Originally posted by rgoudieLet me share a wee tale about my accent.
Okay, but do Canadian/American accents sound closer to, say, Kiwis/Aussies than an English accent?
I find that Irish, English and Scottish accents are very distinct.
-Ray.
I'm Scottish, but have not lived there for a long, long time. The only Scottish word I incorporate into my every day language is 'wee' and that's because to me it still means piss and I get a kick out of saying it.
Anyway, I was living in Israel and on one of the kibbutz' I was working at I was talking to a Scots lad (which is basically another Scots word, but I'm drunk, and the more drunk I get, the more Scottish I get...stereotypical yes, true? yes.) and he wanted to talk about football.
So I mentioned I'm supposed to be a Celtic supporter (I'm from Glasgow and my family are catholic. However, I generally support the team least likely to win and even then only when I'm so drunk I can't move myself away from the television) and he asked: "You're fay Glasgay then..." (that's my imitation of his accent by the way.).
So I said: "Yes." Obviously I could have said "Aye", but I don't, so I didn't and I won't.
He said: "I thought you were from Edinburgh."
I shrugged and queried: "Why?"
"You don't sound very Glaswegian." he said.
"Oh." I replied. "That's just education for you."
Absolutely true.
Common Canadian English and common American English are almost indistinguishable. I worked down in Baltimore during the year 2000, and when a certain date arrived in November, many of my colleagues reminded me to go vote. Of course, I wasn't eligible to vote in the U.S. Presedential elections.
Yes, I'm fully aware of regional dialects, but notice this: nowhere in Canada or the U.S. do news anchors speak with the local accent. Listen to the national news or local news and the anchors will speak this pseudo-standard television English. The local accent is deliberately suppressed. It is this television accent that I was referring to.
So, does this North American television English accent sound closer to the South African accent to Aussies or Kiwis? This was the nature of my initial query.
-Ray.
The only oddity is that "British" English and the Irish sound completely dissimilar despite being neighbours.Well being Irish, I can tell u that accents vary hugely from town to town. I sometimes have a bit of trouble understanding people from a town 40 miles away.
The Kiwi accent is like the Oz accent except its been heavily influenced by the mauris. They seems to have a real vowel problem. 😉 i's become u's. e's become i's, etc. Very funny hearing somebody asking for "fush and chups", and then being told that it'll cost "tin suxty".
Canadians sound quite like Americans, but the words to watch out for are the words with ou in. Like house, about. Also, and trying not to offend too many people, I always pick up on people being canadian and not American by the decibel levels of a group of people with an Americanish accent. Low to midrange - Canadian, mid to high - American.
D
Originally posted by rgoudieThis is one thing that confuses me: I still have trouble telling 'standard' Canadian and American accents apart, and yet it seems Canadian accents sound quite foreign to Americans. On the other hand, I've heard Americans have a similar problem. London has a large number of Aussies working there, but an American might have trouble telling them apart from native Londoners, while the difference is immediately obvious to any Briton.
Common Canadian English and common American English are almost indistinguishable. I worked down in Baltimore during the year 2000, and when a certain date arrived in November, many of my colleagues reminded me to go vote. Of course, I was ...[text shortened]... ies or Kiwis? This was the nature of my initial query.
-Ray.
Unlike the US and Canada, England really does have a standard accent that many people (myself and Tony Blair included) speak all the time, with only slight variations. These days our news anchors don't generally put on a standard accent, it just happens that a lot of them speak 'BBC English' anyway. However, outside the Home Counties, the majority of the population still speak with some kind of regional accent.
An interesting tale of accents is that of the character Daphne in Frasier. The actress (Jane Leeves) is actually a Southerner, so probably speaks much like me, but she had to put on a Manchester accent for the part. Her first attempt was deemed unintelligible to American viewers (I gather the Gallaghers need subtitles over there) so she had to use a toned-down version which is probably somewhere between a Manchester accent and her normal accent.
I was in a bar in Laos one night with a group of mixed nationalities. I'm Australian but don't have a very strong accent.
This guy who claimed to be an ex-Green Beret started looking at me in a funny way. After a while he leaned in close and said "You may fool these other people..." (who included Australians by the way) "but you don't fool me." "What do you mean?" I asked, wondering what dark secret from my past he'd uncovered.
"I know you're not Australian," he said, his voice slightly menacing.
"Really?" I said, edging away and looking for a heavy blunt object within gripping distance. "Where exactly do you think I'm from?"
"I know you're a Russian spy..." he growled and my hand curled tightly around a chair leg. He looked deeply into my eyes (although his gaze was somewhat fazed from alcohol, drugs and what I was quickly coming to recognize as a psychotic tendency a little to the right of sane). I made a few quick calculations: weight difference, distance between us, numbers of people likely to join either side of the fight...and suddenly he broke into a big smile, like a crocodile that has stopped two feet short and breaks into a broad grin. "But I like you anyway." He then wnet off to get into a brawl with another guy who claimed to be an ex-Green Beret (apparently he wasn't really an ex-Green Beret) leaving me to get on with spying for the motherland.
The moral of the story: mate, if you're an Aussie, put the accent on bloody thick to avoid hassles. The locals lap it up and it'll keep ya outta strife.
A lot of people are talking about the "British accent" in a general manner. There are many accents within the British isles that are so dissimilar from each other. i.e. Brummie, Geordie, Cockney, the Yorkshire accent. lancashire accent. I am sure the are a few different Scottish dialects as well.
I would say my main dialect is Geordie and I find that American accents and Aussie accents seem closer to my own than some of my neighbours, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and other english accents. Very interesting topic this.
Originally posted by StrayJayIt's amazing that a creature as little as the fly could have such an impact on a dialect. I swallowed a fly once; I must have been watching too much American tv that day.
Aussies try to open their mouths and move their lips as little as possible, turning sentences into one string of vowel-based sounds.
In SA I think one of the biggest problems comes from the apartheid era.
Most white Afrikaans speaking people just didn't bother learning to speak english.
This means that when they open their mouths now to speak english they absolutely rape the language...
BTW, I'm actually Afrikaans speaking, but when we moved to a new town and I had to be put in a nursery school, the only one my mother knew of was an english Jewish school.
This meant that I had to learn to speak English very quickly.
I worked with a guy for 9 months, and he still thought I was Australian the day I left. When I used to hitch-hike (I still do occasionally - rail is a rip off), people always think I am from Oz.
Yet most people I meet day to day could never understand why someone else would think that, but it just happens so often( For the record, I have not watched a single trashy Australian soap in about 20 years) Very strange. I must put on a voice in certain situations, I don't know.
I do find accents quite fascinating – why such a short distances should make such a huge difference. I used to go out drinking with a Geordie, a Welsh guy, and an Indian. (This sounds like a joke, I know) I could only understand the Indian guy without having to make any effort. After a few pints, I would get lazy, and I wouldn't even hear words – just noise,
-Russ