Hoots, mon, where’s ma heid?
05 June 2008 @ 20:52 in Life
In the last month, Receding Hairline has had visitors
from 148 countries, including countries I blush to
confess I hadn’t even heard of. (Kyrgyzstan?
New Caledonia?)
This is by way of being a completely manufactured introduction to a rather pretty little question that formed in my head the other day: what accent do people ‘do’ when they do an accent of your country?
Let me give you an example: when people do a Scottish accent, chances are it’s going to be a Glaswegian, or at least broadly-west-coast-of-Scotland accent. I blame the big yin. And so I’m imagining that when people do a generic American (Cope, I’m looking at you) accent, it’s usually specific to a city or at least region of the States. Ditto for Welsh (you saw that coming, huh?), Irish (Susan?), German and so on.
So given that I have so many international visitors, I’m hoping y’all will oblige me in letting me know in the comments what city or region tends to define the accent that represents your country when people do an impression of you and your compatriots talking. Rope in friends, enemies, colleagues and those with whom you have never worked before. I’ll do a special page somewhere on the site if I get enough responses.
A little guidance
(The only one that I’m thinking is probably going to be difficult is ‘English’ itself. When I were a lad growing up in Scotland, an English accent was always an unbearably posh RP-meets-early-Queen-Elizabeth-II, but that was probably as much to do with a tiresome background anti-Englishness than any notion of a coherent English culture. But knock yourself out in the comments.)
This is by way of being a completely manufactured introduction to a rather pretty little question that formed in my head the other day: what accent do people ‘do’ when they do an accent of your country?
Let me give you an example: when people do a Scottish accent, chances are it’s going to be a Glaswegian, or at least broadly-west-coast-of-Scotland accent. I blame the big yin. And so I’m imagining that when people do a generic American (Cope, I’m looking at you) accent, it’s usually specific to a city or at least region of the States. Ditto for Welsh (you saw that coming, huh?), Irish (Susan?), German and so on.
So given that I have so many international visitors, I’m hoping y’all will oblige me in letting me know in the comments what city or region tends to define the accent that represents your country when people do an impression of you and your compatriots talking. Rope in friends, enemies, colleagues and those with whom you have never worked before. I’ll do a special page somewhere on the site if I get enough responses.
A little guidance
- It’s not about what accent actually is the most representative of your country; it’s about listening to the accent that people from outside your country ‘do’ when they’re being Scottish or French or whatever.
- This is about national accents, not about ‘what people sound like who try to do a Brummie accent but fail’.
- For a given value of ‘national’. In my world, ‘Welsh’ is national, rather than ‘British’. You decide.
- This only really works in my mind with places where English is spoken natively, but I’m assuming the same will hold true for other major languages spoken in different countries. What does a Québécois think a Parisian sounds like doing an impression of a Québécois? Of course, I’d love to hear that British people speaking English with a mock German accent all sound Bavarian on whatever, so just have at it in the comments.
(The only one that I’m thinking is probably going to be difficult is ‘English’ itself. When I were a lad growing up in Scotland, an English accent was always an unbearably posh RP-meets-early-Queen-Elizabeth-II, but that was probably as much to do with a tiresome background anti-Englishness than any notion of a coherent English culture. But knock yourself out in the comments.)
