The English language

I love the english language. I wonder, espesially if you're not a native speaker, what do you try to sound like when you are talking english? and what is in your opinion the nicest english accent/dialect?

Hmm, interesting question. I usually have fun speaking lots of different accents when I'm drunk, but normally I think I sound a lot more American than British. I can't explain why, but speaking in any British accent doesn't feel natural at all. American English, however, does

Go oan, gie the scots a go Ringdrotten, whit yi fert aw? Its a doodle tae master. Jist maike suir yi gie it laldy. Oan yersel big yin!

I've been there a few times when I've been drunk, trust me I seriously doubt that I succeded at it, though

I'd love to hear that!

This accent is close to mine, only in a female voice! (I couldnt find a male west coast accent that wasnt a strong Glasgow one, which is quite different)

That's exactly what springs to mind when I think of a Scottish accent - love it

American English is more familiar to us because we grew up with American TV-series and movies. But we learn (at least in theory) British English in school. I am afraid my English sounds better in my head than when spoken, but compared to some folks at work I sound like a native.

I'm curious if any of you naturally notice the difference between Canadian and USA English. There's a clear, lyrical quality to some Canadian speakers that's very nice. [I've always read Leelee's posts with that accent, but we haven't heard from her for a while.... ]

Also Petty, does Archie Fisher count as a west coast accent?

Archie Fisher was born in Glasgow so its west coastish, but Glasgow has its own strong accent which is generally regarded by the rest of Scotland has been the harshest sounding and it also has an association with a ned culture, buckie, violence-all the things Glasgow is famous for in fact. It also has a lot of its own words and phrases.

This doco on Glasgow Gangs has plenty of Galsgow accents in it.

Eeee by gum its taters outside, gona put me welly's n wooly aton.
Thats my accent. When you read me posts think of Arwen with a Yorkshire accent.

That combination of accent and Arwen is oddly arousing Chris!

Didn't no the Yorkshire dialect had Viking wards mixed with it ?

My accent is Baltimorese, which is basically normal American English, but with a few pronunciation differences. The most notable one is that I struggle to pronounce the letter T. Hence why I live in "Baw'more" and drink "wadder". I've made a conscious effort to fix some of the weird pronunciations so it's not as pronounced as it used to be, though.

Also, I like reading the Scottish Wikipedia while imagining the most ridiculous, stereotypical Scottish accent possible. I suspect that might in fact be its purpose.

I'm not sure that wiki is legitimate Eldo. Its fine for some things but its entry on buckie is woefully inadequete and I could find no refrences to breakthroughs in buckie mathmatics or crabbit calculations. In fact it doesn't even know what crabbit is!

They tell me my accent is a little different. My family has lived on a fairly isolated part of the coast of Washington state for about 120 years, with a lot of Scandinavian fishermen and farmers, next to an Indian reservation. Then I went off to school. Now I speak American English with a farmer/academic/Native American accent. When I travel, people often wonder where I'm from.

I love the sound of scottish, all of them (yes, I am aware that there are several different ones). My sister did a presentation at school some years ago where she talked about english around the world. Didn't get to hear it though, but she does a pretty good scottish accent I can too, if I practise a bit and qoute something which someone has already said. Though I would never brag about it in front of native speakers though xP

my english tends to sometimes sound irish. (i think because I watched a documentary about film lately with an irish presentor and he had this beautiful melody in his speech). or some mix of british dialects (which sounds really horrible). I've watched too many BBC programes and I've just gone through all of Cabin Pressure. and sometimes, on bad days, I get this really bad america/british mix.. :S god help me..

Norwegians speaking english tends to sound aweful because of the "melody" in the dialect, but where I'm from, we have the same melody as in "normal" english, so we tend to sound less bad. (woop woop)

and thanks to you Petty I wrote all of this having a scottish voice in my head.

Here to help Norc.

I'm curious if any of you naturally notice the difference between Canadian and USA English.- David

I can normally tell a Canadian immediately. There is quite a bit of Scots influence in some of it I believe and certainly to a Scots ear certain sounds and rythmns are familar.
Some American accents you can hear trace Scots constructions popping up in. And listening to country and western (the real thing real people play in barns at drunken parties I mean) is a spit and a stone throws from ceildh music using all the same instruments.

I imagine farmer Dave to have the accent the English settlers had 500 years ago, if its an isolated pocket of Washington State, a kind of West Country/ American flavour, but thats just my imagination.

My accent is Mancunian so think Charlie from Lost or Peter Kay or heaven forbid the brothers Oasis, Our Kid.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Some American accents you can hear trace Scots constructions popping up in. And listening to country and western (the real thing real people play in barns at drunken parties I mean) is a spit and a stone throws from ceildh music using all the same instruments.

That doesn't makes sense to me, since IIRC the American South (where a lot of country and western comes from) had a higher percentage of Scottish settlers than the rest of the future U.S. in the colonial era.

My brain might be buckied but why would the place where Scots settled producing a music that sounds very like scots ceildh music not make sense? Or am I just misreading you Eldo?

Derp. I meant to say that it does make sense to me but it somehow got garbled while I was reordering the words within the sentence.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I'm curious if any of you naturally notice the difference between Canadian and USA English.- David

I can normally tell a Canadian immediately. There is quite a bit of Scots influence in some of it I believe and certainly to a Scots ear certain sounds and rythmns are familar.

That makes sense to my ear too. The telltale "ou" sound of "out about the house" is closer to Scots than anything else I can think of, though often subtler.

And listening to country and western (the real thing real people play in barns at drunken parties I mean) is a spit and a stone throws from ceildh music using all the same instruments.

I think that has as much to do with what they're drinking. Not the buckie. This is the stuff in the canning jars that also removes paint.

Mrs Figg wrote:I imagine farmer Dave to have the accent the English settlers had 500 years ago, if its an isolated pocket of Washington State, a kind of West Country/ American flavour, but thats just my imagination.

I doubt if it's quite as romantic as that, but please feel free to imagine it so.