Very true. I grew up hearing people with Scottish accents (my grandparents and many of their friends), and got so used to it I didn’t even realise my grandparents had an accent that was different from mine when I was a child.
A couple of months ago I was travelling through Europe and kept on meeting English people at hostels. Upon hearing that I was planning on ending my trip in Scotland, they invariably warned me that I wouldn’t be able to understand a word. Thing is, I had more trouble with some of their accents than I did with anyone in Glasgow.
I can do accents fairly well. Me mum’s from Oir’land and me da was from Narw’hey.
So I did avoid the typical Lawn Guyland and N’yawk accent - though I remember going to speech class to prounounce R’s and Th’s rather than ‘T’ (a defect in my parents European speech that I often mimicked and will certainly will go to hell for unless that ‘honour thy mother and father’ commandment is repealed).
I actually cannot think of a great male actor who can do great accents. Cary Elwes comes to mind - as he can nail 'Murikan accents fairly well. Laurence Olivier? The best I know is Cate Blanchett.
I have a very hard time with Scottish accents, but I can’t say it bothers me much. Just keep talking, please! fanning self
I’ve been in the middle of a three-way argument about who had the accent – Americans, Canadians, or Australians, one or two from each arguing. It ground to a dead halt after a while because nobody was willing to admit they had one…
Gary Oldman is the accent king. Few British actors can do any convincing American accent. But Oldman can do a wide variety of American and other accents, and nail them all perfectly.
Funny you should say that, because in True Romance the only reason I recognised him as Gary Oldman was because he was so obviously a Brit putting on a fake American accent.
Well, that’s because nobody, not even the subtitler, knows what he’s trying to say, so subtitles would just be even more confusing!
Re: Scottish accents. When I lived in England I occasionally spoke with Glaswegians, usually when I had to reserve train travel (Virgin Trains moved its call center to Glasgow some years ago). When we lived in the residence and used the common phone, a man from the call center tried calling me back about a problem with the reservation. Three different people, all from England, tried talking to him and failed to understand him. Fortunately, I was the fourth, and had no trouble talking to him. A post-mortem suggested that I might have been better able to understand him since I lived for a while in Leeds, some of whose inhabitants have similarly difficult accents.
In short, I don’t think a Scottish accent in general is difficult to understand…it is probably the one local accent from Glasgow that causes trouble.
Didn’t say I couldn’t understand, just sometimes I’m like what “what the hell did you just say.” I knew this girl from Alabama who would say some like “Cane you gimee a kay” and I was like kay? What is a kay? Took me a half minute to find out that what she wanted was a key. I seriously don’t encounter all that many people with strong southern accents. Most people at my high school and college didn’t have southern accents. None of my professors have. No one in my family (Most live in Texas) does. Never had a good friend with a southern accent. I know far more people on a first name basis with East Indian or Chinese accents then with southern accents. All my friends who are 3+ generation Texans have my accent even if their parents had southern accents.
There are some people in Louisiana with seriously impenetrable accents, especially when you get out of the cities. And the New Orleans accent(s?) are like nothing I’ve ever heard – sort of a combination of New York and general Southern to my ears.
So I can easily see somebody from Texas having problems with some people in Louisiana. I did most of my growing up in Texas and have run into people here I could barely understand, though no fault of their own.
For whatever its worth, when I was a civilian employee of the U. S. Army, I attended a course where the instructor was from West Virginia. I’m from St. Louis, and there were students from around the country. From time-to-time the instructor would write a word out on the blackboard because people did not understand it when she said it. One was “oil”. On the other hand, I’ve known several people who were born and raised in West Virginia whose accent caused presented no challenge whatever.
Growing up in a suburb of St. Louis, I had two classmates in grade school who were identical twins. Their family was from a white working class neighborhood in South St. Louis, and it appeared they reinforced one another’s peculiarities of pronunciation. The result was a St. Louis accent so thick a lot of native St. Louisans couldn’t understand them. For years they talked about a young woman they knew named “Dorsey”. Then I saw her name in print and learned it was “D’Arcy”. They also used to wash their hands at the “zinc” and drive down Highway Fawrty.
That’s funny, I never had any problem at all with Fife accents. (Didn’t know enough people from Dundee to really tell.)
Then again, understanding could be a matter of familiarity. I know you travel to Glasgow often (well, Celtic Park anyway ), so you have more of an opportunity to hear Glaswegian accents. I had occasion to travel to St. Andrews and Aberdeen a few times, and I had a few friends who studied at Edinburgh or St. Andrews, so I was more familiar with eastern Scottish accents.
Of course, this may also be why I have so much trouble with Mississippian or Alabaman accents.
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