Why aren't there more strong Dublin accents in the media?

I think there's an estuary accent in England it's like a generic working class accent used by middle class people or maybe actors who do not want to sound
too posh to get roles in TV dramas
I think any Irish person can understand Joe Duffy even though he has a working class dublin accent
Most ads use people with middle class or neutral accents i can't see actors with
working class accents being used to advertise i phones or BMW cars

Its a dreadful accent

saabsaab wrote: »

Being from 'down the country' I used to think there was only one Dublin accent when i arrived first a sort of maureen potter (remember her) panto twang. To my surprise I found several Dublin accents depending on what part of Dublin they were from and social background etc.

Is that the same most places?

Galway has numerous accents depending who you're talking to. i was surprised when I went to Liverpool how many different accents there were too.

Tony EH wrote: »

Is that the same most places?

Galway has numerous accents depending who you're talking to. i was surprised when I went to Liverpool how many different accents there were too.

Galway is full of outsiders probably more so that any other Irish city I'd say 70% of the city are non Galway origin.


Probably true to some extent elsewhere but it came as a shock to me at the time.

Nexytus wrote: »

I like Kerr's accent/voice and he's also an excellent pundit/analyst.

The accent/voice is a personal like or dislike, but he is not an excellent analyst. He's woeful.

riclad wrote: »

dart accent is neutral sounds almost like an english accent.
you can live anywhere in dublin and have a dart accent.
its like old bbc presenters , eg it just means you are middle class .

This is anything but a "neutral" accent. Those tones have to be artificially worked. A neutral accent is something you don't have to adopt or work at to achieve. That "Dort" "Ok ya" accent has absolutely nothing to do with Dublin and only started to appear around the 90's. It was something people made an effort to use and not something that happened naturally.

The same goes for that old fashioned auntie Beeb accent. It was something you needed to train yourself to do and when it became silly sounding and no longer in vogue, it was dropped.

John_Rambo wrote: »

Maybe that's when you started to hear it!! The Bob Geldof accent has been around a long long time. My parents would have slagged off people with accents like that in the 70's pronouncing Harp like Horp. Two points of horp please.

Geldoff's accent represented absolutely nowhere in Dublin, not at the time or now. :pac:

There used to be a female radio/TV presenter in the 90's, I can't remember her name. I think she used to do traffic reports in her "dort" accent. But, anyway, I remember Gay Byrne brought up her accent when he interviewed her, because he found it so odd. He didn't find it disagreeable or anything, but he'd not heard it used much and that was a man who interviewed people for a living.

To answer the OP.

A strong Dublin accent to a non Dub is like have needles rammed into your eardrums...repeatedly.

Tony EH wrote: »

Perhaps. But compared to a Belfast accent it's like a soft summer breeze.

TBH I think a strong accent from any region grates.

Country girls love the Dublin accent. They often travel to the capital for some Dub action.

John_Rambo wrote: »

Country girls love the Dublin accent. They often travel to the capital for some Dub action.

No man. They just shag other boggers. You got no frontage.

topper75 wrote: »

Bizarrely intolerant opinion of hers given her profession. What an ugly fantasy she has of same-sounding robots.

Did she not ever consider that kids of 4 have no 'education' to speak of, yet they have accents relating to where they grew up.

I do recall being quite taken aback and still recall it. I can only surmise she was masking her own insecurities.

partyguinness wrote: »

I was at some course or something in England about 10 years ago and this lady was a speech therapist of sorts.

Basically, in her view having a strong accent or different pronunciations was taken as ill-educated i.e. we should all sound the same.

I could have chucked my cup of bad coffee at her.

It's a trapping of that "Finishing School" sort. More an outward projection of snobbery than a factual note. But she certainly wouldn't have been alone in that type of thinking. Anywhere you go, you'll encounter people who attach speech patterns with a level of intellect.

In the modern age, it remains a bizarre hangover though.

An accent is formed, largely, through interaction with peers and everyday contacts. Which is why if one moves away from a country to another, you'll find yourself taking on certain words, phases and lilt, even if you fight against it.

I was in San Francisco a number of years ago and was talking with a woman from New York, who'd lived there for a while. I noticed that she was speaking with that questioning intonation that was limited to the west coast at the time (but now appears everywhere) and that she was losing her nice NYC accent.

She nearly hit me.

riclad wrote: »

Every country town has pennys and dunnes stores shops.
Every small town has the same shop,s , uk chain stores.
I know dunne stores is irish owned.
i wonder if children of people who speak with a dart accent speak the same way.
when you are a child you simply learn english from your family no effort needed .You tend to speak in the same accent as your parents.
Most bbc presenters have a middle class accent ,or a mild regional accent.
i think the worst accent is a strong northern ireland accent ,it sounds very threatening and rough .

Daniel O'Donnell?