Accents and dialects

[canadagoose]

I always like commenting in these sorts of posts, so I hope I don't repeat myself, but: who associates the DISGUSTING woman with Edinburgh? She's from Oxgangs, apparently. I knew she was from east-central Scotland but couldn't have placed her specifically in the city.

Edit: I've got a feeling I've discussed this with someone on here before. Sorry for the repetition.

[prelektric]

Sunderland's is a little faster and higher pitched with the vowel intonation (eg "Ha'way" instead of "Horweayh")

Yes, you've pretty much nailed that. The longer I've been here, the difference is hugely recognisable. I can tell if local people I meet are from Tyneside or Sunderland instantly. I love it.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I always like commenting in these sorts of posts, so I hope I don't repeat myself, but: who associates the DISGUSTING woman with Edinburgh? She's from Oxgangs, apparently. I knew she was from east-central Scotland but couldn't have placed her specifically in the city.

Edit: I've got a feeling I've discussed this with someone on here before. Sorry for the repetition.

Disgus-TANG!

I'd assumed Fife (specifically West Fife) when I first heard that, which I suppose is not that different to an Edinburgh accent of a non-private school/Morningside type.

Around Dunfermline they're always saying things like 'shock-AN' ('shocking') but don't know whether Edinburgh has this particular twang so much.

Not very tuned into different east-coast accents, though - for instance, I'd probably have assumed that Fern Brady came from one of the less posh bits of Edinburgh if she didn't go on about being from Bathgate.

[canadagoose]

Disgus-TANG!

I'd assumed Fife (specifically West Fife) when I first heard that, which I suppose is not that different to an Edinburgh accent of a non-private school/Morningside type.

Around Dunfermline they're always saying things like 'shock-AN' ('shocking') but don't know whether Edinburgh has this particular twang so much.

Not very tuned into different east-coast accents, though - for instance, I'd probably have assumed that Fern Brady came from one of the less posh bits of Edinburgh if she didn't go on about being from Bathgate.

I think Edinburgh does have that "-an" thing - I've heard it around Leith and east Edinburgh in general. I'll admit that West Lothian sounds a bit similar but with a touch more west-of-Scotland in it. My partner is from Polbeth and doesn't have that strong an accent now, but his old pals from Breich, Addiewell etc sound like a strange east-west mix to my ears.

Some people say there's a difference between Leith and other Edinburgh accents (Gorgie, Craigmillar etc). I can't say I've noticed a real difference these days, though. Some young people have some odd-sounding accents too.

[shoulders]

What/where's the Welsh accent where the aspirated H noise is completely missing?

Eg. here is "eyurrrrr" and hard is "aaaarrrd"?

[buttgammon]

What/where's the Welsh accent where the aspirated H noise is completely missing?

Eg. here is "eyurrrrr" and hard is "aaaarrrd"?

Some Wrexham people do that.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

My dad was from the Wrexham area and he pronounced years as "ears".

[The Culture Bunker]

Listening to people like Paul O'Grady or Nigel Blackwell, the Birkenhead(Wirral?) accent is distinctively nasal compared to other nearby accents.

Sort of like the difference between Manchester and Salford (in the case of the latter, at least people from Eccles and Irlam that I've known).

[oggyraiding]

I have a hybrid accent, as I grew up in Bradford, went to a posh school where I had to hide my Bradford scum accent, and then I moved to the East Midlands. My northernness only comes out when I'm drunk or angry.

I'm a big fan of the accents of North East England. Didn't like Brummie for a long time but dated a Brummie girl and I grew quite fond of the accent.

Only UK accents I really don't like are scouse, cockney, and South West England. And yam yams I guess as they're like Brummie but made to sound terrible.

[Ferris]

Is there anything worse than a Cockney accent?

Genuinely the reason I decided to relocate from London back to the north. Couldn't hack vuh geezahs with their apples and stairs and their foopball. £5 a pint it was too.

Horrible.

[touchingcloth]

bloke at work says 'driv' instead of 'drove'

he also says 'yourn' and 'ourn' instead of 'yours' and 'ours'

would any of you care to guess what his accent/dialect is?

I'm learning to get over myself with this sort of stuff. I used to be a grammar and spelling pedant, but if a foreign knows that easy and hard are antonyms and that the rule for forming compratives gives us easier and harder, if they apply those same rules and come up with a way to compare boring and interesting things with boringer and interestinger, who gets to say that that's not correct given that any speaker could use context clues and familiarity with the language to work out exactly what they mean?

Driv is fine, but it feels like it would apply better to the past sense of driving rain. I am driving a car -> I drove. The rain is driving -> the rain driv.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I've got a relatively mild Wolverhampton accent but some people I know, who grew up all of three or four miles away, speak proper Black Country: "'Ow bist?" (How are you?) "yow cor" (you can't" "the tew on we" (the two of us) "hisen" (his) "yourn" (yours), etc.

When I first heard my friends Steve and Joe (Stave and Jew) from Bilston, I thought they were putting it on ('Ark at 'ow Black Country we am) but they've managed to keep it up for the last thirty years.

[gib]

I'm learning to get over myself with this sort of stuff. I used to be a grammar and spelling pedant, but if a foreign knows that easy and hard are antonyms and that the rule for forming compratives gives us easier and harder, if they apply those same rules and come up with a way to compare boring and interesting things with boringer and interestinger, who gets to say that that's not correct given that any speaker could use context clues and familiarity with the language to work out exactly what they mean?

Driv is fine, but it feels like it would apply better to the past sense of driving rain. I am driving a car -> I drove. The rain is driving -> the rain driv.

driv is old english as far as i know. Pretty sure ourn and yourn were used in the olden days, same idea as 'mine' really.

[gib]

My grandparents definitely used to say 'yourn' and may have said 'ourn' but I can't remember it, and they were from Gillingham, so Kentish, but 'driv' has thrown me off a bit, so it could well be something else. East Anglian maybe?

'driv' is definitely East Anglian. It's interesting that you've spotted 'yourn' in the wild in Kent because the speaker in question is very much a cockney, so kinda halfway between the two regions.

[drummersaredeaf]

I think it was mentioned in the discussion on the other thread about this crossover, but my oldest friend who, like me, grew up in West Cumbria went on to marry a Swedish woman after meeting during fresher's week at uni. She later told him that when they first met, her best guess based on the accent was that he was from some remote part of Norway.

There's an older Potteries dialect that's not far off dying out, but a mate of mine is fairly gruff and affects bits of it. Someone had university friends in town and they wouldn't believe any of us could understand him, thinking he was Scandinavian. It's not miles off this, though I find this a fairly lucid monologue. There's still old boys in pubs that are fairly incomprehensible.

[Kankurette]

I can recognise North Walian a bit because of living in Chester. I remember a video of two Welshmen where one of them had a fork stuck in his shoulder, and the one who was filming said 'yurr he is'. Not sure of the accent but it was Valleys, I think? Like Andrew off The Traitors.

[Durance Vile]

'driv' is definitely East Anglian. It's interesting that you've spotted 'yourn' in the wild in Kent because the speaker in question is very much a cockney, so kinda halfway between the two regions.

That's interesting, because the North Kent accent is all about people moving up and down the dockyards from Woolwich to Chatham to Sheerness and mixing in with the local rural dialects.

I've got a fossilised Medway accent (from thirty-odd years ago, because that's how long I've lived abroad) and I've always been mistaken for a Cockney, but like the Birmimgham / Black Country or Smoggie/Mackem/Geordie difference  discussed above, it really isn't the same thing. It's just hard to tell apart for people who aren't accustomed to it.

[Proactive]

It's mad how your accent can change unnoticed. People back home have being saying 'you have an Irish twang' for years (largely because of certain turns of phrase I've picked up) but after nine years in Dublin, I'm after developing an accent that increasingly makes locals think I'm from round here, especially over the phone apparently.

Did you mean to put "I'm after..." in there to illustrate that point?! I hear Blindboy using that all the time and it's a lovely little turn of phrase.

[Kankurette]

Thinking about it, I'm surprised I didn't grow up with a slight Scottish accent because my dad was from Greenock, and he still had his accent, but living in England probably stopped that. I can't remember him using any Scottish slang apart from 'tube', but my paternal gran used to say 'greet' for 'cry'.

[Theoretical Dentist]

Re 'driv', 'drove', etc, in Sussex there's 'druv', as in the phrase 'we wunt be druv. In this phrase the modern standard English would be 'driven' not 'drove' but I guess it's linked to some older form of all these words. I'd associate it particularly with Lewes but it's also claimed to be a motto for all of Sussex, and I think the association with Lewes is partly to do with its use by Lewes bonfire societies and also that the attitude reflected in the phrase is a sterotypically Lewes thing, rather than it coming from a Lewes accent or dialect.

On picking up accents as you move around as an adult, I must be quite reistant to it since I've sometimes been identified as South African from my accent, including by people from South Africa, even though I've lived in Sussex for more than three quarters of my life. I lived in Zambia as a child, so presumably that's where the accent comes from, although I still find it a bit hard to explain. I'm white so I think the accent people are talking about is white South African/Afrikaner, which is quite different from other South African accents. And while native white Zambians and Zimbabweans have accents that are quite simialr to white South Africans, I don't think I had much contact with any of those people when my accent was being formed. It would have been more black Zambians and people from various other countries (mostly European but a few from North America and Asia), as well as my parents who are both English but from different areas so I didn't pick up a particular English regional accent from them.

[buttgammon]

Did you mean to put "I'm after..." in there to illustrate that point?! I hear Blindboy using that all the time and it's a lovely little turn of phrase.

Yes, it was intentional and that's one I don't really use (it would feel a bit cultural appropriation-ey), but it's one I really enjoy when other people use it.

[The Culture Bunker]

There's an older Potteries dialect that's not far off dying out, but a mate of mine is fairly gruff and affects bits of it. Someone had university friends in town and they wouldn't believe any of us could understand him, thinking he was Scandinavian. It's not miles off this, though I find this a fairly lucid monologue. There's still old boys in pubs that are fairly incomprehensible.

Reminds me of my grandfather being on his last legs in hospital, and a family member being required to be present when the Doctors spoke to him because none of them, coming from the South with one from Nigeria, could understand a word he said. At the time, I had to force myself to stop thinking I was in a comedy sketch rather than dealing with the last days of my grandpa, to whom I was very close.

In mitigation, he was the one who got me into Monty Python, so I think he would have understood if I had laughed.

[touchingcloth]

driv is old english as far as i know. Pretty sure ourn and yourn were used in the olden days, same idea as 'mine' really.

It's like how Cockneys call Del Boy a spiv while to the rest of the country he's a spove.

[Bobloblawslawbomb]

I love a Jan Molby hybrid accent. My brother married a Polish girl and they've been living in Cork for a decade, her accent is absolutely glorious.

[studpuppet]

I don't have an accent.

Reminded me of Maggie Smith.

[touchingcloth]

I reckon I've got a genuinely pretty neutral English accent. I've lived just about everywhere but the North East and South East, and wandered between the North West, Midlands, East, and South West in my formative years with the regions' influences somehow cancelling out.

I'll alternate between talking about baps, barms, cobs, and rolls, and end it with an "'ere y'are, duck".

I wish I'd lived in Liverpool at some point so I could geg in on gegging in. Or Scotland for ten million ace words and turns of phrase.

[Ferris]

I've got a relatively mild Wolverhampton accent but some people I know, who grew up all of three or four miles away, speak proper Black Country: "'Ow bist?" (How are you?) "yow cor" (you can't" "the tew on we" (the two of us) "hisen" (his) "yourn" (yours), etc.

When I first heard my friends Steve and Joe (Stave and Jew) from Bilston, I thought they were putting it on ('Ark at 'ow Black Country we am) but they've managed to keep it up for the last thirty years.

I grew up in the BC and that all seems fine.

This for example is clear as a bell to me, and only when trying to explain where I grew up to other people did it become apparent that it's broadly incomprehensible if you didn't grow up in my specific bit of the west mids:

To be honest it reminds me of my grandad (not the Glasgow one). Even the flat cap is on the money.

Edit to add: I speak like a demented mid Atlantic Scotsman now though, dialing it up or down depending on which side of the pond I'm on.

[popcorn]

I reckon I've got a genuinely pretty neutral English accent.

I think your accent is genuinely pretty too darling 😘

[ros vulgaris]

I've had mixed feedback on my voice. Often people say they don't hear it in me at first but it comes out after a while.

My first partner was from Merthyr Tydfil and I thought he had a slight accent, if somewhat formal and affected at first. Then I heard him on the phone to his parents and the purest tongue of Owain Glyndwr came from his mouth. It was a moment of beauty and joy.

[touchingcloth]

I think your accent is genuinely pretty too darling 😘

Yam guna plant wun on me smacker?