Irish people with English accents

Widdershins

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Wouldn't bat an eye to it.

Love England and their diverse selection of accents.

Apart from the north crowd, Newcastle, Sunderland Middlesbrough. Good God Almighty. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Too much shipyard thug for me. I find it very hard to understand these creatures.

Maybe actually we the Irish and the English both have something in common. We both hate our nordies, and both were former ship building regions.

They're salt of the earth and much warmer people up North in England. I wouldn't judge by their more rugged facade.

topper75

Yamanoto wrote: »

But that is what many Protestants in the State do by necessity. Due to the scattered and low-density demograpic, very few outside of Dublin have access to a local C of I secondary school - just 12 counties have them, with only six free second-level schools (and three of these are in Dublin and Wicklow).

As for the Anglo-Irish shipping their kids off to board in England, it's mostly because of tradition & it being considered the 'done thing' - much like many middle class Dublin professionals sending their sons to Rugby playing schools like Blackrock or St. Michael's. It's also giving your kids the best education you can afford & with respect to the three Protestant boarding schools in ROI, they'd be no match for the likes of Harrow, Westminster etc.

Sending your children to school in another land is nothing to do with a reformed Christian faith as an Irish person. Unless I haven't understood Luther's demands in full! :-) True there aren't many such schools here. But there certainly are enough. I know this because many have enrolled RC pupils and have done so for some time. I would refute, from my own experience, that the Irish CoI schools are lesser in quality somehow in comparison with English establishments. Unless you can elaborate on how?

dd972

Widdershins wrote: »

They're salt of the earth and much warmer people up North in England. I wouldn't judge by their more rugged facade.

Much rather listen to a Northern English accent then that dry, bland monotone they call Estuary English, they impart more warmth, wit and humour.

Del.Monte

dd972 wrote: »

Much rather listen to a Northern English accent then that dry, bland monotone they call Estuary English, they impart more warmth, wit and humour.

Yes, yes but it's well known that civilisation ends north of the Watford Gap - accents don't come into it.

indioblack

dd972 wrote: »

Much rather listen to a Northern English accent then that dry, bland monotone they call Estuary English, they impart more warmth, wit and humour.

You don't have to go all the way north - the West Country is closer. Where men are men, [and sheep get nervous].

pickarooney

Wibbs wrote: »

Hugh Laurie? Even to my non American ears his accent sounds below par and "off". There are far better examples of non American actors and actresses pulling off American accents. Going the other way is another matter. Vanishingly few American actors can pull off a British accent and certainly not an Irish accent. Denzil Washington can do a British one pretty well and Gwyneth Paltrow nailed it as well. The various Irish accents seem to be very difficult to get right, at least judging by all the attempts varying from kinda, yeah, but no, to bloody awful. Even Meryl Streep who can do an English accent pretty well was in the yeah, good attempt but defo not a native.

Yet, if you read any of the many redditors threads or discussion forums populated by American linguists the overwhelming consensus is that he sounds completely American, yet without a specific local accent, which is arguably even harder to pull off.

Ipso

Liam28 wrote: »

Lot of people mentioning a Kerry accent here, but it is spot on to say there are several accents in Kerry. Killarney is completely different to Tralee, North Kerry different to South, West Kerry has the Gaelic twang. I met a man last week and before I know he was a Kerryman, I asked him if he was from Sneem. Wonder if this applies anywhere else. OK I know North / South Dublin are poles apart, Cork city accent is different to West Cork, same with Limerick city and county. But is there one Donegal accent, one Cavan accent, one Mayo brogue?

I think the Southern accents are bit like Welsh and obviously the Northern accents a bit closer to Scottish.

Wibbs

pickarooney wrote: »

Yet, if you read any of the many redditors threads or discussion forums populated by American linguists the overwhelming consensus is that he sounds completely American, yet without a specific local accent, which is arguably even harder to pull off.

I've heard that too P. Apparently quite the number of Americans were shocked he was English. His accent still sounds "off" to me. As does say Liam Neeson's, or our own Colin Farrell's. A few others too. Maybe I hear the slight Irish intonations that Americans would miss? My ear being more attuned to them?

Now this is just my take, but what might be in play here is that America has so many local accents that vary quite a lot, including a fair few that have accents with external influences(Latino, French, German, Asian, African etc), so the "American accent" is a broad church. So because of that, once somebody approaches close enough to generic American™, avoids any sounds in their native accent that would jar and like you say with Hugh apes one that isn't a specific local one, they sound "right" to them. Lotsa Canadian actors can pass as American with little of a shift. Just avoid the "oot" type sounds.

I'd have a pretty good ear for accents, though I can do none but my own, but Hugh's accent really stood out for me. Neeson's is extremely jarring and Farrell's is variable, but rarely consistent across an entire film. One like Gerard Butler(he of 300) American accent is hopelessly off(his Oirish accent was appalling). Sean Connery was always Sean Karl Urban(a New Zealander) is another that jars. His costar in the flic Judge Dredd, Lena Headey sounded flat too(and it was damned hard to type that as I want to have her babies ). All no doubt sounded fine to the majority of Americans.

There can also be an element of that oh so American contradictions thing going on. Where they can be both maddeningly insular and wonderfully broad. Years back I was on the phone to an American lass in a consultancy role and we got to generally chatting and she said she loved my accent. She had that lovely middle class New Englandish type accent so I said I liked hers too(note, not loved. I'm not American, they're more enthusiastic a people ). Her reply worthy of a Snopes no way search was; "I'm American we don't really have accents". And this woman was nobody's fool and widely well read and educated. We had a great oul discussion about it and she quite obviously knew that there were various American accents, but she hadn't really thought about it too deeply. Even when she did it seemed she saw it as more a range of extremes from soft to harsh, with standouts like say the Bronx accent and the Southern Belle accent.

I myself remember a few times when in the States where various locals couldn't place me and offered up all sorts of options, sometimes British, Australian another, but Canadian being the most common for some reason. And I sound nothing like any of those. I generally found that if you didn't have a "commonly accepted" accent, in my case not oh begorrah, top of de mornin to me lucky charms "Irish" they were mostly lost. Canadian, with Aussie off in second place seemed to the go to origin for "native English speaking accent I can't quite place". I did find that post Live Aid Bob Geldof and Bono and the lads while they didn't often get my origin, they accepted it far more when I told them(IE not "begorrah", but still Irish). I've always found America and Americans fascinating and the accent thing has been a part of that.

Four Phucs Ache

I have a phrase I use all the time in a heavy London accent, although I only say it to myself upon witnessing or suffering an error by somebody , more often a work colleague.

"You stupid c**t"

Sounds deadly if you trail off before the t.

pickarooney

I must watch an episode of House.

donegaLroad

Liam28 wrote: »

Lot of people mentioning a Kerry accent here, but it is spot on to say there are several accents in Kerry. Killarney is completely different to Tralee, North Kerry different to South, West Kerry has the Gaelic twang. I met a man last week and before I know he was a Kerryman, I asked him if he was from Sneem. Wonder if this applies anywhere else. OK I know North / South Dublin are poles apart, Cork city accent is different to West Cork, same with Limerick city and county. But is there one Donegal accent, one Cavan accent, one Mayo brogue?

There are several Donegal accents, Bundoran / Ballyshannon are bordering the Sligo accent. East Donegal is Northern as in Tyrone / Derry.. Inishowen is very much Derry too. Gweedore has a Scottish influence, but is a softer accent than East Donegal. Dungloe is Daniel O'Donnell. The most difficult Donegal accent to understand is Carrigans, St. Johnston, Newtoncunningham, Raphoe, Convoy.. Ulster Scots territory.

SharpshooterTom

LordSutch wrote: »

Not so sure any of those on your list have an ENGLISH accent. Shane Ross slightly?

Tracy Piggott has an English accent.

Declan Ganley doesn't have any English accent?? :pac:

Have you ever heard him speak? You would think he's never left Watford.

Ipso

donegaLroad wrote: »

There are several Donegal accents, Bundoran / Ballyshannon are bordering the Sligo accent. East Donegal is Northern as in Tyrone / Derry.. Inishowen is very much Derry too. Gweedore has a Scottish influence, but is a softer accent than East Donegal. Dungloe is Daniel O'Donnell. The most difficult Donegal accent to understand is Carrigans, St. Johnston, Newtoncunningham, Raphoe, Convoy.. Ulster Scots territory.

What are you saying, sir!

LordSutch

ThomasFlynn wrote: »

Declan Ganley doesn't have any English accent?? :pac:

Have you ever heard him speak? You would think he's never left Watford.

If you say Declan Ganly has an English accent then so be it.

SharpshooterTom

LordSutch wrote: »

If you say Declan Ganly has an English accent then so be it.

I would bet that if most Irish people heard Declan Ganley most would think he's an Englishman. His accent sounds as English as mine and even though I've been living here for nearly 17 years most people keep on asking me how long have i been on holiday here for?

bobbyss

On a related later, isn't it strange that the impediment that people like Jonathan Ross has and some others whose names I can't recall at the moment , doesn't seem to be apparent in Ireland?

Peregrinus

It sounds like a speech impediment to us, but actually is an extreme version of an accent feature. Ross is perfectly capable of forming the 'r' sound with his tongue placed on the ridge behind the top teeth, as you and I and all nearly Irish people do, but in fact he forms it by bringing his lower lip close to his top teeth, which is standard in Estuary English, which is his native dialect, and in quite a number of other dialects. This produces a much looser sound, and in his case it's particularly exaggerated, so it sounds to us like a 'w' sound. But in fact there's a sharp distinction between Ross's true 'w' sound - the sound he would use in a word like "woman", for example, - and the sound he makes when pronouncing his own name.

LordSutch

You say Ross is perfectly capable of forming the 'r' sound.

So might the equivalent here be many peoples issue with the 'th' sound, and the fact that it gets lost in many words, like 'this', that, these & those, yet it pops up in other words where you wouldn't expect it, like heigth for example.

I hear many Irish people pronouncing their th's perfectly well > just not always in the right words (as those of us with 'th' sensitive ears would see it).

So what I'm asking is, might this Irish th sound (lack of) be the equivalent of the Thames estuary 'r' sound you talk about?

Peregrinus

Something similar. Hiberno-English has a wider range of sounds than most of the dialects that prevail on our nearest offshore Island. Included in this rich diversity are values for -th- that our English neighbours lack.

Now, here's the thing about sounds that don't feature in your own dialect. Not only can you not pronounce them; frequently, you can't even hear them. Take all those Irish people who hear Jonathan Ross pronounce his own surname as "Woss". To them, the sound he makes at the start of his own name is the same as the sound he would make saying "woman". But, to Ross himself, and those who share his dialect, the two sounds are completely different. But a Hiberno-English speaker won't hear the difference.

(And this isn't confined to English. Remember all those crude racial stereotypes about Japanese speakers of English confusion -l- and -r-? That's because they genuinely find it difficult to hear the difference, which doesn't occur in Japanese. Whereas most English speakers not only can hear the difference easily; they genuinely are baffled that anyone might not hear it.)

Listen to an English performer trying to imitate an Irish accent, and saying "dis", "dat", "dese", etc. To a Hiberno-English speaker, the sound of an Englishman trying to sound Irish is very distinctive, and "dis", "dat", "dese" pretty much encapsulate the distinction. To the Englishman, this sounds close enough to a Hiberno-English pronunciation of "this", "that", "these"; to a Hiberno-English speaker, it's not remotely the same. How could he possibly think that this sounds Irish?

So, when you say "I hear many Irish people pronouncing their th's perfectly well", what you mean is that you hear them pronounce the -th- sound as, say, a southern English speaker would pronounce it. So, yes, Hiberno-English speakers can do that. It's just that, in Hiberno-English, that particular sound doesn't occur in words like "this" and "that". In most dialects in England, it does.

We've only got 26 letters in the standard alphabet, and every dialect of English contains vastly more sounds than 26. Even when you allow for combinations of letters, like -th- and -sh- and -ou-, there are still many more sounds than there are ways of representing sounds. So a lot of representations have to stand in for two or more sounds. English is famous for this, in fact (bough, bought, through, rough, cough) and the problem is even more acute in Irish where, loan-words excepted, the alphabet offers only 18 letters. So, spelling is only an approximate guide to pronunciation. "Th" in Hiberno-English represents a slightly different range of sounds than in the various dialects you'll find in England, and some of these are sounds that English-English speakers won't readily hear.

Wibbs

Peregrinus wrote: »

And this isn't confined to English. Remember all those crude racial stereotypes about Japanese speakers of English confusion -l- and -r-? That's because they genuinely find it difficult to hear the difference, which doesn't occur in Japanese. Whereas most English speakers not only can hear the difference easily; they genuinely are baffled that anyone might not hear it.

Similar goes on with native Spanish speakers, where the English E and I sounds aren't as obvious to them. So Ship becomes "sheep" and words like peace, peas and piss can sound the same. the W and V sounds with native German speakers another one(IIRC Latin as originally spoken has a similar V/W thing going on. So while in the modern world we'd say Veni, Vidi, Vici pronouncing the V sound, they would sound more like Weni, Widi, Wici). I recall reading somewhere that this native ear for such sounds is set down pretty early in our lives and takes a lot of work to begin to hear such differences later in life.

Del.Monte

bobbyss wrote: »

On a related later, isn't it strange that the impediment that people like Jonathan Ross has and some others whose names I can't recall at the moment , doesn't seem to be apparent in Ireland?

I had the same problem as I grew up in Bray but not being 'proper' Irish couldn't say it.

Peregrinus

Wibbs wrote: »

Similar goes on with native Spanish speakers, where the English E and I sounds aren't as obvious to them. So Ship becomes "sheep" and words like peace, peas and piss can sound the same. the W and V sounds with native German speakers another one(IIRC Latin as originally spoken has a similar V/W thing going on. So while in the modern world we'd say Veni, Vidi, Vici pronouncing the V sound, they would sound more like Weni, Widi, Wici). I recall reading somewhere that this native ear for such sounds is set down pretty early in our lives and takes a lot of work to begin to hear such differences later in life.

Yup. Babies, as far as we can tell, hear all sounds with equal facility, and when they get to the babbling stage they can make all sounds with equal facility. But, as they acquire speech, they lose this capacity; they master the sounds that have semantic significance in the language/dialect in which they are being raised, and they lose the capacity to make, and discern, the other sounds.

Samaris

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. Babies, as far as we can tell, hear all sounds with equal facility, and when they get to the babbling stage they can make all sounds with equal facility. But, as they acquire speech, they lose this capacity; they master the sounds that have semantic significance in the language/dialect in which they are being raised, and they lose the capacity to make, and discern, the other sounds.

That does likely explain the "language window", where children who, for one reason or another, are not properly exposed to speech and language at an early enough age may never learn to speak. It's most notable in so-called "wild children", children who grew up without human contact, but severely neglected children also can suffer from it. A sadly typical case was a young girl who was kept in a basement most of her short life before being rescued around the age of ten. She appeared (or was, I can't recall exactly what her condition was classified as) severely mentally retarded, but as I recall, it was an "imposed" retardation so to speak. It was just that her brain had never been able to develop in the conditions she was kept it. She learned a couple of words but while she was able to develop movements that she'd never had room to learn, she never spoke more than those few words.

Probably more the pre-language window, so to speak. Not so much the age where you can pick up other languages with facility, but the age where your brain is being shaped to recognise certain sounds.

There is some evidence that developed foetuses are already forming these distinctions between sounds while still in the womb, and it continues after birth.

Omackeral

bobbyss wrote: »

On a related later, isn't it strange that the impediment that people like Jonathan Ross has and some others whose names I can't recall at the moment , doesn't seem to be apparent in Ireland?

There's a fella on DublinCity FM that does the traffic and it's seriously off-putting. Wanelagh and Wathmines jam packed.

Fratton Fred

Wibbs wrote: »

Similar goes on with native Spanish speakers, where the English E and I sounds aren't as obvious to them. So Ship becomes "sheep" and words like peace, peas and piss can sound the same. the W and V sounds with native German speakers another one(IIRC Latin as originally spoken has a similar V/W thing going on. So while in the modern world we'd say Veni, Vidi, Vici pronouncing the V sound, they would sound more like Weni, Widi, Wici). I recall reading somewhere that this native ear for such sounds is set down pretty early in our lives and takes a lot of work to begin to hear such differences later in life.

I am reminded of when Silvain Wiltord joined Arsenal and upon being asked what he was looking for from English football replied "a pe-nis", or at least that's what it sounded like to the English journalists in the room.

To his French manager ( who actually clarified his statement) it came out as "Happiness".

Fratton Fred

Peregrinus wrote: »

It sounds like a speech impediment to us, but actually is an extreme version of an accent feature. Ross is perfectly capable of forming the 'r' sound with his tongue placed on the ridge behind the top teeth, as you and I and all nearly Irish people do, but in fact he forms it by bringing his lower lip close to his top teeth, which is standard in Estuary English, which is his native dialect, and in quite a number of other dialects. This produces a much looser sound, and in his case it's particularly exaggerated, so it sounds to us like a 'w' sound. But in fact there's a sharp distinction between Ross's true 'w' sound - the sound he would use in a word like "woman", for example, - and the sound he makes when pronouncing his own name.

I know it is more a dialect thing than anything else, but how come to the majority of people born in central London (as Ross was) it would come across as some sort of impediment? Surely a dialect would be local and there would be a concentrated number of people who spoke

Another pronunciation that seems fairly obvious is the way in England the letter R is pronounced arr, whereas in Ireland, it is pronounced oar.

Peregrinus

Fratton Fred wrote: »

I know it is more a dialect thing than anything else, but how come to the majority of people born in central London (as Ross was) it would come across as some sort of impediment? Surely a dialect would be local and there would be a concentrated number of people who spoke

Ross has Estuary English, which the experts distinguish from Cockney. He was born in central London but he grew up in Leytonstone. And, even for an speaker of Estuary English, Ross's expression of this particular characteristic is fairly pronounced.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Another pronunciation that seems fairly obvious is the way in England the letter R is pronounced arr, whereas in Ireland, it is pronounced oar.

Aitch and haitch. Zed and zee. Ay and aa. Jay and jy. Different varieties of English having different names for some of the the letters of the alphabet is a long-established thing.

shaunr68

Wibbs wrote: »

Similar goes on with native Spanish speakers, where the English E and I sounds aren't as obvious to them. So Ship becomes "sheep" and words like peace, peas and piss can sound the same. the W and V sounds with native German speakers another one(IIRC Latin as originally spoken has a similar V/W thing going on. So while in the modern world we'd say Veni, Vidi, Vici pronouncing the V sound, they would sound more like Weni, Widi, Wici). I recall reading somewhere that this native ear for such sounds is set down pretty early in our lives and takes a lot of work to begin to hear such differences later in life.

Reminds me of an aspect of Operation Chariot, the Commando raid on the port of St Nazaire in 1942. Planners came up with a German-proof password: "War Weapons Week" to which the countersign was "Weymouth", ensuring that even if the Germans discovered the password they would not be able to pronounce it. Genius!

osarusan

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. Babies, as far as we can tell, hear all sounds with equal facility, and when they get to the babbling stage they can make all sounds with equal facility. But, as they acquire speech, they lose this capacity; they master the sounds that have semantic significance in the language/dialect in which they are being raised, and they lose the capacity to make, and discern, the other sounds.

This is pretty much it. The older they get, the less likely they are to be able to accurately discern, and therefore store certain sounds in their brain to help with deciphering language in the future, and moreover, as they cannot hear it properly, they cannot replicate it in their own speech - rather, they will simply be approximating sounds from their own (limited) store of acquired sounds.


This 'fossilisation' of language acquisition lead to the development of the critical period hypothesis, which is that without being adequately exposed to a language before a certain age, the person will never become a 'native' speaker of that language. But these days, research is suggesting that the brain is a lot more plastic than we used to think it was, and these theories are being revisited.

Anyway, this is purely an issue with the brain, not the ear or mouth - the child of two Asian parents who have the usual 'l' and 'r' pronunciation problems will end up with perfect Irish-English pronunciation if it is adopted at an early age by two Irish people living in Ireland, for example. Sadly, there is occasionally a belief that it is an issue with the mouth, and there was a brief but horrifying trend among South Koreans of getting the lingual frenulum (stringy part on the underside of the tongue) cut in their young children, in the hope that the tongue would now be unrestricted in its accurate pronunciation of English.

Back to Johnathan Ross, I think his particular pronunciation (a labiodental approximant in place of a phoneme) is so...eh..pronounced that it is more than simply a dialectic variation though. I'd probably class it as a speech impediment.

farmchoice

speech and accents and pronunciation really is fascinating. in my job i speak to people all day, mainly people from my locality, by and large i can now tell what part of town or what local village they live in before they tell me.
in my medium sized Irish town there are 3-4 distinct accents and a few more sub accents.

there are also generational accents, people in their 30's and 40's have a distinct accent from those in their 50's ad 60's and same again for people older than that.