Irish/Scottish (and other non US Anglo-speakers): Can you understand Americans?

[pravnik]

*Originally posted by TheLoadedDog *
**American accents can be quite thick, but they do tend to be clear. The strange thing is that they seem much stronger when I’m talking to an American in person than when I hear the accent on TV. Especially that low, rumbling “rrrrrrrrr” (which I quite like).

Listening to an educated, unpretentious American accent is quite a pleasure.

**

On behalf of all 10 educated, unpretentious Americans, thank you very much!

When I lived in Central Europe the bar I worked in was mostly staffed by Aussies, Irish (almost all from Limerick), Scots (almost all from Edinburgh) and Canadians. The Irish kids told me Cork was famous for it’s accents, that they didn’t so much speak as sing their words. A show on Cork airing in Ireland apparently (jokingly) had subtitles when interviewing locals.

I understood everyone pretty much fine except for the head manager, who was the oldest of the Scots and had a thick, thick brouge. When I first started working I was scared of him and would have to find someone to translate when I sounded out phonetically what he said.

Scottish John: “Goan doon to tha bo’um bah an gib it a wee spreh”

Me: " Will do!" (runs and finds Jake) Jake, he says he wants me to “Goan doon to tha bo’um bah an gib it a wee spreh”

Canadian Jake: “He wants you to go to the downstairs bar and spray it for flies”.

Later when I was no longer scared of him I would smile and shake my head until he slowed down enough for me to understand. Eventually I gained Jake’s “proficiency”.

As far as the accents in “O’ Brother Where Art Thou?”, having grown up in the South, to me they didn’t sound thick enough!! George Clooney’s anyway.

[jazzmine]

*Originally posted by pravnik *
On behalf of all 10 educated, unpretentious Americans, thank you very much!

I laughed out loud at this. Perfect.

I have trouble with thick Irish and Scottish accents, but I find their voices so pleasant, that I don’t mind.

[bordelond]

Once in college, a student from England told me that there was a BBC television documentary about prisons which required subtitles for the speech of some Scottish inmates.

…

I wanted to address this contention that Americans speak “more clearly”. It seems like what people are describing when they say “more clearly” are the following traits of American speech:

1) Secondary stress is often added to longer words/phrases – An easy example is a word like “laboratory”, which is commonly pronounced “lab-ruh-tor-ee” in America and as “luh-bor-uh-tree” in the UK and Ireland (any exceptions notwithstanding). There are many, many words & phrases like this that differ between generalized American and British use. The American pronounciation gives the listener an additional auditory hint with such secondary and tertiary stresses. Such additional auditory hints may be interpreted as “clarity”.

2) Situational retention of word-and syllable-final consonants – Consider a Cockney pronounciation of “a spot of tea” as “a spo’ o’ tea”. IIRC, some other British English dialects (but by no means all) have this feature as well. American pronounciation retains these final consonants in the same phonetic environments in which some dialects of British English would drop them – thereby adding to the number of auditory clues afforded to the listener. Again, this may be interpreted as “clarity”.

Also consider, similarly, such pronounciations as “bo’-uhl” for “bottle” and “cuh’-EE” for “cookie”. Interestingly, many British English speakers avoid the dropping of such consonants, and instead pronounce these consonants with more force than an American or Canadian would. Most North American English speakers would say “bahd-uhl” for “bottle”, while a number of British English speakers say “BAWT-tuhl” for “bottle”.

3) Situational retention of word-initial “h” and of post-vocalic “r” – Americans keep the “h” on words like “have”, “had”, and “heard” much more frequently than British speakers. Along the same lines, in words like “bar”, “hard”, and “shirt”, most Americans (Bostonions excepted!) retain a stronger pronounciation of the “r” than most British speakers. In fact, some British speakers simply draw out a vowel when followed by “r”, and lose any rhotacization (“r” coloring) in the process. Yet again: more auditory clues – more perceived “clarity”.

DISCLAIMER – I have oversimplified considerably in the post above. The linguistic differences among speakers in the UK and Ireland are far greater and more changeable than those in the US and Canada.

[Balor]

Bordelond -

I think you are describing the best accents in America, which none of us has any problem with. However, in my experience, your description fits only some American accents. Many southern accents are less precise than you describe. Many Americans give odd vowel values, vary consonantal sounds like T and TH and lose the final R in certain circumstances.

I think it is best to agree that every country has a few people whose accents are hard for outsiders to follow. Luckily, the rest of us can translate for them, and they represent the value of difference. Most of them are more interesting than the people who went to elocution classes. Heaven forbid that we all start talking like Frasier or the Queen of England

[bordelond]

*Originally posted by Balor *
**I think you are describing the best accents in America, which none of us has any problem with. However, in my experience, your description fits only some American accents. Many southern accents are less precise than you describe. Many Americans give odd vowel values, vary consonantal sounds like T and TH and lose the final R in certain circumstances. **

Oh, to be sure. But my post wasn’t explaining “why Scottish/British/Irish folks can’t understand Americans” – I realize that understanding American speech is not often a problem for UK and Irish people. My post, rather, was an attempt to explain specifically why several posters above (including the OP) find that American speech is “clearer”.

See above.