Are some Scottish and Irish accents really inintelligeble?

***Other reports I've read claim that American English is also making in- roads into both Ireland and Scotland***


Duh! What can you mean by that??? .... hot off the press news to me and I only live here....the Scotland bit anyway. As Chris says, maybe some words from over yon, but nothing else, that's for sure. We've got nothing at all against American English....we hear plenty of it here but no way do we want to adopt any of it ourselves. The (limited) absorption of American words into our everyday Language is inevitable with globalisation I reckon. As a separate form of our Language American English is great, cool, brill.....but "only in America". It'll never become the norm in Killiecrankie or Dalwhinnie.

I read that Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" has opened up on Broadway with the original London cast....to Americans living in or near New York...go and see it....it's fantastic. It had a great run at the National Theatre on London's South Bank and is now starting a UK tour. I've seen it twice over here. I heard a review on the radio.

In another program dealing with entertainment this American guy said that the Americans have performed wonders for the English Language by turning it into a Hollywood musical. He was talking about "The Producers" at the time....."I wanna be a Producer, with a great big Broadway show....." The film was hilarious.

*TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO*ABE*TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO*ABE*TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO*ABE*TRINDAD AND TOBAGO*ABE*TRINDAD AND TOBAGO*

I'm from a Brit from Birmingham. I live in Toronto. Looking back on my home from a remove, ny sympathy extends to the US browser. Of course it's a strange that a country you can travel the length of in a single day has so many extreme differences in accent and dialect. Then I remember the experience of actually living it, and doesn't seem strange in the slightest.

RP is a dead duck, in all honesty. It certainly isn't popular, not least because of its sinister implications. It fell down almost completely when businesses attemped to enforce it - the result was RP Irish, RP Scottish, and so on. Hardly the singular homogenous model of clarity that its creators intended it to be.

Some people in the UK are indeed prejudiced, in all of its countries. The RP accent is seen as the tongue of the enemy (i.e. the English), with the unsavoury whiff of colonialism about it. Curiously most regional English people share their neighbouring countrymen's feelings about RP. RP is seen as the posh accent, the tongue spoken by reactionaries, Tories, aristocracts, or hankers afer them (like that twerp Brian Sewell).

Accent prejudice is often regional rivalry in crude disguise. Often you have the stock situation: the English puffing up haughtily about how they can't understand the Welsh and the Scots (although, curiously, almost never the Irish.)

Divisions endure within even the smallest of countries. Wales manages a great deal or division and prejudice with only a population of roughly three million people. They have a word, 'gog'. Literally translated it means 'North' or 'Northern', but to them it means something like thicko, dumbass, cave-dweller. Someone primitive and backward. In return the North Welsh tend to see themselves as the only 'true' Welsh. In Scotland you have the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the islands and the borders. Then you have Northern England versus Southern England...

This is all BEFORE you add social class to this heady mix.

This is what makes Great Britain the imperfect, diverse, and joyous melting-pit it is, and has always been. My feelings on the topic of English as its spoken by all the different tongues in the UK are this:

1. Even the most unfamiliar accent takes only a few seconds to click; most who claim otherwise are fishing for an excuse to keep people at arm's length.

2. Regional accents are a fact; they've been around since before Ur and aren't going anywhere. Nor, indeed, should they.

3. RP is a dead duck and best left to those who know no better, like Daily Mail readers.

4. Every last American dialogue coach should be flown to Britain (and Ireland) without delay to highlight the staggering extent of their ignorance, and in so doing avoid committing further crimes against the human ear.

5. As the American novelist Richard Ford put it, there is no such thing as correct or incorrect English, merely dull or exciting English. Generallty it is best eep to the rules, but you can and must break them good and hard when the situation screams for it. You can split infinitives if the result would be grotesque otherwise; you can start sentences with conjunctions; you can on occasion use a sentence fragment.

6. There's no such language as American, only American-English. Technically AE is a a variant, not a language in its own right. Yet, when living and working in a nation, it is only proper (and common sense) to submit to the national usage; neither side is more 'correct' than the other.

" the English puffing up haughtily about how they can't understand the Welsh and the Scots (although, curiously, almost never the Irish.) "

The Celtic people sometimes ARE difficult to understand. Sometimes when you hear a Scotsman speak, it's hard to believe that he's actually speaking the same language. You have to say: "Can you repeat that, please? It was just all nonsensical garble to my ears." And it's even worse when they are drunk, which is often.

I've never heard people saying they can't understand the Welsh. It's the Scots who are the main culprits.

***It's the Scots who are the main culprit***

Aye....and that's mint! Done for a purpose, my wee Sassenach friend. The Welsh and the Scots understand each other...it's you lot down there we want to confuse with our Celticisms. :-)

*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*

*AUSTRALIA*AUSTRALIA*AUSTRALIA*AUSTRALIA*AUSTRALIA* cheated out of the World Cup. Good theatrical "dive" wins Italy a goal in the final seconds.

"It was brilliant play by Grosso to get into the box but an outrageous piece of cynical gamesmanship to flop to the ground over the strewn Neill. "

"6. There's no such language as American, only American-English. Technically AE is a a variant, not a language in its own right. Yet, when living and working in a nation, it is only proper (and common sense) to submit to the national usage; neither side is more 'correct' than the other."

I wonder--bearing in mind the many people that bring up spelling reform on this forum--would we still say that American English is a dialect and not a language if both the U.S. and the U.K. modified spelling, based on General American and RP, respectively? One need look no further than phonetic transcriptions of words such as dance, later, or new to see that the resulting written languages would look very different.

To be a connasaueaure of languuage you must anderstand the menu

If Irish and Scottish people can communicate with other then by definition it is not un-intelligeble.
I moved from Ireland to Scotland when I was 6 years old with NO problems in understanding the Scottish accent.
The use of Gaelic words in both countries is mearly an emblishment to the modern english.
Yes, and as other have said, it's Scottish, not Scotch (I hate it when people do that!!!)

Hello I just found this site on a google search and I just wanted to say that I love Scottland and Ireland, they are very beautiful countries and I hope someday to go there.

As for the accents I love them. Though I don't know anyone from Ireland or Scotland, but, I wish I did,plus I could listen to someone from both places talk all day about nothing.

Sorry if I'm messing up your conversation.

I'm a bit bored and thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

"Aye....and that's mint! Done for a purpose, my wee Sassenach friend. The Welsh and the Scots understand each other...it's you lot down there we want to confuse with our Celticisms. :-)

*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL*PORTUGAL* "


Come on, Scotsman. Get rid of that inferior complex and that chip on your shoulder that's so plain to see.

Remember that I, as an Englishman, pay YOUR wages, and give you free medical drugs, too, whilst us lot in England and Wales have to pay for them.

As someone said in the Daily Mail newspaper this weekend: "Scotland is acting like Subsidy Central."

lol

I have a hard time telling the difference between an Irish accent and a Scottish accent.

I thought Scotland had paid it's people their wages.

Geez people get a grip.

I don't think this the time or place to start an argument.

You really are stubborn lot aren't ya?

lol Sorry I felt like writing that, thought it might keep there from being an allout forum war.

During my teenage years, the pastor of my church was a Scot originally from a small coal mining town whose burr seemed to get stronger when he was trying to make a point. Since then, I have known numerous Scottish speakers and a few Irish ones. Admittedly, most of these speakers are professors or other highly educated professionals. At times, I really can't differentiate between their accents and native, well-educated, non-specific American ones.

As far as talking about preconceived prejudices, however, I must mention that I'm a Texan who has worked outside of Texas in the Northwestern US as a professor of rhetoric and composition. Away from home, I sometimes found myself subconsciously playing up my accent and even occasionally slipping into a Dan Rather style metaphor, although when I first moved there, my neighbor sternly lectured me when "y'all" crept into my speech. I currently teach in an inner-city school where about once a month I am asked if I am Canadian. All this leads me to believe that class and education have about as much influence on accents as nationality.

>>> Remember that I, as an Englishman, pay YOUR wages, and give you free medical drugs, too, whilst us lot in England and Wales have to pay for them. Adam<<<

With pompous, self-righteous, supercilious comments like that, it's no wonder very few people like the English.