In The Crying Game (1992), Dil (who is English) meets an Irishman:
Dil: Are you American?
Fergus: No.
…
Dil: Scottish?
Fergus: How can you tell?
Dil: Your accent.
This has always bothered me because his accent is so stereotypically Irish (to this American, anyway).
Is Dil being facetious, or does she really not recognise his accent?
If the latter, did this strike any English dopers as plausible? Seems like your average English person could spot an Irish accent a lot more easily than I could.
I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on this specific case, but there are some Irish accents that are a bit similar to some Scottish accents (to people unfamiliar with them anyway) – at least to the extent of making someone’s origin uncertain if they only spoke a few words.
And of course, some people are just shit at recognising accents.
As an American living in England, I was surprised how many people thought I was:
Irish.
Welsh.
Australian.
South African.
from some other faraway part of England.
Even though none of these accents sound like mid-Western American.
It’s my guess that the people who make this kind of mistake can distinguish a not-from-around-here English-speaker’s accent but don’t narrow it down any further than that.
Speakers of accent A of English often can’t distinguish accents B and C of English, even though speakers of B and C will insist that their accents don’t sound alike at all. For instance, I have a hard time convincing speakers of standard Australian and English (as in England) dialects that many Americans have problems distinguishing their accents. These Australian and English people would insist that their accents don’t sound similar in any way.
Interesting, thanks for the responses! I guess that American, Scottish, and Irish dialects are superficially similar to the English because they are all rhotic accents.
Man, you need to get the cotton out of your ears! If there’s any less of an American sounding accent…
I’ve got a Canadian accent and am forever having people guess it’s Scottish or Irish. I think it’s the hard r’s. With an Australian accent the 4 wheeled vehicle you drive to work and the sound sheep make sound exactly the same.
“his accent is so stereotypically Irish” and therein lies the problem if an accent doesn’t conform to the steroetype people have trouble placing it. The “stereotypic” Welsh accent is that of central South Wales - never mind the locals within the same area can place each other to within ten or so miles, to the world at large an up & down intonation, elongated vowles and use of ‘isn’t it’ = Welsh. People from the north of the country, who have a lovely sibilant accent, generally softer than the southern version are often told “You don’t sound Welsh” (almost as if they were trying to be misleading!).
As WotNot says some of the accents from the north or Ireland bear similarities to those of Scotland.
Take this example (this is NOT a hijack, just an example). In Lost I heard Desmond’s accent as being Scottish, to Ponster he sounded like someone from part of Ulster, the use of ‘brother’ also reminded him of speech patterns from there.
