Irish people with English accents

branie2 · 11-09-2017 3:52pm

The Duke of Wellington

Peregrinus · 12-09-2017 2:30am

branie2 wrote: »

The Duke of Wellington

Wellesley was sent by his family to Eton, by one account largely so that he would lose his Irish accent, which his family felt would handicap him in polite society. By all accounts he hated the place, but he hated even more being seen as Irish, and he did succeed in losing his accent. He had a good ear, was musically talented and learned to speak fluent french in adulthood (learning a new language in adulthood is difficult) so he probably didn't have too much trouble acquiring a new accent.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater · 12-09-2017 9:38am

I know heaps of Irish people who live or have lived in the UK for varying lengths of time and almost none of them have picked up even a hint of a twang, apart from one girl who lives in Scotland. My OH's sister lives in southern England, is married to an English guy, loves living there, is always slagging off Ireland (infrastructure, weather etc), but her accent sounds like she never left Galway.

I think, on some level, you have to want to lose your accent for whatever reason.

Zubeneschamali · 12-09-2017 9:43am

stimpson wrote: »

He can't. Apparently to a yank his accent is awful.

Bryan Singer, the director, specified that he wanted an American actor for House. Laurie auditioned anyway, and Singer hired him, not realizing he was British.

Dr Bob · 12-09-2017 9:56am

Erik Shin wrote: »

Not you, but this is a phenomenon that is becoming more common amongst children...English and American accents from watching kids shows on television

That happened to me....mid 70s..we lived in a dodgy neighbourhood with no play areas ..so until I was 5 or 6 spent a lot of time inside watching TV ( mostly BBC and ITV which didnt have much in the way of regional accents back then) .. I ended up developing a R.P. , public school English accent ...which didnt go down too well in Crumlin! .
In fact most kids at school didnt think I was Irish.It took years to lose it and as a result most of the time I have a sort of neutral Irish accent ( whereas my brothers have proper Dublin accents)...

Zubeneschamali · 12-09-2017 10:01am

topper75 wrote: »

Hundreds of years of sending their kids to schools to another country: England. Not entirely sure what is Irish about that.

Not sure it's any of your business where they go to school, or that anyone gave you the authority to judge the Irishness of other Irish citizens.

And since forever, the CoI community has faced the possibility as a small minority of being absorbed by the majority through intermarriage if they don't make efforts to have their children socialise with each other.

topper75 · 13-09-2017 2:19pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Not sure it's any of your business where they go to school, or that anyone gave you the authority to judge the Irishness of other Irish citizens.

And since forever, the CoI community has faced the possibility as a small minority of being absorbed by the majority through intermarriage if they don't make efforts to have their children socialise with each other.

I don't need any authority to make judgement on a situation, do I? Or has something changed about opinion entitlement in these fast-moving times?

So, if kids in the CoI community are sent to CoI schools here in IRELAND, that exposes them to a threat of absorption how exactly? Are the teachers of Irish CoI schools so strict that the pupils are not permitted to socialise with one another?

Crispycool · 13-09-2017 2:23pm

That's feckin ridiculous mate

Squatter · 13-09-2017 2:25pm

One acquired accent that really grates on me is Jim Beglin's - I don't know how to describe it!

But it's not Waterford and neither is it Milltown (where I first saw him playing for Rovers, back in the dark ages!).

WesternZulu · 13-09-2017 2:34pm

Squatter wrote: »

One acquired accent that really grates on me is Jim Beglin's - I don't know how to describe it!

But it's not Waterford and neither is it Milltown (where I first saw him playing for Rovers, back in the dark ages!).

You wouldn't call his an English accent. Although it's very hard to place it's definitely an Irish one.

I was a bit shocked to find out he was from Waterford though when he was on Up For The Match.

Zubeneschamali · 13-09-2017 2:56pm

topper75 wrote: »

So, if kids in the CoI community are sent to CoI schools here in IRELAND, that exposes them to a threat of absorption how exactly?

There aren't many CoI schools. My nearest primary school has to be Mixed to be big enough to stay open, and there is no CoI secondary school in town at all, the kids would have to go boarding anyway.

(If I was CoI myself or gave a crap about religious ethos, you understand, neither of which applies).

topper75 · 13-09-2017 5:03pm

So they can board in an Irish school, can they not?

I am not of any ethos myself and it is not the ethos I am taking issue with in the slightest.

However, residing here and passing over Irish schools, undermines their belonging to Ireland to put it generously. The entire mindset is predicated on a puerile denial of Irish nationhood and independence despite having been given a mere century to come around to the concept.

Del.Monte · 13-09-2017 5:09pm

topper75 wrote: »

So they can board in an Irish school, can they not?

I am not of any ethos myself and it is not the ethos I am taking issue with in the slightest.

However, residing here and passing over Irish schools, undermines their belonging to Ireland to put it generously. The entire mindset is predicated on a puerile denial of Irish nationhood and independence despite having been given a mere century to come around to the concept.

Surely it's up to the individual where they send their children to be educated? Why should they be obliged to 'belong' to Ireland?

Zubeneschamali · 13-09-2017 5:29pm

topper75 wrote: »

However, residing here and passing over Irish schools, undermines their belonging to Ireland to put it generously.

You are not putting anything generously. They are as Irish as you are whether you like it or not.

topper75 · 15-09-2017 3:17pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

You are not putting anything generously. They are as Irish as you are whether you like it or not.

Ha ha! Classic.

Were you the PR agency sent out to bat for the Mossad lads with the passports?

JupiterKid · 15-09-2017 3:23pm

Your social class, your peers in school and your family are huge influences on your accent.

My sisters and I had elocution lessons in primary school (our mum was adamant we wouldn't have thick Dub accents) and as a result we all now have very neutral, slightly posh accents.

But not "D4" accents. They are a recent invention.

Lux23 · 15-09-2017 3:25pm

My Mum used to say that was an educated accent, I quite like but you don't really come across it that much anymore.

Bygumbo · 15-09-2017 3:38pm

from what I hear the D4 accent is becoming more and more "Americanised". The likes of "totally", "Right?","do the math", squeezing as many "like"s into a sentence as possible and so on. And the most annoying of all, ending every sentence on a high tone, turning every statement into a question.

Normal eejits put higher tone on the action of a sentence, eg: "Yesterday I WENT to the shop", or maybe no emphasis at all. Americans put higher tone on the last word of every sentence which sounds thick, "Yesterday I went to the SHOP."

100% due to American pollution channelled into our homes via the internet and telly non-stop. A sign that people are spending less time around actual people and more time looking at screens?

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5 · 15-09-2017 4:00pm

Bygumbo wrote: »

from what I hear the D4 accent is becoming more and more "Americanised". The likes of "totally", "Right?","do the math", squeezing as many "like"s into a sentence as possible and so on. And the most annoying of all, ending every sentence on a high tone, turning every statement into a question.

The (accent generally known as the) D4 accent has a very interesting interpretation of certain phonemes too though, which can'tbe pinned on Americans. I doubt anyone from the states would talk about 'the Wohkinstewn rewndehbewt' for example :pac: Or how they had to coll the gords when they crashed their cor.

The older posher Dublin accent is a lot more neutral, I don't know what on earth happened to the poor souls over the past twenty years or so.

Peregrinus · 18-09-2017 3:14am

Accents are constantly developing, so my accent that I regard as perfectly normal and the standard against which all others should be measured would have seemed affected or innovative to someone, say, two generations older than me. This process never stops.

Young people pick up the accents of their peers more than those of their parents. So the children of migrants into any country usually grow up with the accent of the country into which they have migrated. This is so even if they immigrated at an age when they were already speaking, as long as they were still young at the time and speaking with a "childish" manner.

What may limit the acquisition of a local accent is the speaking of a different language at home. So an Australian toddler who immigrates to Ireland will likely grow up with completely Irish speech and accent. But a Chinese or Arab toddler, if Chinese/Arabic continue to be spoken at home, will grow up with fluent English, but quite possibly recognisably Chinese or Arabic characteristics in his accent.

The "rising inflection" that people note in the D4 accent, and that they regard as typically American, is also typically Australian. It first appears in UK speech in the 1980s, among teenagers, and linguists at the time attributed it to the huge popularity of Australian soap operas. It's now fairly widespread in both UK and Irish speech, and people who develop it are not necessarily picking it up from US TV shows, since they are being exposed to it in a lot more ways than just that.

feargale · 18-09-2017 4:16am

Why do we denigrate Irish people who have a touch of American in their speech while we laud Americans who have a touch of Irish in their speech?

Peregrinus · 18-09-2017 4:17am

feargale wrote: »

Why do we denigrate Irish people who have a touch of American in their speech while we laud Americans who have a touch of Irish in their speech?

I haven't noticed that we laud Americans who have a touch of Irish in their speech, to be honest. If anything, "the Yank who thinks he's Irish" is a stock figure of ridicule.

feargale · 18-09-2017 4:20am

Peregrinus wrote: »

I haven't noticed that we laud Americans who have a touch of Irish in their speech, to be honest. If anything, "the Yank who thinks he's Irish" is a stock figure of ridicule.

Ah no. You could get a Yank of Irish parentage in Boston with a distinctly Irish tinge to their accent. Some would say "sure he's like one of ourselves, bless him."

Zubeneschamali · 18-09-2017 9:19am

feargale wrote: »

Ah no. You could get a Yank of Irish parentage in Boston with a distinctly Irish tinge to their accent. Some would say "sure he's like one of ourselves, bless him."

I have never met an Irish person who thinks Irish Americans are like one of us.

Mind you, I've never heard an Irish person under 70 use "bless him" except as sarcasm towards idiots, so you might have heard someone say that.

feargale · 18-09-2017 6:11pm

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I have never met an Irish person who thinks Irish Americans are like one of us.

Mind you, I've never heard an Irish person under 70 use "bless him" except as sarcasm towards idiots, so you might have heard someone say that.

Good God. Never?
By Jove!

Brian? · 18-09-2017 6:13pm

bobbyss wrote: »

Shane Ross:He must have lived in England for a long time?
David Norris: Ditto?
Declan Ganly:Ditto?
There is a horse racing chap who does the racing, a Robert somebody?
Charles Mitchell:ex RTE newsreader had a touch of one I believe.
Martin Manserg;Former senator.
Brian Farrell RTE
Chris de Burgh
Brian O'Connell: Former RTE London correspondent.

Anyone else?

How long do you have to live in England to acquire and retain the accent I wonder?

None of those people have English accents. They're posh Irish people, that's their accent.

George White · 18-09-2017 7:40pm

I remember a review of High Spirits criticising Peter O'Toole's "English" (his own accent, which doesn't quite belong here, considering his Irish roots and growing up in England) accent for an "Irish" character. The character is a broke Anglo-Irish gentry, a la George in Glenroe.

SharpshooterTom · 19-09-2017 10:17am

Brian? wrote: »

None of those people have English accents. They're posh Irish people, that's their accent.

As mentioned before Declan Ganley doesn't have a 'posh' Irish accent he was born and raised in Watford. I was born and raised in England till I was 14 (accent never changed) and I don't think anyone would describe me as 'posh Irish'.