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Irish people with English accents

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    #272
    Stacksofwacks
    Registered Users Posts: 1,534 ✭✭✭Stacksofwacks


    Rayne Tart Cockpit wrote: »
    Yeah I live here but not from here and you do have to be aware or it'll sneak in.

    It's led to some pretty hilarious and charming hybrids though. The PolishxCork accent is very noticeable, and I love all the young African fellas going around with this mad mix of big deep bass voice and a real upward lilting Cark bai accent.

    Thats so true. I worked in a call centre once and a chinese guy rang in with a Cork accent it was something else to listen to


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    #273
    SharpshooterTom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,017 ✭✭✭SharpshooterTom


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    I was 8 and still have a predominantly English Midlands accent.

    That's pretty unusual though. I don't know many real life people or celebrities who moved to another country prior to the age of 10-12 and retained their accent.

    At age 8 your vocabulary range wouldn't have fully formed, so when you learn new words. surely you'd be picking them up in your new country?

    I'm not saying it can't happen, but I don't know too many examples of it.

    Moving here at age 14, I'm quite unusual as it is and most people I know who moved here at a similar have a hybrid accent, some have lost it completely.


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    #274
    Sardonicat
    Registered Users Posts: 12,378 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    Stranger to Sardonicat in the town she's called home for 40 years: You're not from here, are you?
    Sardi: Actually I've been here 40 years... But you're right I was born in
    in England.
    Stranger: (In angry, accusatory tone ) But you never lost your English accent!
    Sardi: I know! Shoot me!

    Sardi in the town of her birth and early childhood
    Stranger: Oh, you've got a lovely Irish accent. Are you really from here?
    Sardi: Yes, lived here 'til I was 8. Went to ---- school.
    Stranger: Well, you'd never know from how you speak. I love the way you pronunce your 't's. Aren't her 't's lovely, Nigel?
    Sardi: I think it's more the fact that I'm actually pronouncing my 't's at the end of words that you're noticing there, love. Ini'?


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    #275
    muddypaws
    Registered Users Posts: 3,601 ✭✭✭muddypaws


    Born in Dublin, moved to Germany as a baby then the UK, spent every summer here, moved back when I was 16 for a few years then back to England with the family. Have been back for 12 years now. Parents had Irish accents until they died but mine is very much an English accent.

    I live in Sligo and love the look on people's faces when they ask me where I'm from and I say Dublin. Although I really wish I could lose the accent.


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    #276
    SharpshooterTom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,017 ✭✭✭SharpshooterTom


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    Stranger to Sardonicat in the town she's called home for 40 years: You're not from here, are you?
    Sardi: Actually I've been here 40 years... But you're right I was born in
    in England.
    Stranger: (In angry, accusatory tone ) But you never lost your English accent!
    Sardi: I know! Shoot me!

    Sardi in the town of her birth and early childhood
    Stranger: Oh, you've got a lovely Irish accent. Are you really from here?
    Sardi: Yes, lived here 'til I was 8. Went to ---- school.
    Stranger: Well, you'd never know from how you speak. I love the way you pronunce your 't's. Aren't her 't's lovely, Nigel?
    Sardi: I think it's more the fact that I'm actually pronouncing my 't's at the end of words that you're noticing there, love. Ini'?

    Right so you have a hybrid accent presumably if English people can notice it, because my accent would be English enough I think that no one in England would believe I've ever set foot in Ireland.


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    #277
    Sardonicat
    Registered Users Posts: 12,378 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    ThomasFlynn wrote: »
    Sardonicat wrote: »
    I was 8 and still have a predominantly English Midlands accent.

    That's pretty unusual though. I don't know many real life people or celebrities who moved to another country prior to the age of 10-12 and retained their accent.

    At age 8 your vocabulary range wouldn't have fully formed, so when you learn new words. surely you'd be picking them up in your new country?

    I'm not saying it can't happen, but I don't know too many examples of it.
    What's your point? That I'm telling lies, or I'm putting on an English accent.?

    It has nothing to do with vocabulary, but how you learn to pronounce the component sounds. As pointed out above, my siblings were a lot older than I so their accents were fixed by the time we got here and obviously I interacted with them a lot. And my accent has changed, it's just predominantly English sounding. Obviously I speak Hiberno-Irish, but that's the English I always spoke anyway. My cousins moved over here a few years later and they are the same. I have another cousin who was born here and moved to England at 5. He's over 60 now and still has a Limerick accent, his siblings accents vary in Englishness in descending order, with the youngest sounding like a character off Peaky Blinders. So, not unusual at all in my experience.


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    #278
    SharpshooterTom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,017 ✭✭✭SharpshooterTom


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    As pointed out above, my siblings were a lot older than I so their accents were fixed by the time we got here and obviously I interacted with them a lot.

    Well if you've bounced off them then that might make a difference. I'm just saying to retain an accent that young you would need to have regular interactions with people who still have the accent, and if your older siblings still speak that way then that would make sense.


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    #279
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    ThomasFlynn wrote: »
    Right so you have a hybrid accent presumably if English people can notice it, because my accent would be English enough I think that no one in England would believe I've ever set foot in Ireland.
    Yeah, it's funny. My wife's aunt has been living in Liverpool for 40-odd years and to us sounds absolutely Liverpudlian. Even uses typical Scouse phrases like, "Our John". The people at her workplace still slag her for her Irish accent. Which to us, is completely gone, she sounds as Scouse as Cilla Black.


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    #280
    Sardonicat
    Registered Users Posts: 12,378 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    ThomasFlynn wrote: »
    Sardonicat wrote: »
    Stranger to Sardonicat in the town she's called home for 40 years: You're not from here, are you?
    Sardi: Actually I've been here 40 years... But you're right I was born in
    in England.
    Stranger: (In angry, accusatory tone ) But you never lost your English accent!
    Sardi: I know! Shoot me!

    Sardi in the town of her birth and early childhood
    Stranger: Oh, you've got a lovely Irish accent. Are you really from here?
    Sardi: Yes, lived here 'til I was 8. Went to ---- school.
    Stranger: Well, you'd never know from how you speak. I love the way you pronunce your 't's. Aren't her 't's lovely, Nigel?
    Sardi: I think it's more the fact that I'm actually pronouncing my 't's at the end of words that you're noticing there, love. Ini'?

    Right so you have a hybrid accent presumably if English people can notice it, because my accent would be English enough I think that no one in England would believe I've ever set foot in Ireland.
    The point being that it varies from individual to individual. I don't think there's anything 'usual ' or 'unusual ' about accent acquisition. And there's nothing wrong with 'keeping' or 'loosing' an accent. Some people are more susceptible to picking up accents than others, I think.

    I don't know if this has got any baring on the current discussion, but I'm a very good mimic and I've a great ear for accents too. I can tell the difference between Lancashire and Yorkshire, for example. I think most Irish people would be hard pressed to do that. I can do just about any regional English or Irish accent (except Monaghan and Louth for some reason ) . I think that comes from noticing the different Irish and English accents around me as a kid and also the difference in vocabulary used. I remember having to explain to a teacher that when my Dad said he had to carry me to school and wait below with me til the bell rang cos the other children were at me meant he had to walk me to school and stay there til the bell rang because the other children were bullying me. She really had no idea what he meant.


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    #281
    Sardonicat
    Registered Users Posts: 12,378 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    neris wrote: »
    Ive an aunt & uncle from Dublin whove lived in London for the best part of 45 years and have gone the full British. Accents that wouldnt sound of place at Henley, names changed from Irish to English, British citizenship and they even voted for Brexit
    Oh dear.

    None of that from any of my lot. Uncle in England since early 50s still sounds as North Kerry as the day he left. Have an Aunt that's developed a hybrid, but she was only in her teens when she went over, so it's something that developed naturally and not an affectation. Funnily ( or perhaps not) family who never left these shores can only hear her Kent accent, her kids think she has 100% Irish accent and I can hear her lovely hybrid. It seems accent is as much in the ear of the beholder as the mouth of the speaker.


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    #282
    chrissb8
    Registered Users Posts: 1,168 ✭✭✭chrissb8


    Alot of older Irish from protestant rich backgrounds can be found with this accent. As naturally they're descended from our Anglo counterparts, at least that's what I heard anyway and would make the most sense. Same as the south Dublin accent centralised in D4 out to Foxrock it is its own microcosm environment which sustains these accents.

    But I mean the American accent that some Irish seem to have just grates terribly.


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    #283
    neris
    Registered Users Posts: 20,036 ✭✭✭✭neris


    seamus wrote: »
    Yeah, it's funny. My wife's aunt has been living in Liverpool for 40-odd years and to us sounds absolutely Liverpudlian. Even uses typical Scouse phrases like, "Our John". The people at her workplace still slag her for her Irish accent. Which to us, is completely gone, she sounds as Scouse as Cilla Black.

    does she ever tell you to calm down, calm down


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    #284
    Electric Sheep
    Registered Users Posts: 2,102 ✭✭✭Electric Sheep


    Stacksofwacks wrote: »
    The Irish accent in general is a fairly neutral accent so it dosent really catch on except the Cork one you go down there for a week and you nearly come back with the accent

    It's fairly neutral to those who have it, not to those who hear it.

    I know I guy from Cork that lives in New York. He has a very heavy Cork accent, but genuinely believes that he has a neutral accent.


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    #285
    James Brown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,015 ✭✭✭✭James Brown


    I lived in London for a brief period and every now and then Id say the odd word with a cockney accent. Pretty embarrassing, but it soon wore off.
    I knew lads did a few weeks in Manchester and would come back all 'our kid' Perry of Harry Enfield style, but that was the Oasis times.


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    #286
    kateee47298
    Registered Users Posts: 27 ✭kateee47298


    I spent half of my childhood in London and still have a bit of an English accent (I hate it). I think whether you retain your accent or not has a lot to do with the people you surround yourself with. My parents would have always had quite strong Irish accents despite having spent many years in England but when I moved here, I became best friends with another child with an English accent. I think this is why I never lost the accent completely.


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    #287
    Berserker
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,046 ✭✭✭Berserker


    kateee47298 wrote: »
    I spent half of my childhood in London and still have a bit of an English accent (I hate it).

    Does it really bother you that much?


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    #288
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Deebles McBeebles wrote: »
    I knew a lad from down the country who started going out with a girl from Dublin and a few months later had a full on Dub accent. Then I've known people who went to Australia or NZ for years and never picked up so much as a twang.

    Apparently if you are musical/have a musical ear, you pick accents up quicker.

    growing up we moved around a lot across the west coast of the country.

    nowadays i think ive quite a neutral accent as a result but i swear if im talking to anyone with an accent i just lean into it, ill sound like a bad impersonator after ten minutes.

    theres no value judgement to be attached to a person changing accent, usually. you can tell if its a total personality transplant but if its just an accent, hey over time and to different extents youre going to pick habits up

    mrs snoopsheep's mum is from london, she sounds like her mum. her dad is from mid mayo, her brother sounds like her dad. its a weird one but there you go.


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    #289
    pq0n1ct4ve8zf5
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,070 ✭✭✭✭pq0n1ct4ve8zf5


    [Deleted User] wrote: »
    growing up we moved around a lot across the west coast of the country.

    nowadays i think ive quite a neutral accent as a result but i swear if im talking to anyone with an accent i just lean into it, ill sound like a bad impersonator after ten minutes.

    theres no value judgement to be attached to a person changing accent, usually. you can tell if its a total personality transplant but if its just an accent, hey over time and to different extents youre going to pick habits up

    mrs snoopsheep's mum is from london, she sounds like her mum. her dad is from mid mayo, her brother sounds like her dad. its a weird one but there you go.

    My dad is from Donegal, generally I've only a light trace of the accent but it's a different story if I've a few drinks on, or if I'm talking to someone with a strong Donegal/Derry accent. That's fine if that person I'm talking to is my dad or another relative but I've noticed people sizing the interaction up to try and tell if I'm taking the piss.


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