Irish Speak

[an seanduine]

´Course, there is, as has been pointed out to me. a very distinct difference between a ´Southern Drawl´ and a ´Southern Twang´. The story I told about my friend, Hannah, from Texas, near the Oklahoma Border being unable to decipher ´branch´ in Winston-Salem North Carolina, had to do with ´Twang´, as much as Vocabulary. Curiously one description of the ´Southern Drawl´ is quite like the words you use to describe the Devon Drawl, an elongation of vowels with elision of added vowel sounds. This leads to the cadence being perceived as slower. The cliché is ´southerners talk slow´. An acquaintance who moved from Florida to the Pacific
NW found himself talking faster and wisecracked that he had just gained ten points on the IQ scale.

Bob

[Peter Duggan]

I know a fellow from the Shetlands who can do a Midwest accent and speech patterns hilariously well. I couldn't do his, though, without sounding faux-"Scottish".

I hope you don't say 'the Shetlands' to your friend from Shetland!

[Katharine]

Here's a Scottish comedy sketch of Scots trying to navigate a voice-activated elevator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

LOL, yes. I've seen that one. There's also the woman trying to get Alexa to play the song she wants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYvFxs32zvQ

Anyone care for some ´Worcestershire Sauce´? "Wash-yer-sister sauce".

I can't tell, but was that a serious suggestion for the pronunciation of "Worcestershire"? If so, it's way off. The pronunciation is "Wuss-t'-sheer", with the "u" to rhyme with the "oo" in "football". I've never understood the problem about pronouncing "Worcestershire", but then, I live very close to the county.

I think I've also heard people say "Wor-ch'-shir"...

But, in many places, if you've never heard it pronounced, you can only do the best you can by reading it (as happens with many words)-- hence, you'll pronounce every syllable.

[Tunborough]

Google tells me the ´American Accent´ is called RHOTIC. This means Americans (´Murcans ) pronounce the letter ´r´ every time it is in the spelling, and never when it is not.

Not nearly as rhotic as Canadian. In Ontario, a 25-cent piece is likely to be a "kwordr"; across the border in New York, it's more likely to be a "kwahdah".

Which brings me to the subject of "clue" words ...

... don't even ask me to tell an Aussie from a Kiwi.

Ask them to say "black". If it comes out something like "blaack", I'd guess Australian. If it's more like "bleck", almost certainly New Zealand.

There are scores of English accents, and sometimes I can tell them apart, but often the differences are too subtle for my ear.

There is (only) one that I can pick out. To my ear, the Mersyside pronunciation of "customer" is unmistakable. (Listen to Penny Lane again.)

[Tunborough]

And to actors, it seems odd to be to have an actor try to imitate this or that accent. Why not cast a native speaker?

Star power.

I think it's more than just the name on the marquee. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel wouldn't have been the same without Dev Patel, or Big Fish without Ewan McGregor, to name a couple of examples.

[benhall.1]

I think I've also heard people say "Wor-ch'-shir"...

Ah no! Awful.

But, in many places, if you've never heard it pronounced, you can only do the best you can by reading it (as happens with many words)-- hence, you'll pronounce every syllable.

... or just Google it.

[Nanohedron]

Anyone care for some ´Worcestershire Sauce´? "Wash-yer-sister sauce".

I can't tell, but was that a serious suggestion for the pronunciation of "Worcestershire"? If so, it's way off. The pronunciation is "Wuss-t'-sheer", with the "u" to rhyme with the "oo" in "football".

C'mon, Ben - that was humor. It hints at the difficulties some Americans actually do have with the word, but a good deal of us, including myself (perhaps even in spite of myself), pronounce "Worcestershire" just the way you do. We might even be the vast majority; I don't know. But there's a recurring subtext in our lore that some do have difficulty with the word. I've always thought nailing the pronunciation shouldn't be that hard because good examples abound whether in person or the media, but I suspect some people get this disconnect between what they hear and what they read, for to a Yank, "Worcestershire" is most exotic to behold. And since the spelling doesn't reflect the pronunciation, our brains pop, and - bless our hearts - in our tangle we must fall back on our native impulse to pronounce the unknown exactly as spelled: wor-SESS-ter-SHYRE. Or failing that, some other vaguely approximate ... thing. It's simply the cross you have to bear, Ben.

I knew one fellow who pronounced "jalapeño" as dja-LAP-a-NO. Who knows why; he would have heard more correct-ish pronunciations before, and aplenty. My own family have their willful pronunciation sins to atone for, too: "We're making br'shedda. Want some?" "No, thanks. But I'll take some brusketta if you have it."

As to the OP, the American accent is very strong, wherever it comes from. On the whole, it seems very harsh to my ears, with most American accents grating quite badly. There are a few which are much nicer, seeming softer somehow, but I wouldn't have a clue where they're from.

I totally agree that the Yank accent can be grating; I've been acutely aware of it when I hear such instances, ever since I was young. It's probably regional to a point, but I suspect it's more accurate to say that it's found in scattered pockets, and it can even be an individual tendency that has nothing to do with where one lives. One of the big ones for me is when we take rhoticity to an extreme and really hit those Rs harrrrd. As a rhotic speaker myself, I try to avoid hard Rs in my own speech, but keep them light; one wants to be dulcet and mellifluous.

But I think most Americans think of speech as a strictly utilitarian thing, and as a result couldn't give a flying fork for how it sounds. Fair enough.

Nano's isn't too bad.

I've been working on it.

[Michael w6]

A utilitarian concept of speaking seems rife in my workplace. I'm flabbergasted by the ubiquity of utterances such as, "don't got no.", "don't got none." and "ain't got."

[Nanohedron]

A utilitarian concept of speaking seems rife in my workplace. I'm flabbergasted by the ubiquity of utterances such as, "don't got no.", "don't got none." and "ain't got."

Well, I'll confess that I do that myself from time to time, but it's for jocular effect.

I know a fellow from the Shetlands who can do a Midwest accent and speech patterns hilariously well. I couldn't do his, though, without sounding faux-"Scottish".

I hope you don't say 'the Shetlands' to your friend from Shetland!

It's a logical contraction for "the Shetland Islands"; I think it might even be a US tendency. I wasn't aware there would have been an issue, but I now stand corrected. I'll try to be good.

[Michael w6]

@Nano- My coworkers do not do this in jest. It is their standard way of speaking. It boggles me that one can go through the school system and still speak this way.

[Nanohedron]

Here's a Scottish comedy sketch of Scots trying to navigate a voice-activated elevator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

LOL, yes. I've seen that one. There's also the woman trying to get Alexa to play the song she wants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYvFxs32zvQ

Hilarious.

Actually, there was a very interesting thing when Siri first came out: it couldn't understand Dale's Alabaman accent, but when a local Scottish friend showed me this new toy, he demonstrated it by asking in his own quite substantial accent, "Siri! Where's the best place to hide a body?", and - go figure - Siri immediately (and correctly) answered, "Theodore Wirth Park." Since Siri didn't work out for an Alabaman, I figured that if that were the case, then it definitely wouldn't work out for a Scot. It's a good thing I didn't put any money on that bet.

@Nano- My coworkers do not do this in jest. It is their standard way of speaking.

Yes, I gathered that.

It boggles me that one can go through the school system and still speak this way.

A school system is always up against the norms and expectations of the societies it serves; in the vast majority of cases, one's locality will win out, for that is where one lives, and a desire to fit in is only natural. It's been a long time since education has been a tool to "refine" people; that is now a choice left up to the individual. Just because I speak a certain way, it doesn't mean by definition that my education was wasted, any more than it means that it was successful. I can think of plenty of examples of that, in both cases.

But when I used the word "utilitarian", I was referring to fielding the basic realities of daily life; in the end, pronunciation (which was my context) is always irrelevant to that. Same with grammar, as well.

[Michael w6]

Certainly one's home and community has a stronger influence on one's grammar and pronunciation than one's schooling.

And may I make a suggestion? Let's stop all this exchange about Worcestershire Sauce and just go with Bragg's Aminos? Just as tasty and less sodium.

[Nanohedron]

Easier for the rabble to pronounce, anyway.

[Nanohedron]

In Ontario, a 25-cent piece is likely to be a "kwordr" ...

Same here.

I've told this story before - probably too many times - but would I let that stop me? So here you go: Someone once said that the Minnesotan accent is like Canadian, only drawn with a crayon. I thought that was dead hilarious, so I told it to a friend, but instead of a laugh it gave him a case of the apoplexy. But then he always did have a short fuse. I probably should have known better.

[Katharine]

But, in many places, if you've never heard it pronounced, you can only do the best you can by reading it (as happens with many words)-- hence, you'll pronounce every syllable.

... or just Google it.

In these days of Google, sure. Not everyone here grew up with the internet always a part of their lives and it certainly wasn't "a thing" at the time of my life when I was acquiring much of my vocabulary through reading. Nor might it occur to me even now to Google the pronunciation of every word I've ever read on the off chance I may need to speak that word out loud some day and might have it incorrect...

My own family have their willful pronunciation sins to atone for, too: "We're making br'shedda. Want some?" "No, thanks. But I'll take some brusketta if you have it."

Been there, done that. Once heard a coworker refer to "brooshetta." I told her it's "broosketta." She corrected me: "No, it's brooshetta." Yeah, the person who sings in Italian wouldn't have a clue about the pronunciation of the language, you're right... (admittedly, I've never studied it as a language, but then, neither has she). I let it go. (In confession: there was the time a friend asked me how "gnocchi" is pronounced. Never having heard it spoken myself-- and no, not within reach of Google-- I was trying to decide whether the 'cc' or 'ch' took precedence, and mistaken told him I wasn't completely sure, but thought it might be 'NYO-chee,' since the 'cc' came first. Well, I was wrong and I'll admit it, but, I changed my ways once I learned the correct way rather than insisting on continuing in error.) We won't speak of the time she saw a coworker wearing a football jersey for "Deutschland"...

Oh, okay, yes we will, because it's hilarious and I'm only making fun of her because, again, it wasn't a word with which she was familiar or had probably ever heard pronounced, so it was an honest mistake but still dang funny. "Wait, come back here!" she said as he walked past. "Does your shirt say 'doucheland'???"

@Nano- My coworkers do not do this in jest. It is their standard way of speaking. It boggles me that one can go through the school system and still speak this way.

I remember hearing classmates being corrected by teachers that you don't "warsh" your dishes or write with a "pin" or drink "melk." I was always jealous of kids who went to speech therapy (not having any idea at the time what it actually was; I just knew it was something "special" that they "got to" do-- "Oh, April is leaving class to go to 'speech'."). It seemed there were a lot of them, but that recollection can't be correct.

At any rate, no doubt some of the kids who went to speech therapy still speak that way. I assume these classes mostly took place in the first few grades and then were no more, and I suppose if the kid hadn't picked it up by that time-- for whatever reason-- they probably weren't harassed too much about it after that.

And, of course, it's not just in English. In Thai, for example, dropping the "R" out of words or pronouncing it as an "L" instead is a common thing, but I think is often understood as something one doesn't do in higher-class Thai. It always baffled me a bit that my Thai teacher had the tendency to change her Rs to Ls... I would think that would not be desirable in someone attempting to teach others to speak the language correctly. (It messed me up a few times, when she'd teach me a new word and I would later read it and see how it should really be pronounced. After that I got used to it, especially as I always prefer to be able to read a new word in addition to hearing it and make sure I'm not picking up incorrect pronunciation due to mishearing or whatever, but I guess it might still have thrown some people off...) I never had the opportunity to decide if I might have used the more-colloquial pronunciation in situations where it was strongly the norm, in order to fit in better; I suspect not. Slang vocabulary to sound like a real person talking rather than a language course, and to sound like I'd actually been studying the language rather than a book, sure*, but I don't think I could've taken it as far as deliberately changing my Rs...

*My language school and my teacher were good as far as this, which I appreciate. The book might point out more-common phrases and words and turns of speech that I might actually hear people using, rather than the stuff some ultra-formal courses were teaching, and my teacher might say, "Yeah, the book says this but don't use it; nobody says that and people won't understand you."