A tour of the British Isles in accents! Brilliant!

Social Media - Is It Worth It?

A rabbit that sends your child to sleep

Status
Not open for further replies.
Not yet mastered writing accents...but love the evolution of the regional accents in the UK.



Not sure if this is a discussion post or not but I thought it is a nice share. :)

This was a great video for me — not being from the Isles, I recognize these myriad dialects but have no idea how the various locales relate to each other geographically.

I realized Yanks talking about places like Michigan, Texas, Maryland, Oregon, Montana, and such, must be like all this talk of Cornwall, Yorkshire, Kent, etc. All I can say is "yup. Those are in England. And Scotland's up there somewhere."

And generally, the best way to 'write accents' is not to do it, but for very sparingly, Emu. More often, it's accepted as better writing to try to convey an accent purely with word choice and ordering. Things like,
"Blimey mate, you really done for him dinne?"
"Aye and where do ye think ye be going?"
"Ay meng, what's this I hear about you messin' with my pushers?
"It is not so much between friends yes? Your friend Nenad tells you this is true."
The general rule is, if your reader has to slow down and figure out what exactly your character is trying to say around the accent they're chewing on, you've done too much accent. And are racist.
 
Could he have taken the Liverpool dialect (is it an accent or a dialect?) further still, or is a thicker drawling Liverpool accent purely fictitious, like a bad American accent that sounds like a brain-damaged mid-westerner?
 
Hmm. Don't think you could take the Liverpool accent further without biting your own tongue off. But I'm a Southerner / East Anglian. We talk proper.:) What, no 'soft Southerner' ripostes?
 
Last edited:
This was a great video for me — not being from the Isles, I recognize these myriad dialects but have no idea how the various locales relate to each other geographically.

I realized Yanks talking about places like Michigan, Texas, Maryland, Oregon, Montana, and such, must be like all this talk of Cornwall, Yorkshire, Kent, etc. All I can say is "yup. Those are in England. And Scotland's up there somewhere."

And generally, the best way to 'write accents' is not to do it, but for very sparingly, Emu. More often, it's accepted as better writing to try to convey an accent purely with word choice and ordering. Things like,
"Blimey mate, you really done for him dinne?"
"Aye and where do ye think ye be going?"
"Ay meng, what's this I hear about you messin' with my pushers?
"It is not so much between friends yes? Your friend Nenad tells you this is true."
The general rule is, if your reader has to slow down and figure out what exactly your character is trying to say around the accent they're chewing on, you've done too much accent. And are racist.
Seconded. I've only read one book where the accent was orthographized (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and it was incredibly hard to read. Your reader will spend way too much time trying sound out the accent to figure out what you're saying. Best to do things like slang words or add a tag to the effect of "he said, his Indian accent thick".
 
Seconded. I've only read one book where the accent was orthographized (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and it was incredibly hard to read. Your reader will spend way too much time trying sound out the accent to figure out what you're saying. Best to do things like slang words or add a tag to the effect of "he said, his Indian accent thick".
Exactly. It goes even further with some fantasy stories, when you start to talk about accents for fictitious regions — like a King's Landing accent in GoT, or in one of my books, when I talk about accents like Harudish, Icenian, Otingish, Goidelic, Imgarian, etc... you can't really indicate any accent at all, because the reader is going to be generating their own!
 
Awe man :confused: what about Edinburgh? and Dumfries and Ayrshire, Aberdeen, Inverness, Peterhead? Huh huh? All have totally different sounds in their accent. England gets a million but Ireland, Wales and Scotland get only 2 each. Bloody typical that.:rolleyes: Lol anyway it is a bit of fun :p so here's a lady version :)
and a crazy boy that does accents from around the world speaking English... a tad mental but hey, he must have some time on his hands :p
 
Awe man :confused: what about Edinburgh? and Dumfries and Ayrshire, Aberdeen, Inverness, Peterhead? Huh huh? All have totally different sounds in their accent. England gets a million but Ireland, Wales and Scotland get only 2 each. Bloody typical that.:rolleyes: Lol anyway it is a bit of fun :p so here's a lady version :)
and a crazy boy that does accents from around the world speaking English... a tad mental but hey, he must have some time on his hands :p

Yeah we've all done this... being alone driving in the car especially at night often seems to find one jabbering to oneself in myriad successive accents and dialects.

Right? Y'all do that too right?o_O
 
Yeah we've all done this... being alone driving in the car especially at night often seems to find one jabbering to oneself in myriad successive accents and dialects.

Right? Y'all do that too right?o_O
Yup... at times. I'm willing to admit to that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Social Media - Is It Worth It?

A rabbit that sends your child to sleep

Back
Top