Harry Potter read by Jim Dale

Vytenis   Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:32 pm GMT
I wonder if any of you guys have listened to Jim Dale's reading of Harry Potter books. My question is about the accent Jim Dale gives to various characters. For example, Professor McGonagall is speaking Scottish accent, Hagrid - Irish, Stan Shunpike - Cockney(?) etc. Can anyone tell what other regional accents do the characters speak? It would be very interesting for me to hear what various British dialects sound like. I have heard, for example, that the centaurs all speak Welsh accent, but I have not heard Welsh accent before so I can neither confirm nor deny this...
Uriel   Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:59 am GMT
I have heard him read the books, and I know many of the characters sound different, but as I'm not British I couldn't identify the names of the accents for you -- sorry!
Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:09 am GMT
VYTENIS:

Naturally Prof McGonagall woul be speaking in a Scotish accent! I know of the HP CDs but had never heard of Jim Dale..it seems he's a Brit now living in America. The CDs I've seen in the stores had Stephen Fry reading the extracts...he sounds a wee bit "posh" to me but as he's an actor he would have had good training at drama school in adopting regional UK accents that's for sure. I've no idea what other regional UK accents characters spoke in.

As for Welsh accents, they too vary quite a bit even within a comprataively small area such as Wales....North is greatly different from the South and easily distinguished.

In another thread TOM K posted a link which is truly brilliant...I'm repeating it here....it's fegs wunnerfae! :-) If you follow the links you can hear accents from all over these islands and even accents which vary even within small geographical areas.

If you want to familiarise yourself with Welsh accents just click on the right links. Guid sonse.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/
Damian   Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:13 am GMT
**a comprataively small area**

comparatively

Haste ye no Damian.... :-(
Trawick   Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:12 pm GMT
I always assumed that Wales would have a good deal of dialect variation, since there are far more native Welsh speakers than Cornish or Gaelic speakers. So I'm assuming there are a lot of different interpretations of English pronunciation that vary from village to village.
Vytenis   Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:45 pm GMT
Jim Dale is a British singer/actor living in the USA and he has recorded all the Harry Potter books in the US. The UK edition was recorded by Stephen Fry. Both of them have their metits. I like Jim Dale better. Stephen Fry sound a bit stuffy but otherwise he is very professional too.
Damian   Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:00 pm GMT
**So I'm assuming there are a lot of different interpretations of English pronunciation that vary from village to village**

Your assumption is correct. I have a mega good friend (a fluent Welsh speaking native born Welshman - even though he has a Scottish name....Andrew!...och the Celtic brotherhood knows no bounds) who lives in Anglesey (Ynys Mon in Welsh...phonetically pronounced UN-nis Morn...I cannae get the circumflex ^above the O in Mon!---it draws out the length of the vowel.

Anyway, Ynys Mon ..with a ^...(Anglesey) is the island bit of Wales at the North West tip of the Principality if you care to glance at a map....separated from mainlad Wales by the bridges over the Menai (MEN-eye) Straits. The Romans when they invaded us from 54BC onwards saw Anglesey, sculled across the Straits nae doot and called it Mona...hence the Welsh name today 2k years later nearly.

Andy tells me the original accent of Anglesey was quite distinctive...a stonghold of the Welsh language (64% of the population there are able to speak and/or understand Welsh according to the 2001 census figures...which compares with 72% for 1991....and over 95% way back in 1931. The decline is mainly due to English immigration, mass communication blah blah blah.......we have the same "problem" up here in Alba :-) Only joking, Adam....

Across the aforementioned Straits there are two sizeable (by Welsh standards) towns only 10 miles apart ...Bangor (home of the Univ of N Wales) and Caernarfon (formerly known as either Carnarvon or Caernarvon - with a 13th c. castle) yet the Welsh accents of both areas are like chalk is to cheese....so different in such a short distance. That is more or less common throughout the UK anyway. Bangor with its uni is top heavy with international students from all over the shop so that may have an influence. You could say the same here in Edinburgh with several universities.

The accent in Caernarfon (when they speak English!) is really weird...I was there last week as it happens on my first ever visit to Wales! so I speak at first hand here. That accent is quite unlike anything I've ever heard before. Even the youngest kids speak Welsh to each other but now in August it's the height of the tourist season so not only is English (and American!) very prevalent in the streets so is just about every other lingo from what I could hear.

As you go east along the North Wales coast you come to strings of seaside holiday resorts and gradually the Welsh accents fade away as English ones take over so by the time you get to Rhyl and Flint (still in Wales technically) you may as well be in Scouseland (Liverpool...just a hop and a skip and a jump away across the Dee, the Wirral and the Mersey).

So you're right....they do "vary from village to village" it seems...but perhaps town to town or city to city would be more accurate for England anyway, which is more generally urbanised than Wales (apart from the South Wales Valleys, Cardiff, Swansea, Newport etc) or Scotland (apart from the Central belt - Glasgow to Edinburgh, and Dundee, Aberdeen).
As above   Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:05 pm GMT
stongold=stronghold
Vytenis   Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:48 pm GMT
I think all countries have a great variety of dialects. What amazes me most about Britain is that they are not ashamed to speak their local dialects even on radio, TV etc. In my country the dialects are much more marginalized and everyone is trying to speak the bland standard version all over the country. Is there the same tendency in Britain?
Travis   Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:08 pm GMT
>>The accent in Caernarfon (when they speak English!) is really weird...I was there last week as it happens on my first ever visit to Wales! so I speak at first hand here. That accent is quite unlike anything I've ever heard before. Even the youngest kids speak Welsh to each other but now in August it's the height of the tourist season so not only is English (and AMERICAN!) very prevalent in the streets so is just about every other lingo from what I could hear. <<

I didn't know of any language named "American" myself. ;)
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:37 pm GMT
Research results from the BBC archives on the net and reference books:

VYTENIS asks:

**In my country the dialects are much more marginalized and everyone is trying to speak the bland standard version all over the country. Is there the same tendency in Britain?**

No.....I believe at one time on the BBC, especially in earlier days, everybody more or less had to speak standard "BBC English"...a form of RP I reckon....especially on the National stations covering the entire UK. The BBC as a national broadcasting service in Britain was incorporated in 1922.

It sratted off with a National Program but further stations developed by the 1930s.

There were only very few stations in these earlier days and they were called by such names as the BBC Light Program which broadcast light entertainment and variety programs.

The Home Service produced the more serious stuff....discussions, plays, dramas, religious stuff, etc etc. Then there was the Third Program devoted entirely to classical music.

It was only on the BBC regional programs such as BBC Midlands region, Scottish region, North Region, West Region, Welsh Region, Northern Ireland Region, that any form of regional accents were allowed for obvious reasons but even so these had to be very modified. In effect, the announcers and continuity staff perhaps had regional accents which were barely perceptibly...they still had to adhere to the strict BBC standards!

An amusing thing I learned was back in those days the announcers and news readers had to wear evening dress to do their stuff.....as if their listeners could see them!

The world's first national TV programming was that of the BBC which started TV programs in 1936. This was suspended in September 1939 because of the WW2...recommenced some time after the war.

In 1955 independent TV stations came into being, with regional stations all over the country. Financed by commercial advertising.

BBC TV stations have now expanded a great deal with quite a number of them and all BBC TV is financed by a licence fee system and there is no commercial advertising at all on any of the stations as with the independent stations. Now with satelite TV and cable channels, Sky, freeview etc etc there are loads of stations to choose from as in every other country.

In radio broadcasting there are now many, many radio stations of all kinds, catering to all kinds of people...again many of them commercially supported. Here you can hear every conceivable accent..from the staff and the people on the phone ins. Some of the late night ones are a hoot.

As for accents now....the old standard "posh BBC English" is dead in the water thank heavens and although there is still an adherence to (present day) RP in many quarters that does not means there are no regional accents, even on the national stations. Having a regional accent on the national channels is not a drawback anymore as it was when Adam was a lad (No..not THAT one!) as long as it is not so thick as to be incomprehensible to the general population. Not many people in the exclusive Surrey commuter belt for instance would take kindly to the news being read in really broad Brummie. It's all done sensibly.

Anyway, the top and bottom of it all is that things are much more democratic now across the board in broadcasting. As in general life anyway, as having an accent which is perceived as "English English posh" is very much a social drawback in most of society. If you listen to the broadcasts from yonks ago, like those dreary old black and white films, those accents were not just ludicrously affected but ******g painful to listen to. Of course, all this posh accent stuff is very much an English thing.....and even there, a Southern English thing. I've said that before haven't I?

I'm a Scot....so I don't care anyway.
as above   Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:39 pm GMT
It sratted off with a National Program = it started off...

oops! stratted? :-(
Vytenis   Sat Aug 20, 2005 3:34 pm GMT
Wow, that is fascinating. I envy the Uk their linguistic democracy. Many other countries are much more intolerant in that regard: they have their "standard" variety and all those who speak regional accents are considered "uneducated", "low brow, "illiterate" etc.
What is "posh English" anyway?
Damian   Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:24 pm GMT
"Posh" English: basically RP (Received Pronunciation) but a sort of affected "upper-class" version which is now considered very much a disadvantage.....really uncool...certainly among younger people. It was this attitude which saw the "birth" of Estuary English more or less. I'm speaking of England here as it is very much an English thing. The whole "accent" scenario really is one that seems to affect England mostly and I don't think there could be another country other than England where it used to be said that "an Englishman only needs to open his mouth to make another Englishman despise him".

I think it's only older English people from certain social backgrouds that "speak posh". You can bet that their grandkids have "downgraded" from that accent now...it's one I associate with all those old b&w films you see on TV where the cut-glass accents sound so funny to us in 21st century Britain. Even Southern England is now a lot less divided by social class than in the days gone by.

The word "Posh" as defined in the dictionary:
Informal; chiefly British.
adj.
1. smart, elegant, fashionable, exclusive;
"posh clothes".
2. Upper class or genteel.

adv.
In a manner associated with the upper class: "to talk posh"

Derivation of the word:
Some people think it's an acronym of the phrase: Port Out Starboard Home - this being the most desirable location for a cabin in British ships sailing to and from the Far East, being the north facing, shaded side.
Others that it's more likely to be a development of obsolete slang for a dandy (this was a guy who was obsessed with his appearance - smart dress and style and fashion. Also called by the French word "Beau". Nobody uses these words now as they were more used a couple of centuries ago. English history has had some famous guys considered a dandy or a beau - eg Beau Brummell (1778-1840). Imagine the reaction today if this guy came back in the same style. :-) H'ed be out of place even in Broughton Street, Edinburgh or in Old Compton Street, London - both in the centre of gay areas. On second thoughts - maybe not! :-)

Anyway, aside from that - that's what "posh" means. Except for the older generation to "talk posh" is regarded as a no-no socially in 21st century Britain. Even Queen Liz has had electrocution coaching to modify her vowels....no longer does she say "Eeow - come orn - knock it orf, Philip!" There is the slightest hint too that she drops her Ts...like Tony (when it fits). Now that IS serious.... LOL
Vytenis   Mon Aug 22, 2005 4:34 am GMT
I think American English (including Canadian English) is much more uniform in pronunciation 'xeeept 'f coooz fe suthin draaaawl... ;) Just like Russian sounds almost exactly the same in Kaliningrad and Vladivostok...