accents

[Moon bunny]

When I speak in my strong Tyrone accent and idioms people stare, a degree in English from QUB made little difference, ("Was it one of those bought off the internet?"- @Hover Fly) but slowly I am picking up Hover's strong Cumbrian,-or Wordsworthian as he calls it-where water is a perfect rhyme with matter, floor has two syllables and so on, meanwhile he is picking up some of my idioms, so he is, eh marra? Eventually I suppose we will only be able to understand each other.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

When I speak in my strong Tyrone accent and idioms people stare, a degree in English from QUB made little difference, ("Was it one of those bought off the internet?"- @Hover Fly) but slowly I am picking up Hover's strong Cumbrian,-or Wordsworthian as he calls it-where water is a perfect rhyme with matter, floor has two syllables and so on, meanwhile he is picking up some of my idioms, so he is, eh marra? Eventually I suppose we will only be able to understand each other.

Pardon?

 

[Moon bunny]

At dinnertime I was sat on the bench looking over the lake, with the boss, a Cornishman, and another technician, a Scot, Hover fly came over, "Is this some kind of joke?"

 

[burndust]

i was on an escorted tour in canada last year...mainly english folk but like me there was a few scots on the tour....the look on the tour guides face when we (scots) were deep in conversation was priceless

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I forgot, the Altofts (accent/football) experience made me smile yesterday, it reminded of my favourite film scene. "Ya fat twat, he wants bleedin milkin", so many classic lines in such a short clip.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3cayRMnVb8

BUM! Could you imagine them doing a school scene like that now? They would be arrested on the spot!

 

[Bromptonaut]

Born and brought up in the West Riding but worked in London since 79. Flat vowels retained, I take a bath after mowing the grass, but it faded for a while. Comes out more talking to a fellow Yorkie - colleagues at work reckoned to be able tell if I was on phone to somebody in the north and my kids say I get my Northern accent out after passing Woodall on the M1. Daughter, after 2yrs at Sheff Hallam Uni is acquiring one too.

Placing accents is a challenge I quite enjoy. Like East Lancs with the elongated urr - Manchestuurrr. And then you get mixed accents; Bradford or Burnley overlaid with and Asian lilt.

The award for linguistic and accent flexibility though goes to the ethnic Asian family running the hardware etc store in Tarbert on the isle of Harris who switch from English to Gaelic and then Punjabi without pausing for breath.

 

[MarkF]

Placing accents is a challenge I quite enjoy. Like East Lancs with the elongated urr - Manchestuurrr. And then you get mixed accents; Bradford or Burnley overlaid with and Asian lilt.

3rd generation Asian (Mipuri lineage) accents in Bradford make me smile, I don't know how it's happened, maybe the white flight from the inner city, but those kids talk like all kids did when I was one. It's hard to explain, like an inner city scruff from the early 1970's talking with a balaclava pulled over his mouth.

 

[AndyRM]

I quite like my accent. It is a smashed together cobble of East Coast Scottish, West Coast US and North East England. It varies rather a lot, and I've been told I can sound Irish, Canadian, or West Country.

Canny as owt me luvver, knaa mean homie?

 

[nickyboy]

Born and brought up in the West Riding but worked in London since 79. Flat vowels retained, I take a bath after mowing the grass, but it faded for a while. Comes out more talking to a fellow Yorkie - colleagues at work reckoned to be able tell if I was on phone to somebody in the north and my kids say I get my Northern accent out after passing Woodall on the M1. Daughter, after 2yrs at Sheff Hallam Uni is acquiring one too.

Placing accents is a challenge I quite enjoy. Like East Lancs with the elongated urr - Manchestuurrr. And then you get mixed accents; Bradford or Burnley overlaid with and Asian lilt.

The award for linguistic and accent flexibility though goes to the ethnic Asian family running the hardware etc store in Tarbert on the isle of Harris who switch from English to Gaelic and then Punjabi without pausing for breath.

The "urr" you refer to is technically know as Rhoticity (or is that a way of cooking chickens on a spit??)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity

It's dying out. I am from Lancaster and we used to laugh at the boys from Preston with their Rhotic "urrs"....porrrrrk the corrrrrr. I moved from Lancaster to Manchester (and later Derbyshire) twenty odd years ago. I no longer say "sure" as "shoo-er", nor do I say "garage" as "garidge". I have also managed to reinsert all those missing "the"s. I've ended up with a sort of generic Northern accent. Unlike son #2 who, when we visited some friends in Northumberland, was reckoned to sound like an extra from Last of the Summer Wine (it is set about 10 miles from here). Thankfully some expensive private schooling has got rid of that...haha