That was a very interesting read, if I might say so. Hugh Lawrie will, for me, always be the "thicker than a whale omelette" Prince of Wales in Blackadder Three.
Cheers, HIAG. As I've said, I thought this was a particularly interesting thread. You know I actually associate good things with Scousers, thanks to the only one I knew. She walked up to me once for no reason and stood about two inches away. She was very pretty, I'd just met her, and so I couldn't help wondering what was up. She craned her neck back and looked directly up at the bottom of my chin. "You are a big bastard," she said, and walked away.
Red, you know, I had exactly the same experience. Only the little lovely was looking down at the bulge in my trousers.
I find the Yorkshire accent grating - "sooop or frooot joooce?" The Aussie accent sounds like chirpy Cockney gone wrong (probably something to do with transportation) It's amazing how people can speak with so many different accents in such a small island. Moving east from Liverpool, you've got the Scouse accent, then the slightly Scouse Lancashire accent (Widnes, St. Helens), the west Lancs accent (Bolton, Wigan), the Salford accent, then the similar but less harsh Manc accent, the mixed Lancs/Manc accent (Bury, Rochdale, Oldham) and to the north you have the very broad East Lancs accent (Blackburn, Burnley). All these accents, some of which are very different to the others, within a radius of 40 miles!!
"All these accents, some of which are very different to the others, within a radius of 40 miles!!" Just one reason why I love the UK.
I had an Australian use a bunch of ridiculous Aussie cliches in a couple of sentences a couple of days ago when speaking to me. G'day mate, fair dinkum, good on ya... Still not sure he wasn't taking the piss, to be honest. Either that or I walked onto the set of Neighbours by accident.
In Norfolk, old ladies will say stuff like, "There you go, me duck!" They seem to have a big thing for ducks, in Norfolk. I don't know why I'm telling you this, as I know very little about Norfolk, and have been there only a few times in my life.
Sounds like Hyacinth Bucket, than the usual sophiscated words of the boards highest regarded poster . R.P. Can be split into many camps . The comic chinless absurd toffee nosed style of the Royal Family , Brian Sewell, Brian Badonda , Thatcher ,made in Chelsea cast , Edward Fox, Noël Coward etc., This has had a little revival in recent years , with the Tory government overdosing on Eton effete privileged Toffs. Then you have maybe the most attractive form , in the English speaking world . Slightly theatrical , less plum, considered well spoken without the blocked nosed effect . The accents of Peter O'Toole , Larry Olivier , James Mason, Richard Burton , Errol Flynn , Stewart Granger would be considered by many as perfection. Unsurpassed by any other form. Everyday RP in the style of Southern England is the most common , most fashionable , classless but the tone of the middle classes . A large element of the Toff removed . Speakers would be Orlando Bloom , Jude Law, most modern newsreaders etc. London, cockney can be attractive in its likely lad form. Michael Caine , David Bailey, Terry Stamp, Sweeney cast, Lock Stock , but has diminished with the rise of the ridiculous stupid ,laughable Essex Style , inner city cretinous Ali G ethnic tone or Eastenders depressing thick spill. There is an American posh , mid Atlantic , upper class WASP accent . Still in use as the pompous but enjoyable Fraser , Boston Mash Doctor , old Hollywood stars such as Hepburn , Liza Taylor , Joan Crawford , Vincent Price . On it's way out , l am not sure. The most odd is the West Country . On one hand the simple honest farmer or the devilish pirate .
Your accent most certainly can change through your life, depending on many factors. For me, my father was an ex army officer - very well spoken. My mother had more normal london accent. Most of my mates spoke more like my mum, but my Dad would get on my case about my speech. So, at home I had to speak very correctly. My first wife was American. I lived there for 4 years, worked for American banks in London, when I returned. Nowadays, my accent is more a mixture of all those influences. I still pronounce many words the American way.
That made me smile. Those of us born in the west country don't consider the Cornish pirate accent to be west country at all. People in Wiltshire (awrigh you?), Somerset (I be fram Samerseh) and Gloucestershire (Glaah-ster) have west country farmer accents. People from Bristol (origh my lover?) are pure yokels and are just too difficult to understand. They say the American accent comes from the west country as most people sailed from the west country to the Americas.
The upper class English accent is very pronounced and in its own way is as idiosyncratic as the Scouse or Welsh accents. It's only seen as the "proper way" to speak because of its class associations. Actors in the mid 20th century often received elocutuion lessons to ensure that they spoke in clipped tones, but you can hear traces of a Yorkshire and Welsh accent in Mason and Burton repectively. I think the middle classes speak much the same in all parts of England. The only noticeable difference between Northerners and Southerners is whether or not you use a flat or long 'a' in words like ask or past. American accents are very muddled. As I said earlier, I can hear the Irish influence in a New York accent. I'm not sure about any West Country influence. The flat 'a' and hard 'r' sounds hint at broad Lancashire to me. The Canadians definitely have a Scottish twang.
Canadians don't have a scottish twang,unless thy are from the east coast,Newfoundland etc.how do i know, my dad is a Canuck,from Ottawa.no scottish twang
"Not one nomination for Stephen Hawking? You should be ashamed of yourselves!" http://www.text2speech.org/temp/543804771e93f.mp3
Canadians don't have a Scottish tang, or burr, but they do retain some Scottish pronunciations, as when a Canadian said to me "I'll just pahss oot on the coach." Posh accents get ground down pretty fast in the US. Hollywood accents of sixty years ago now sound English and ridiculously posh to us. There's a democratic prejudice. The Boston Brahmin accent is dying. Oddly, nothing seems to guarantee success in an American TV sitcom quite like having a central character who is brainy and has a relatively posh accent, like Fraser, or, arguably, the Big Bang theory. The latter's main character features an accent part nerd, part posh and part metrosexual. Yet overall, we continue to head towards accents which are more demotic, or, perhaps, more middle of the road.
Hard to argue with that on the Tottenham board. I once decided the best and richest American accents were for some reason acquired by California girls of Asian descent. Our last three presidents have all had good accents: Obama also with a bit of the rich far west standard, Clinton with a really fun Arkansas snake oil, and W. with a pleasant Texas/standard hybrid. W.’s dad has a shocker, on the other hand, "not enough John Wayne and too much Barbara Stanwyck." Kennedy’s was somehow a winner, though it was Boston Irish working class ineptly pushed and prodded upward into something absolutely unique and weird. Reagan’s was Hollywood B movie circa 1943, which was his message: that the world really was a Hollywood B movie from 1943, and he was the hero of it.
I love Joey Ramone's thick New York accent, although he attempted to sing in a non-descript sort of British accent in "Beat on the Brat" and some other songs - for whatever reason Hey ho, let's go! Shania Twain is Canadian yet she sings like she was brought up in Nashville! And of course how many British groups over the years have cultivated an American singing voice?
