Having lived in The North™ for the last 16 years, I’ve been accused of Mrs North of sounding more Northern.
So I’ve decided to spend most of the week living and working in London now in order to wash it off me,
My daughter, however, was born in Manchester and is growing up in Lancashire. If she’s with me, she’ll say “barth”, but “bath” (with the flat A) with Mrs North. It’s almost as if she’s bilingual.
Perhaps she can help me translate when I go into Wigan….
f she’s with me, she’ll say “barth”, but “bath” (with the flat A) with Mrs North.
there’s some degenerate teacher at Stoner Jr’s school that uses “flat A” in bath & grass etc. Regular clips around the ear have smacked that out of Jr for now. He came home once and pronounced “H” as “Haitch” 😯 He got 2 weeks in the hole for that. Wont be doing it again.
I tend to mimic the accents of whomever I’m around the most, it’s like a form of tourettes and I have to concentrate to stop it at work, some people find it funny and some don’t, but the Weedge is my default postion when pished and/or annoyed accent. Get it right up ye!
We had this last night for the first time. I nipped that in the bud quick sharp. Living in the north west it’s endemic, even among the (apparently) educated.
The next word she’ll be learning to spell is “aitch”. It’s in the dictionary everyone!
My eldest (11) is native Perthshire, but can do great Bolton and Blackburn accents at will – usually when he’s taking the piss out of his parents!
And all those worried out pronouncing Haitch, you can start worrying when they come out with jai (like eye, but with a j in front) when they mean the letter J, or Etch, when they mean aitch!
Grew up in Dundee with west coast parents then lived in Glasgow followed by Suffolk and now Cheshire. According to most of my clients I am the Irish vet? Don’t hear it myself but describe my accent as mongrelised.
Can vary it, gets stronger when go home or speak to my sis on the phone but can do a good ‘phone’ voice too.
Cal Crutchlow has done a bit of a Steve McLaren, as did Gary Verity last year having spent so much time with Prudhomme, obviously a natural (if amusing) side effect of speaking English with non native English speakers.
I don’t think the effect is as pronounced with very strong accents. It’s more with Europeans and Middle Eastern folk who learned English accentlessly or through Business and not through a dialect, you end up with that curious “mid atlantic” version which is not quite UK, not quite US english.
Sounds odd.
Yeah my wife has this as she went to an American International School but then came to the UK to study at undergrad level.
A global accent will end up being the sign of being one of the elite, as globalti pointed out. Different world, once you’re rich enough you can live where you want, state borders no longer exist.
Hamilton’s placeless accent is no worse than one of the Athertons – Rachel, or Gee in particular, who sound like they are desperately trying to hide every trace of their coun’ry bumpkin Wiltshire roots, with this mid-Atlantic dirge. Probably also a product of hanging out with too many non-native English speakers (aka Americans) 😉
I have a Lebanese customer in Monrovia who rings me from time to time and shouts down the phone; he has a bogus American accent and I know he’s never lived in the USA. He’s a really conceited, pompous idiot. Keeps saying: “Liberia’s ebola free! When are you coming to see me my friend?” I only went there once and it was ghastly; I’d rather go to Lagos.
So lewis and the athertons going one way while Blair, Osbourne and even Cambridge are going the other with occasionally flurries of full estuary….all rather amusing.
