British Accents - Listen to these
Alright, I basically know nothing about British accents, but I am have gotten more interested lately. So I think I am going to give you some links, and if someone comments on the accents, I'll appreciate it. What I'd like to know is at least the kind of accent, and then if you want you can comment on it, its features, popularity, etc.
1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SouTgWtWOOE
- Neg's accent (the crazy guy with the hat)
- The guy who interview him
2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksSee3aZXos
- Gareth's accent
- Other main characters in the office...??? Do they all have the same accent as Gareth?
3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xccvftYS8
- That accent where "fuck" sounds like "fork" or something, and r's are trills, I guess.
That's enough for discussing accents. Thanks.
Clip No 1: Definitely London/Home Counties - ie the counties surrounding Greater London, but most probably South London by the sound of it as it is essentially urban, as Neg's roots truly are in the Balls of Steel series.
Clip No 2: "The Office" - set in Slough, a town about 25 miles west of London but Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) has a rural Home Counties touch to his accent with his slightly rhotic Rs which could be mistaken for West Country, but in actual fact MC hails from Maidstone, Kent, one of the Home Counties, Kent being to the south east of London - the most south easternmost part of Englan.
Clip No 3: The most unpleasant clip of them all, that is obvious. Most certainly set in the North West of England, most probably to the north west of Manchester, and possibly around those Lancashire towns with very high concentrations of Asian people in the population. The accent of the vile assailants is of that area. Sadly the scenario of this clip can be all too real.
What's a lot more unpleasant is the type of comment following the Youtube clip. I wonder if the makers of the film read these and ask themselves if they made a mistake in doing it. The main skinhead character has a Liverpool accent, the small boy has a less distinctive Northern accent, could be Yorkshire or Lancashire. Someone from that area would probably be able to tell where exactly.
Very interesting. There must really be so many regional variations in the UK. One thing I have noticed in those accents is that glottal stops instead of T's are not used systematically: sometimes they are used, other times they are not. So, words like "butter, bottle, matter, etc." can have the glottal stop, but not always and in all cases, so a speaker might say "butter" and a minute later repeat it with a glottal stop, bu?er. Is it so?
Since Damian's already identified the accents, I'll go ahead and offer up my thoughts. I'm not saying this is how I see these people, just commenting on the way the accent sounds to me.
The first one sounds boring, run-of-the-mill to me. The only thing about it that really strikes me is that it sounds like they're trying to be cooler than they are.
The second one I like. It sounds friendly and lyrical to me.
The last one (and please ignore the situation in the clip itself as I'm not commenting on the horrible behavior of that child) is my favorite. But I'm paritial to the Northern English accents.
Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) may have been born in Maidstone but he doesn't speak with a Maidstone/Kent accent. I've lived in Maidstone all my life. Mackenzie sounds more West Country to me. I wonder how he got that accent?.
The last film is just unpleasant - yes, it's northern. Maybe Manchester?
There are several UK regional accents in this latest YT clip. Some research on this shows it to be taken from a TV series of the 1980s called "Oh Mr Porter", essentially featuring a small rural train station on a railway system branch line, and the staff working there, and set in the early 1960s in the days when a certain Dr Beeching (a Ph.D and not a medical doctor) who was the guy whose main purpose was to close down wholesale a good many such railway lines on the entire British railway network which were considered to be less than entirely profitable.
Beeching's axe saw the demise of many rural branch lines right across the UK between 1959 and the late 1960s.
One such was the railway line between Kidderminster, Worcestershire, and Bridgnorth, Shropshire, both in the West Midlands of England, and it was in fact "closed down" but an ardent group of railway enthusiasts clubbed together to save the line and keep it running on a privately owned basis and it subsequenty became known as the Severn Valley Railway, running between those two locations, and now it runs trains on a regular basis as a tourist attraction, the trains beng operated by steam as in the early days of the railways in Britain.
This very same TV series was in fact filmed on the Severn Valley Railway, and the train station seen in this clip, and in every episode of this TV program, is the one at Arley, Shropshire.
The main actors seen are Su Pollard and Paul Shane, both of whom speak with Northen English accents, although Su Pollard may well come from the Midlands, I am not sure on that one. Paul Shane is definitely Northern English, but I'm not sure whether from west of east of the Pennines, the backbone of England, and the dividing line between two distinctly different entities....Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the main.
The really elderly porter sounds as if he is a Londoner, as does the other elderly lady seen at the beginning, leaning out of a window.
Other accents include the "posh" lady passenger, and the "posh" businessman passenger, ("posh" English English RP) reflecting a certain amount of class distinction which, in the 1960s, was still pretty much prevalent in England.
I forgot to mention.....the clip title "Oh Dr Beeching" is taken from a very old song of the arly 20th century connecrted with the railways.....
Oh Mr Porter
What shall I do?
I wanted to go to Birmingham
But they sent me on to Crewe!
Take me back to London
As quickly as you can!
Oh Mr Porter
What a silly girl I am!
A porter is a guy who worked on the train station platforms assisting passengers with their luggage and seeing that the trains arrived and departed safely. (From the French word "porter" - to carry.)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONBn1EpMZJk >>
That clip is perfect to discuss a lot of features!!! I might well be mistaken, but here's what I heard and noticed:
4:44 - Don't be American! (trilled R, sounds so to me)
6:06 - Take it easy (tapped t in "it")
6:49 - Not his fault ("naw tiz fault", final "t" is aspirated and becomes part of the next word) Same feature at 7:20 (He was not a... ---> He was no tuh...)
7:22 - He was lovely ("He was lovleh", no final "y" tensing)
9:00 - She's a lovely looking woman now ("she" is /ʃɪ/ and not /ʃi/)
And at 8:28... does she say "Come here, I wants a word"?
If you feel like commenting...
Accents, in order of intelligibility:
1) Clip 1 interviewer, Clip 4 guy in black hat and woman in fur hat.
2) Clip 2 Gareth, Clip 3 shopkeeper
3) Clip 2 others, most others in clip 4, Clip 1 Neg
4) Clip 3 robbers
Jane-
As to the clip you posted, yes, I can understand everything said and I'm American.
<Mackenzie sounds more West Country to me. I wonder how he got that accent?. >
It's not his actual accent but one he's using for the character. In interviews he speaks with a southeastern accent.
***In interviews he speaks with a southeastern accent***
I checked this out, and it's true.....Mackenzie Crook does normally speak with a standard South East England RP accent, which bears out the fact that he was born and bred in Maidstone, Kent.
As "The Office" was set in Slough, and Slough is west of London, it is not really that far west that West Country rhoticisms take over so someone should have told Mackenzie that before he adopted this very non-Slough accent of his in the series. He sounded as if he was working in Plymouth or Exeter instead of Slough. Slough is actually a melting pot of all sorts of accents - many native Brits in the area are a mix of straightforward Estuary and standard English English RP, with a few "poshies" thrown in for good measure, while the rest are a mix of Asian, Polish and God knows what else.