Scottish/Irish Accents

[Jim H.]

Anyone know a good source to learn to have a real sounding accent?

Thanks,
Jim

[highlander_Daz]

Anyone know a good source to learn to have a real sounding accent?

Thanks,
Jim

glasgow or dublin !

[highlander_Daz]

Serious reply!

1 decide which one you want there is no "scottish accent"
and no "irish" accent there are legions of regional varition and Irish and Scots accents are soooo different despite sounding similar to the untrained ear,As Ive said before most Brits cant tell the difference between a Canadian and US accent Despite hoots of laughter from people on the other side of the pond its true. same with scots and irish to the unfamillier ear

Actors normally learn RP which is a very neutral English accent and then modify that to a regional variation RP sounds like captain Jean Luc Picard from star trek.

identify your country first then your region, Ireland -Ulster has a very hard accent like Gerry Adams but the republic has a softer accent like Terry Wogan

Scotland has a wide variation most times when you say Scots accent people assume Glasow is THE scots accent but its not really just the most common and in some ways its similar to Irish. but faster and trilled R sounds.

Irish tend to miss out Th so "three" becomes "tree" and the i sound is different so "sir" becomes "sor".

Glasgow is very fast and is vary hard to mimic even for scots from other areas, Billy Connely is "posh" slow Glasgow with the end of sentences declined and slightly trilled R sounds, as you head north the trill becomes more prounonced and can become a d sound so "brown" becomes "ber-down"
its not often rolled despite stereotypye mimicry.

Ewan Mcgregors accent is a good one to start with, its like a posh west coast accent, Sir seans is now very american posh Edinburgh so leave that one.
my advice is to contact a reputable acting coach with maybe scots connections or watch trainspotting and listen for the variations in each of the actors but idntify the common things like the oo sound is like hoop
good luck
it will require a LOT of work to be convincing . Johnny Depp in Finding Never land gets an honourable mention.

[Colin]

1 decide which one you want there is no "scottish accent" and no "irish" accent there are legions of regional varition and Irish and Scots accents are soooo different despite sounding similar to the untrained ear,As Ive said before most Brits cant tell the difference between a Canadian and US accent Despite hoots of laughter from people on the other side of the pond its true. same with scots and irish to the unfamillier ear

When I was in Scotland a friend of mine told me that people in Edinburgh even have a hard time figuring out what people in Glasgow are saying. I wouldn't have thought it true, had I not been to both places.

The same goes for Belfast and Dublin. Northern Ireland definitely sounds different than the Republic of Ireland. Of course it could be all the English tourists in Dublin (didn't care for the city myself).

As for Canadian and American accents, it is much the same. There are different accents between the two countries, and different accents within those countries. Try talking to someone from B.C and than someone from Newfoundland. You gotta love the Newfies, their dialect is similar to the pikies in Snatch.....a little mix of Scots, Irish, English, French, and American. Mind you a better group of people is hard to find, and I hear the same of the US south.

[highlander_Daz]

Glasgow is very fast and littered with slang and a weegie constantly asks you if you agree with them by making a i sound (Not I as in I but i as in pit) this "i" sound sometimes sounds like the word "Jimmy" hence you get the sterotypical Weegeis saying "See you Jimmy" and that type of stuff. So heres an example

"you all right i?, what you been dooing i?, just goin for a bletehr doon the pub what you think i?"
etc etc.

despite its reputation and bad press the weegies are very nice down to earth people but very hard to undrstand, I remember the BBC Pointlessly interviewing Kenny Dalgliesh after football matches and not being any the wiser, Kenny is one of the greatest player in history however he really has an accent that Alan Turing would struggle to decypher!.

[Andrew Breecher]

I love the Paisley accent. Perhaps that has something to do with a lovely lass from Paisley I once knew.... ;)

Andrew.

[auld argonian]

Having worked in the theatre and having therefore heard WAY too many really bad attempts at various accents....

...I'm almost convinced that you have to go there and live for about six months for it to rub off on you. My brother got sent to Ireland for three months by his company and came back with the "ending every sentence with an interrogative" thing...every sentence ended with "...isn't it?" or "...aren't they?" or something similar...it's a couple of years later and he still does it. I drink in a bar that has a healthy smattering of native Irish and they have the same tendency.

It's not just vowel sounds...it's cadence and intonation...rising and falling inflections...syntax...it's very complex and very subtle. That's probably why a native speaker can spot someone affecting an accent so easily.

best

auld argonian

[yoippari]

YMMV

Some people seem to pick up accents faster than others. My brother and I have lived in the same house our whole life. My mother is from the midwest and parts of the south and southwest. She has found that the northwest has a very neutral accent. So when my brother went to Tampa, Floridia for a couple weeks on an inner city mission trip and then orlando to visit my aunt (charlie hit while he was in orlando) the south carolinians that the mission team was paired up with said that he sounded southern after a week. He was fooling native southerners with whatever accent he picked up in that week.

So depending on how quickly you pick up an accent you may be able to vacation in scotland and start sounding like the natives within a couple of weeks, however; you will probably also loose the accent as quick as you picked it up.

[toadinakilt]

I speak Spanish like a Mexican from Acapulco :-P

My accent, that is. They loved it down there, but my vocabulary is still very small...

I WANT TO LIVE IN SCOTLAND!!!

[highlander_Daz]

Yoippari with respect, I think it a little different changing regional variations of the same accent to actually picking up a new one, Ive heard many many attempts at a "scots accent", actors and otherwise and 99 times out of hunded they fail because they dont latch on to a particular region and work on that, they try and do a generic Scots accent which doesnt exist. but it can be done if you identify exacly which region and just work on that, the accent can vary by village to village.