On 05/05/2011 20:28, Bob W wrote:
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Boris Liberman
On 5/5/2011 16:55, mike wilson wrote:
Southern Scotland. That's not bad for a native speaker to understand.
Here's a selection of more extreme versions from the same area.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rab+c+nesbitt&aq=f
Hmmm. I think you live relatively close to there, right (*)?
Mike lives in the part of England that has probably the most impenetrable
accent of all.
People here like Scottish accents, although the chap in the BBC video has a
rather difficult one - Glasgow, I think, like Rab C Nesbit. But people with
Scottish accents are much sought after to work on telephone help desks. It's
probably something to do with the way they pronounce "See you, Jimmy".
Also, I
suppose you meant to say "non-native speaker" if you were referring to
me. But I appreciate the slip of your tongue :-).
Plenty of native English speakers struggle with some of the regional
accents. Especially people from the South, but I was barred from a pub in
Manchester once because the landlord didn't like my accent.
One of the popular science programs here has a presenter that always
raises his voice towards the end of the sentences. He sounds vaguely
similar to this accent except that his is perfectly clear. Well, he's a
popular science program presenter after all.
Send a Youtube link if you can find one. It'd be interesting to hear. The
rising intonation is a new thing to British English, having come here from
New Zealand within the last 20 or so years, and is generally restricted to
young women. Maybe your presenter is not British.
The British Library has an interesting archive of regional accents. This is
what Mike Wilson sounds like:
<http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/byker/>
I actually live no more than ten miles away from there and the accent is
this different:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/resources/sounds/mp3/world-map/england/sunderland-canny.mp3
A few miles further south and you get:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/resources/sounds/mp3/world-map/england/cockfield-fell.mp3
Whereas go the same distance west and:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/resources/sounds/mp3/world-map/england/whitfield-gan.mp3
The one from the north doesn't seem to be working:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/resources/sounds/mp3/world-map/england/england/holy-island-granda.mp3
There are people I know who claim to be able to place a person to the
part of the village they were brought up in, by their accent.
B
Wondrous, wondrous indeed.
(*) No hint, no pun, nothing, merely pointing out something that
occurred to me.
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