Ending you sentence in a high note and the Americanisation of the Irish accent

Tell me how wrote: »

Whatever about the mid-Atlantic twang spoken about above, what I find really irritating is the vocal fry as practised by the Kardashians and the likes.

Succubus_ wrote: »

I say mom, I was raised to say mom and most of my friends used ''mom'' too. There were some lads that used to tease us about it because they said mam but otherwise it seemed fairly normal. I've noticed it seems to be a middle class city thing. Like middle class children in Cork city and Dublin city seem to grow up saying mom.

I'm middle class, born and bred in Dublin as are most of my friends I grew up with and not a "mom" user among them, "mam", or "mum" were the variants(though I've noted two of them are using "mom" more, but it's a recent thing). Now I'm older than you, which suggests a generational change and one I'd mark down to circa the 90's, which again strongly suggests no "Irish language" influence and much more a US cultural influence as both the interwebs and more TV channels spread throughout the country.

I'd personally reckon the interwebs and spellcheckers had more of an effect. Why? well being as I said a Dub, as a child in the 70's and 80's we had "piped TV" so more channels than those beyond the Pale and a lot of those TV programmes were American and British. Sesame Street came up in a thread earlier and I adored that show as a kid(picked up some Spanish from it) and grew up and feasted on Kojak, Starsky and Hutch etc, absorbed US Marvel comics like sunlight(remainder stock in little shop across the road from Eason. Dirt cheap:D) and yet neither me nor my peers had American or British accents. I do recall getting static from an English teacher for using an American spelling in an essay(I remember clearly using "thru" instead of "through". The shame. ), which I almost certainly picked up from Spiderman or whatever. That made me so twitchy then I still use "gaol" instead of "jail", when almost nobody does anymore.

So I can well understand with wall to wall American TV and American interwebs how many, particularly younger folks are picking up the accents and spellings. If I had been born in say 2000 I'd probably be talking like that too. After all look at threads here on Boards over the last only few years, with talk of "cucks" and "liberal" and "SJW" and "alt-right" and all sorts of the dafter American political identity nonsense(when I saw Irish Boardsies use MAGA... Jesus). They didn't hear that in any gaeltacht.


EDIT. I notice S you said it was mostly lads who mostly highlighted you saying "mom". I remember reading somewhere that young women are more likely to absorb accents(and peer slang) than young men and I have noticed the mid Atlantic accent to be much more prevalent in Irish women than in Irish men. A mate of mine has three kids, two girls and a boy, the boy sounds entirely "local", whereas both the girls have the "American" accent thing, the younger being the more accentuated of the two(There's a ten year gap between them). Another mate of mine's parents who are fairly old; his mother says "mom", his father "mam". It's interesting stuff this accent/language thing.

bodice ripper wrote: »

Or, to be fair, anyone who spent some of their childhood in international schools. A blanded out accent on a native English speaker is usually interpreted as an American accent.

International schools overwhelmingly tend to have a mid Atlantic accent and are more Websters than Oxford in spellings too. A blended out English speaking accent today is far more likely to sound "American", whereas go back a few generations and it would be far more likely to sound "British".

bodice ripper wrote: »

We never get asked are we from the States by Americans.

I have found Americans, even well travelled ones aren't generally great at placing other English speaker accents. Much like many non Americans think the "American accent" is a singular one. The Irish accent throws them. They tend to expect a diddly aye accent and if you don't have that they're a tad confused. They're better at it than they were though, what with more Irish accents on famous people showing up on their telly. Back in the 80's I had British, Australian or even Canadian(?) as suggestions put forward by Americans in their native environs. Irish came way down the list.

I've also felt they've not such a great ear with non Americans faking their accent. I found a show like House with Hugh Laurie hard going at times because to me his accent sounded "wrong", even grating at times, yet many Americans were apparently shocked he was a Brit and critics raved about how good his accent was. Yer man Rick outa the Walking Dead another one that can take me "out of the moment".