OK, yes, accents (isn’t there movie where the bird just melts when the bloke says one word or summat?) and personal taste and utility and all that:
But my favourite accent is to be found in Belfast; a Northern Irish accent immediately adds three points to a person’s attractiveness. It has the friendliness of scouse, but is much softer and more charming.
Depends which NI accent really, doesn’t it? Ian Paisley’s would rarely be described as “soft” nor, whatever the reports of the man himself, charming.
why under jonny F?
“I used to have an ex-girlfriend who, I’m ashamed to say, I frequently asked to say “power shower””
ahh the accent of love- nothing more romantic than a power share with Ian P.
Jerry Maguire? “You had me at Hello?” perhaps?
As for the Northern Irish accent, my mother always said it was one of the reasons she left County Down (apart from the whole anti-Catholic sectarianism thing) was the fact that the local accent was “grating and unappealing, but not as bad as the chauvinistic attitude of the men”. Still, that was 1957. I’m sure it’s totally different nowadays…
😐
Every male from NornIron I’ve met sounds like Frank Carson. Liam Neeson manages a “nice” accent but then he’s been praticising it.
There’s some rom com out called Wild Mountain Thyme check the accents in the trailers on Youtube.
Otto- jamie dornan’s brogue is soft but he doesn’t use it for films. I saw he was in a bit of a teacup storm for playing a southern irish farmer and an irish critic saying he sounded like a belfast man doing an impression of a rural southern rustic who spent his formative years in LA. A bit harsh because if you actually did mimic successfully a cork farmer’s speech in a film you’d need subtitles and it’d be classed as foreign language.
I love the Scousers, great bunch of lads. But I have to confess that their querulous nasal patois makes me want to build a 300 ft Mecha-Thatcher with 400MW laser beam eyes and set it loose on Brookside Terrace.
Best English accents apart from Sir Humphrey Appleby’s mellifluous RP are the soothing rhotic rustics of Gloucester and West Oxfordshire, and the gentle Geordie inflections of Durham.
Wasn’t the film ‘A Fish Called Wanda’?
Great accent story involving PG Woodhouse (pbuh). He was working as a script doctor in Hollywood and was asked how they could rapidly convey that someone was very upper class. He suggested that they get her to pronounce the word ‘yes’ as you would ‘ears’. It works perfectly.
Brings back memories of a Derry girl I used to knock about with. She was a divorcee from a violent marriage. She’d bounced the ex, teeth first, into the bathroom handbasin. And a very powerful & accurate crockery thrower when argued with.
Best: South Wales
Worst: Lancashire. It’s like talking to people who are permanently angry.
It happens across countries. I’m used to dining with groups of Italians where the vocal noise rises until I can’t hear any more. But if I raise my nondescript generally southern English voice by a decibel* to join in, the table goes silent, and they all wonder what has made me so angry. I think that in the North African campaign, we really should have just raised our voices, and the Eyties would have surrendered in droves.
Edit: Apparently we did. And got the anticipated result.
*Yes, I know it’s a log scale, so a decibel is a lot, but does iota convey the same?
“300 ft Mecha-Thatcher with 400MW laser beam eyes“
Genuine LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxpYW_w5pgo
A woman who writes for the Guardian about her mental illness is trying to be interesting by saying how she likes accents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwLV1dnuNjw
Cointreau ad from the ’80s is what I think Tim was thinking of. Creepy French tosser copping off with our women.
@BIS
piecing together your romantic history from your comments in this blog it does seem you have a penchant for birds who could handle themselves on the door of a tasty East End boozer.
Accents. Funny things I was surprised to discover that the French French have to turn on sub-titles to watch Canadian French movies.
“Cointreau ad from the ’80s is what I think Tim was thinking of. Creepy French tosser copping off with our women.”
I knew a guy who did very well in Chicago with a Yorkshire accent. And not Sean Bean but more like The Chuckle Brothers (and not much better looking). But you get that advantage of signalling exotic genes which gets more attention.
@BIS
piecing together your romantic history from your comments in this blog it does seem you have a penchant for birds who could handle themselves on the door of a tasty East End boozer.
Believe me. I once accompanied the wench to the Silver Slag in Tottenham. It had an 8 foot spade on the door asked to look in her handbag. Her short reply was “Ye can try”
Each to their own BoM4, your best is my worst.
Aisling Bea has me at “hello”, though it helps that she’s drop dead gorgeous.
Funny old things accents. I used to hate the Scouse accent but one of my best mates hailed from there, so I now hear it with fondness. I used to work with a chap from Noon Iron; you’d need new vowels to transcribe his speech.
Foreign laydee accents, fond of both French and German. Closer to home, soft southern Irish, posh Edinburgh or Sloaney (but only if she’s blonde).
@Halllowed Be – not Cork but Kerry; I literally can’t understand a word of this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c
The only episode of the original Taggart I could understand was one I saw in France which had been dubbed into French.
Can’t beat a South African accent! *melts*
One of my old mates, who hails from Dublin, always used to reckon that the main difference between a Dublin accent and one from Belfast was “about 30 decibels”.
So 99.9% of bbc announcers use Received Pronunciation.
Leaving aside the fact that 99.9% of real people, i.e. not guardian writers or bbc announcers, call it the Queens English exactly which bbc channels is she referring to?
Much as I love your wit Steve, they don’t speak Geordie in Durham.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-rE80E5NY again (there’ll be a test afterwards)…
MC- yeah makes you wonder whether not having front teeth helps or hinders irish elocution.
DocBud
I had no idea who Aisling Bea was. But I’ll fight you for her!
After two tours in Ulster during ‘the troubles, a Belfast accent is one I find hard to like. Harsh, bitter sounding, and seemingly accusative, even in a normal conversation.
The soft lilt of a colleen from southern Ireland however, can send shivers down my spine even, or should that be especially, when talking dirty. Not the Mrs Brown Dublin accent, but one from further south. 46 years we were married, until her untimely death. I still play videos of her and that fantastic accent.
@Excavator Man
A decibel is 10^0.1 = ~1.25, but it’s often claimed that a 10x (10dB) increase in audio power is only perceived as a doubling in loudness, so possibly more like 7% than 25%.
Back on topic, Southern Europeans are generally perceived by Brits as very loud, particularly over meals, not helped by the tendency of restaurants in warmer climes to go in for tiles rather than softer furnishings. I was told that if you’re in a Spanish town that you don’t know, you can tell the best restaurant by the volume of noise spilling onto the street.
Evidently they had a slow submissions day at the Grievance Desk of the Guardian.
And could anything be more Guardian than this:
Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist who writes on pop culture, music, tech, football, politics and mental health
One of these things is not like the other!
BoM4: Oi! Lancashire is quite variable. Listen to Lisa Stanfield talking, not singing. Pure Rochdale. George Formby is further West. Go to Clitheroe it’s different again. I’m a polyglot of Rochdale & Rossendale, with a few Southern vowels from living down here for nearly 50 years. The harsher NornIron variants are more naturally angry, as is Scouse to my ears.
I love the norniron bit, had to send it to my brother.
Wasn’t that one 90’s cinema critic from norniron? Or was he a southern poof?
John Galt, your quote reminds me, a spitting image of (early) Renee Zellweger working at the automated tills in a Morrisons supermarket up north. Could be her twin sister. Same pouty lips, bedroom eyes…can’t get close to her, male workers buzzing around her, bastards.
https://youtu.be/jgC6VqsC3QY
I’m with BoM4 and TractorPerson. Welsh is a fantastic accent, and living in Lancashire not that far from Rochdale, I can say that Lisa Stansfield’s voice was very nice.
My wife says that an old friend of mine has the most attractive voice/accent she’s come across. He’s from Kirkcudbright.
A friend of my daughter claimed that I sound just like Sean Connery. When I said “eh?” she said “but much more handsome”.
The R4 sketch show The Museum of Everything had a recurring character of a critic from Norn Iron presenting the Museum’s Fillum Club…
@Chris Miller,
Useful to be reminded of the relationship. But I did say ‘a lot’, not 10x – basically because I couldn’t remember and was far too idle to look it up. The Eyties still think I’m angry when I try to match their volume.
Hey JuliaM, howzit my cherry?
Dennis, He Who Refuses To Be A Whiny Bitch said:
“Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist who writes on pop culture, music, tech, football, politics and mental health”
So she writes about her hobbies?