilant S) quite different to the near Irish pronunciation in Castlebay.
My colleague from Fife can identify local differences in Edinburgh, mildly mocking the 'Morningside' accent of one of the Ministerial appointees we were paid to serve.
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I'm originally from the Lancashire / Yorkshire border, and the accents and dialects change very rapidly over a few miles either way. My sister has lived on the wrong side of the border (Silsden) for the last 15 years or so, and I still haven't got used to her "new" accent.
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"'getting the Northern accent out' in Sheffield Leeds or Scarborough"
same with me Brompt. Was brung up in Scarborough and have gradually lost the accent but if ever I go back there or speak to someone up there it brings the accent back.
MrsW is from Wirral and has lost the (gentle) scouse accent (I used to think she was singing to me when she spoke!!) but hear her talking to her Mum or siblings and it comes back. Broad Scouse is (IMHO) coarse but Wirral scouse quite nice.
Incidentally, an old (auld) farmer who was next door neighbour to my uncle near Scarborough had such a broad local accent he was virtually incomprehensible to me who lived only 8 miles from him
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>> "'getting the Northern accent out' in Sheffield Leeds or Scarborough"
>>
>> same with me Brompt. Was brung up in Scarborough and have gradually lost the accent
>> but if ever I go back there or speak to someone up there it brings
>> the accent back.
>> MrsW is from Wirral and has lost the (gentle) scouse accent (I used to think
>> she was singing to me when she spoke!!) but hear her talking to her Mum
>> or siblings and it comes back. Broad Scouse is (IMHO) coarse but Wirral scouse quite
>> nice.
Very early in my CS career I worked with a lass from the Wirral who's accent was like that. Sort of posh scouse.
>> Incidentally, an old (auld) farmer who was next door neighbour to my uncle near Scarborough
>> had such a broad local accent he was virtually incomprehensible to me who lived only
>> 8 miles from him
Various relatives and neighbours of my Mother's family in the mining areas of Leeds were similarly difficult to follow.
The Newlands Valley Cumberland farmer at who's DB&B establishment my parents and subsequently family were regulars from fifties until seventies was incomprehensible until I was 10/11 and acquired ability to tune in.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 29 Sep 13 at 22:39
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There was a young mixed race woman on the box tonight, speaking very confidently, but in an accent that was totally unidentifiable.
It occurred to me that there are accents these days that are entirely synthetic, assembled from bits of other accents in some clique of girls or young women with a view to obliterating any sign of regional or class origin. The process is largely unconscious in most cases.
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>>
>> It occurred to me that there are accents these days that are entirely synthetic, assembled
>> from bits of other accents in some clique of girls or young women
I know someone utterly English, from Cranley, who from working in Hong Kong has aquired a kind of pseudo Australian/NZ/expat Chinese kind of accent. It's very weird and very irritating, because one knows it's entirely false.
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>> irritating, because one knows it's entirely false.
Synthetic, not necessarily 'false'. Acquisition of accents from the people around one tends to be unconcscious.
Not everyone has parrot skills, and most people avoid trying to sound (e.g.) 'posh' or 'tough' because they expect to be rumbled by the real thing.
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Don't Talk Like Him - Talk like Me! - BiggerBadderDave
