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Fingolfin
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Likes it here |
Location: Slovakia
Registered: August 2008
Messages: 265
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Yesterday I attended my evening lesson of CPE English and it was very cool. We practised pronunciation and our teacher performed different British accents starting with his own accent (suburban London), continuing with SW England, Wales, Scotland, northern England, finishing with Irish. It was HILARIOUS. Several peolple in our group were living in UK and the subtle shades of accents can be perceived. My accent (I have never been to an English speaking country) was compared to James Bond (no remarkable accent).
My questions: What are your accents like? Which accents do you like? How about American English? Is it sometimes tough to understand a specific accent?
Marek
It is better to switch on a small light than to curse the darkness.
- Vincent Šikula, Slovak writer
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Oh help! I have a bit of a mixture of an accent. Up to the age of 10 I spoke perfect BBC English, as insisted on by both my parents and Prep school. I still revert to this in moments of high stress (such as when confronted unexpectedly by policemen).
Then I went to secondary school, where this as seen as pretentious ... and I rapidly adopted the local Oxford City / Cowley Motor Works (not to be confused with Oxford University!) accent. Forty years later, having lived in London most of my life, I seem to have ended up with an accent based somewhere between Otmoor (marshland just outside Oxford) and the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.
It is, I'm aware, one of the accents that is often taken to be rather "uneducated": people who only know me through e-mail / the internet sometimes find it a bit of a shock when they meet me!
To my own ears, I also have a few of the stereotypical "gay" speech patterns, though several other people have assured me that I don't. I rather hope they are right about that - I don't really do stereotypes!
As to other accents ... my least favourite is the Fife accent (I lived there for several years). Fifers glory in their reputation for incomprehensibility (even to other Scots), and I'm sure that they intentionally make their accents even more impenetrable when there are strangers about. To me, it really grates on the ears.
Favourite accents? The Forest of Dean has a truly wonderful, rich, rural drawling accent - the kind of voice that makes me want to crawl up inside it and have it put its arms round me!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Of the American accents I would be hard pressed to say which would be hardest to understand. Yankees, Northern states, speak a very quick English with lots of German and Itallian undertones. Midwestern English which is very precise with a kind of draw. then there is Western English which is full of euphinisims and a heavey draw. Then California Which is a very dull flat english. Then there is Southern American English, this is full of Irish and Scottish inflections, very slow spoken with words run together and is the origin of the word y'all.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 17:33] |
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Yes, Marek,
My parents were keen that I didn't get a north Staffordshire accent (where I was born) and I was brought up to enunciate clearly. The consequence is that I speak more precisely than most people and all I have to say on the telephone is "Hallo" and nearly everyone I know recognises me.
The only English accent I find hard is the geordie from the north-east - Newcastle-on Tyne and that area. I now live on the border of the west country whose accent I like - after all I chose to live here.
Accent was an important class distinction when I was young hence my parents attitude, but nowadays it is much less important, in my opinion.
Yes accents can be hilarious and people that can do them well are worth knowing.
I can't.
Love,
Anthony
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My accent makes me stand out a bit. It's a 'BBC' or 'RP' accent, and I haven't mastered the art of roughening it a little so as to make myself more inconspicuous. Being a pedant, I also try to pronounce words precisely and correctly.
I hate listening to recordings of myself. It's on my to-do list to learn to dull the accent so I don't stand out so much, but I've never quite got round to it. My repertoire of accents is very limited and rather unconvincing.
My parents live in Somerset these days, and you do encounter quite a few Somerset/West Country accents round there. It's one of those accents that everyone knows (it's rather like the stereotypical 'pirate accent') and most people make fun of it. I get the impression it's dying out, though -- it's stronger in the older generations, and I haven't met many young people with one.
David
[Updated on: Wed, 24 September 2008 19:51] |
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Michael wrote:
>My French was learned in Canada. He says he finds my pronunciation different.<
Canadian French is something else. I was amazed at the way it was spoken and how English words (particularly verbs) were converted into French words that the Académie Française would never allow to exist, eg 'nous expectons' for nous nous attendons). Any self-respecting Parisian would refuse to understand it on principle.
Anthony comes from a city where they add L to the end of words which end in a spoken vowel. 'Ah, that's a good ideal.' At the time of the Kennedy-Kruschev stand-off in 1961 a piece of graffiti appeared in Bristol saying "Hands off Cubal." I am led to believe that the city's name was at one time Bristow.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I have, of course, no accent whatsoever. But that is because I attended a British Public School!
Others have accents. I am simply blessed with correct pronunciation.
My father, by contrast, spoke accent with a trace of English.
More seriously I have what is now a grave disadvantage of a "correct" English accent, but more of a disadvantage I mirror pretty closely the entire speech pattern of anyone I talk to for a while. I have to guard against that, but it just seems to happen.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Yes, Nigel,
Bristol was once Brig Stowe = the farmstead by the bridge.
Or so I understand.
Love,
Anthony
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Yes, Timmy,
me too; after a week in Wales I'm speaking with a welsh lilt.
Love Anthony
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Timmy wrote:
>I mirror pretty closely the entire speech pattern of anyone I talk to for a while. I have to guard against that, but it just seems to happen.<
Interesting. I don't think I do it any more, but I certainly did as a boy. Partly automatically, partly as a pisstake. Strange how a pisstake can sometimes return to bite you on the bum.
I do also tailor the German I speak according to the part of Germany, Austria or Switzerland I'm in.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Its funny how the way someone speaks varys from location to location. I have a friend who is Spanish, born and raised in Spain. We were talking one day and a Young man of Mexican decent said something to him in Spanish. My friend basicly asked him what he had said as he didnt understand him. Later I asked what that was about and he told me that the young man did not speak Spanish. He said that the Mexicans did not speak Spanish, but instead spoke a hybrid Latin language that just resembled Spanish. I thought this odd but then realized that it is probably a mixture of Spanish and native languages from that area.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 17:31] |
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Interesting, Roger,
Emily had an au pere from Mexico City who was quite able to talk with Emily's husband Javier who as he says 'speaks Spanish in Gallego dialect with a Somerset accent'.
Love,
Anthony
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I know my friend indicated that the Mexicans (and there may be a difference between rural and urban )speak a form of Spanish that is heavely mixed with native language (Azteca, Inca, etc.). Its probably a lot like the difference between Cajun French, Canadian French as compaired to French.
something else I noticed about my friend. He cringes if someone from Mexico says they are Spanish or Spanish speaking. He will correct them and tell them they are Latin and not Spanish and that they do not speak Spanish. Personally I think he is a bit touchy.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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