What's the story with culchies with D4 accents???

I find D4 accents very amusing. Some of the phrases just crack me up entirely and this thread is bringing them all out.

I do find it profoundly sad that people feel so embarrassed about their background they need to hide behind an accent. BTW - its a fake accent and even then you don't fit in as you are not from the correct area. Longford =/= Donnybrook.

I have a east donegal accent and am very proud of it. The american chicks love it! Waaaay better than any dublin accent is!

My accent hasn't changed one iota since I moved to dublin - however, I did pick up all the slang, I say "howye horse" with a donegal accent.....

The 'd4' accent, isn't an accent. Its what English sounds like when its spoken prop-er-ly, okay?

Well, bai, now dat dats cleared up.

D4, is short for Dublin 4, an area code in south Dublin (below the River Liffey) which is commonly linked with wealth and affluence.
Tis the O.C. of Aye-r-land.

My accent would be fairly posh sounding I'd imagine with an American twinge because I used to live in Holland.

Gummybearz!!! wrote:

HA! I would NOT like to fit in with my classmates. No, it grew on me. As we learn to speak we learn from those we interact with and mimic their speech. Ok, I wasn't learning to speak whe I was 12 but still my speech was affected by those I interacted with.

Nonsense, as a child you develop an accent from listening to those around you, you speak the same way you parents do. As a teenager that accent is fully developed. You started going to secondary school, realised then that your accent may cause you some prejudice from your peers and you decided to change it. It doesn't grow on you.
I've worked with a bloke from Birmingham for 4 years, so why am I not speaking with a brummie accent?
You said it yourself in your post that your sister isn't in secondary school yet so her accent hasn't "changed"....

Yes, probably, if I stay there long enough. I wont make any concious effort to though. I spent Five days last week in Cork and developed a slight Cork accent due to being surrounded by Corkonians. If an Irish person moves to a foreign country, let's say America then after a while he/she will develop and American accent due to the speech of people around them, I doubt they will do this conciously to 'fit in' though.

More nonsense, I have relations that have been living in Australia and America for 20 years. If you heard them on the phone you would think they were still in Dublin (unless you knew otherwise). Their accents have not changed at all. I know another person (not you Staggerlee if your reading this) who went to Australia for a year and came back talking like Crocidile Dundee, I was laughing my ass off listening to him.... Sounded like a fool...

Like it or not, people change their accents all the time to fit in with society.

Pink Bunny wrote:

I think it's hard for outsiders to pick up on the differences in Irish accents. I think all the accents sound nice

Well then you just haven't heard all the accents. They vary quite considerably, from Cork to Donegal and Galway to Dublin. If you're an English speaker its not that hard to pick up, its like saying all the English sound the same when they have a myriad of different accents.

pickarooney wrote:

Rubbish. Some people are resistant to change and others have a tendency to subconsciously mimic those around them. Unsurprisingly, the former have little or no capacity to learn foreign languages while the latter have a notable facility for it.

What exactly was rubbish in my post?

pickarooney wrote:

Your pooh-poohing of Gummybearz because her story doesn't fit in with the vast empirical study you've carried out, involving an uncle and some bloke from Birmingham.

Did you read this?

Gummybearz wrote:

Excelent point, my Mum is from Cork and my Dad's from westmeath but I speak with a fairly neutral accent tinged with dortspeak. Why? Because I go to a school in Donnybrook where 90% of the students and teachers are from Donnybrook/Sandymount/Blackrock/Foxrock. Up until when Im started secondary school I spoke without an accent- as did nearly everyone in my clas in primary school. My sister still speaks neutrally because she is only in primary school. I sometimes get criticism for speaking 'Like a poshie' but the way we speak is strongly influenced by the people around us so I don't try and speak the way I do, it has just grown on me.

Some people change their accents all the time, to fit in with their "society", whether its conciously or subconciously. Other people mimic other peoples accent, again whether its conciously or subconciously. This person says his/her accent changed "Because I go to a school in Donnybrook where 90% of the students and teachers are from Donnybrook/Sandymount/Blackrock/Foxrock. Up until when Im started secondary school I spoke without an accent."

Why did all Gummybearz classmates accents change?
Were they all mimicing each other? Clearly not if you read "as did nearly everyone in my clas in primary school". If they were all mimicing each other when they started secondary school, and carried on mimicing each other throughout school, they wouldn't sound like "all roish lorco, are you going for heino like", because they didn't speak like that to begin with, as Gummybear said.

So where did it come from? It leaves me thinking its society, these people realised that to be accepted in their circles, or to sound "normal" in their circles, they needed to "develop" a new accent, that accent being the accent were all talking about.

pickarooney wrote:

I think you misread this. Her classmates didn't change, she changed schools.

Yes, I did, apologies...

Anyway, you can't put it down to mimicing alone, true some people pick up accents very quickly, but we're talking about people changing their accent to conform with society. Whether its out of being ashamed of their current accent/self concious/fear of not being accepted etc. there is definitely social factor involved.