I am simply touting the way you pronounce words in the English Language. Showing emotion towards a pronunciation is nothing new for me, I do it often in class to break the ice, to calm down a situation etc…etc…
Anyone else out there in the teeming soup like a certain accent or pronunciation? If so which? Why?
For me, style and manor of speech is fascinating in how is dictates the way someone cognitively listens to someone else. There are some fun studies out there - non on hand - showing how people perceive what you are saying, how much they retain, and how they hear you cognitively.
I like most irish accents myself, but I can’t stand a broad ‘Black Country’ Accent the kind you get in Dudley (i’m sure they’re all lovely people anyway )
I agree, though. They are pretty nice, especially some of the western ones like Cork and Kerry or the one they have where I’m living. I also love a Jamaican accent and I’m weirdly partial to a southern (USA) accent.
Can’t stand Scouse (a Liverpool accent) and “estuary English” (fake generic London-esque accent).
And I guess people will point out now that Scouse, Jamaican and most certainly south of the USA accents are differentiated and do not resemble their movie counterparts. I deserve that.
I love southern accents. They differ from state to state. My dear friend Jaade is from Georgia…I could listen to her talk all day.
Australian accents make me swoon; my first bf was Aussie.
There was an exchange student from North Carolina last year who had the nicest accent. I could have listened to her talk all day. Now, if only I could meet the new exchange students from UNC who are here this semester…
For me it is the female Scottish accent that makes me weak at the knees - though Geordie women runs a very close second. The way to my heart is through my ears.
/bit of a hijack
Anyone notice that advertisers in Britain seem to use the Scottish accent when emphasising value for money?
The earliest example of this I can remember is the Walkers Crisps advert with the Scots bloke asking:
Getting more specific, it’s interesting to hear the British* pronunciation of words ending in -tary (where “uh” = schwa):
secretary becomes “SECK-ruh-tree” (cf American “seck-ruh-TERR-ee”) laboratory becomes “luh-BOR-uh-tree” (cf American “lab-ruh-TOR-ee”)
Also of note, the British pronunciation of leisure as “LEZH-ur” (rhymes with American pleasure).
[sub]* I realize that these pronunciations probably don’t appear in all British accents.[/sub]
Actually that’s just slovenly Brits talking there:
It is pronounced SeK-Ret-Ary by most people.
Brits also seem to have trouble with Med-I-Cen, pronounced Med-Sin by many news readers, and,
Feb-Roo-Ary, which is almost universally pronounced Feb-U-Ary where I come from.
My mother used to say that if one reads properly then one can speak proper… mind you, she also told me that thunder was the clouds bumping together - a ‘fact’ I happily repeated in science classes until I was 14.
Nothing slovenly about having an accent - I’m pure feb-you-ree, sek-ruh-tree, med-sin and a pure Suffolk one, cuttle-ree (cutlery - my girlfried remorselessly takes the piss out of me for that one, but then she’s from Yorkshire…)
Oh, and laboratory is three syllables around here - lab-ruh-tree.
I think it’s only natural for people to be attracted to accents other than their own. I like some American and some British accents but not all. Some I find jarring, hard and very unappealing.
One word which makes me cringe every time I hear an American pronounce it is Iraq. Either eye-rak or eh-rak as opposed to eh-rahk.
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