'Educated' Irish accents used to be English sounding in the 1970's!!

gormdubhgorm · 03-01-2020 03:23PM #1

I am always fascinated by accents and how they change over time.
I happened to be looking up a Marian Finucane clip from 1970

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2015/0113/672323-marian-finucane-as-a-student-protester-1970/

What shocked me was not the level of get up and go of the youngsters in the clip - but thier accents. :eek:

Marian's accent (the first girl) seemed very clipped and almost English RP with a bit of Irish accent mixed in.
The next girl (from Alexandra college) interviewed would easily pass as English to my ears if I was not told where she was from. The third girl was similar with a real clipped English type RP accent.

To me even the interviewer (Patrick Gallagher) seems to be attempting to put on an English type accent and intonations - even though it is not actually RP.

The BBC at fault?

Apparently the dart/dort D4 accent was only created after 1970 in the early 80's sometime for those who wanted to reject old notions of Irishness. (according to some)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_4

Others argue that it is a not a rejection of Irishness just an aspirational accent

https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/d4-accent-yes-kids-speak-differently-from-their-parents-but-why-should-this-be-a-bad-thing-3947717-Apr2018/

So the D4 accent must have killed the educated Irish interpretation of the English accent?

People now seem to pick an accent they feel like associating with - most of these now seem to be Americanism's more than D4 per se?

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/so-like-what-s-up-with-the-irish-accent-1.2539989

I wonder what accents in Ireland will be like in 2070?

BeerWolf · 03-01-2020 06:03PM

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

I wonder what accents in Ireland will be like in 2070?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPaJ6e48U04

mikhail · 04-01-2020 01:12PM

I can never get my head around the obsession some people in this country have with accents. You pick up you accent from your peers, and it evolves to different degrees over the years depending on where you live. It's not a conscious choice. It's not some conspiracy to undermine Irishness. English accents are constantly evolving too, but I never hear even a fraction of the discussion of it from them.

Here's a posh English accent of 400 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&t=2m51s

spurious · 04-01-2020 01:15PM

Elocution lessons in 'good' schools. They still go on.

andekwarhola · 04-01-2020 01:17PM

It was similar in England, where you mostly had RP type accents in national media up until around the 60s/70s and regional accents became more acceptable.

Accents do evolve as well though. Think of a so called old skool 'Dubliners' accent compared to a more modern working class Dublin accent or a middle class Dublin accent from 40 years compared to a D4 type one now

freshpopcorn · 04-01-2020 01:20PM

I think lots put on a strange posh accent back then. Especially. If they were speaking on television.

04-01-2020 01:20PM

spurious wrote: »

Elocution lessons in 'good' schools. They still go on.

A prime example of this is Mike Murphy, except it was his mother sending him for the lessons.

Thelonious · 04-01-2020 01:23PM

Sounds like me mother's telephone voice. She puts on this mad false posh voice when she's speaking to a stranger.

I called her out on it when I was a kid and she got really defensive really quickly.

banie01 · 04-01-2020 01:25PM

It was the 70's barely 50yrs had passed since independence.
Our governmental and educational structures were still very much Hiberno-English rather than purely "Irish".

The majority of our non-Irish produced entertainment and broadcast were via BBC and other UK outlets.

Those who had attained University education at this point were in the main educated by graduates of a British University system with its academic mores and accents.

It's hardly rocket science as to why the "educated" accent dominant at the time was RP!

Indeed RP and the Irish brogue were the aim of most elocution classes at the time.

Why do people constantly seem surprised that accent is a product of the social norms of one's environment?

It's not a genetic or certain trait, it's a mimicry that allows people to more easily understand their peers.

ILoveYourVibes · 04-01-2020 01:26PM

they put them on

Mad_maxx · 04-01-2020 02:30PM

yes , charles mitchell read the news in proper clipped BBC english tones .

Das Reich · 04-01-2020 02:39PM

English is a bit all the same. Difference between English spoken is USA to the one in England is a small fraction of the difference between Spanish spoken in Argentina or Uruguay (Rioplatense) to its neighbour country Chile.

Hangdogroad · 04-01-2020 03:51PM

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I think lots put on a strange posh accent back then. Especially. If they were speaking on television.

I think there was an element of that. People thinking they'd better put on their poshest accent, the whole country will be watching .

Harry Palmr · 04-01-2020 03:55PM

Received pronunciation it's called.

Not something you heard much of now with natural and regional accents now acceptable on the airwaves. That said some would be impervious to any amount of "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" teaching - see or rather hear Bobby Kerr!

Badly Drunk Boy · 04-01-2020 04:13PM

mikhail wrote: »

I can never get my head around the obsession some people in this country have with accents. You pick up you accent from your peers, and it evolves to different degrees over the years depending on where you live. It's not a conscious choice. It's not some conspiracy to undermine Irishness. English accents are constantly evolving too, but I never hear even a fraction of the discussion of it from them.

There's plenty of talk about accents in the UK, and some telly stations have a policy of getting regional accents for continuity announcements. You'll often hear a Geordie, Welsh or even a West Indian accent informing of the programmes about to be shown. On Graham Norton the other night, some South African dance judge (who works in the UK and Germany) was saying that she found it harder to understand people in the UK because of all the different accents at one time.

Then in Ireland, you have people like David Norris whom a lot of (Irish) people think has an English accent, but an English person wouldn't think that at all. It'd be pure Irish to them. It might be closer to an English accent than a Connemara accent (for example) would be, but it's still Irish.

gormdubhgorm · 04-01-2020 04:39PM

mikhail wrote: »

I can never get my head around the obsession some people in this country have with accents. You pick up you accent from your peers, and it evolves to different degrees over the years depending on where you live. It's not a conscious choice. It's not some conspiracy to undermine Irishness. English accents are constantly evolving too, but I never hear even a fraction of the discussion of it from them.

Here's a posh English accent of 400 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&t=2m51s

People study it and look at it - in England they found recordings from experiments the Germans were doing doing WWI with English prisoners. (Edwardian English)
It also discussed how the accents changed over time.
The linguist in the clip also has a theory that accents are created by the landscape the people live in. Pursed lips etc on the coast. She also says that in smaller communities and farmers etc the language says the same longer.
Obviously this has changed nowadays with social media, American TV and country people moving to Dublin etc.

As I said in my OP the Englishness of the accents in my surprised me.
It just showed how the 'fashion' changed so quickly.

Charles Babbage · 04-01-2020 04:43PM

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

Then in Ireland, you have people like David Norris whom a lot of (Irish) people think has an English accent, but an English person wouldn't think that at all. It'd be pure Irish to them. It might be closer to an English accent than a Connemara accent (for example) would be, but it's still Irish.

Not so much an English accent as a Protestant accent.

gormdubhgorm · 04-01-2020 05:29PM

Charles Babbage wrote: »

Not so much an English accent as a Protestant accent.

I found an article which basically said the southern protestant Irish lost thier accent - but kept plugging away, regardless

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-disappearance-of-the-protestant-accent-from-ireland-1.3816489

This one below rallies against the stereotype of - Irish southern protestant accent = posh

https://www.independent.ie/life/irish-protestants-in-2017-far-from-the-stereotypically-aloof-rich-anglophiles--35621422.html

'Educated' Irish accents used to be English sounding in the 1970's!!

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