Apparently he is Irish. But that’s not any Irish accent I’m familiar with.
The director’s channel page identifies his country as “Ireland”. His twitter account, listed on that same YouTube page, also says “Ireland”.
I wouldn’t blame you but there is often a difference. Certain Canadians don’t have a strong Canadian accent (enough that I could tell they are Canadian instead of American), but lots do.
Seeing as how he’s Irish, one would think that the Brit gamers would be able to hear it, considering I’ve barely ever met anyone from Ireland and hearing his voice my guess was Irish even though he seems like he’s actively trying to mask his accent.
So I guess I’m surprised that they couldn’t tell he’s not American (even though he claims to not be), and then that I could hear that he sounds Irish but they couldn’t.
This game is played over Xbox Live on Xbox 360, everyone sounds different than their natural voice due to the compression, and crap quality of the official headsets.
Well, this is the thing. That’s not an Irish accent he’s talking in there. It may have Irish elements to it, but there are a lot of American elements too. To your ears, accustomed to American accents, the part that doesn’t sound American sticks out like a sore thumb – over here, it’s the other way around.
Yeah he’s clearly got an Irish accent but with a bit of Midatlantic mixed in, he’s either spent time in US/Canada or he’s putting on a bit of an accent for the crack.
Maybe he is from Northern Ireland? I once heard an Ulster Loyalist song sung by someone from that part of the country and it sounded much “less Irish” to me than typical Irish singers.
He’s definitely not from NI, I’d guess he’s from Limerick but TBH I wouldn’t say 100%. I know a few people with accents like his and a couple are from Limerick, others are from the general region.
Doesn’t sound Limerick to me. Actually it doesn’t sound like any Irish accent I’ve ever heard, sounds completely American to my (admittedly untrained) ears.
Ah, that explanation makes sense, thanks.
I’ve been watching some of his other videos and some people DO call him Irish, but I’ve seen a lot of them and they call him American maybe 10x as often as Irish.
rogerbox writes:
> Brits are supposedly hyper-sensitive to various English accents down to the
> neighborhoods, etc. So why can these players not hear that he’s definitely not
> American, especially considering how much exposure they have to American
> accents in media? It’s not just one person in one video, but many Europeans in
> many videos calling him American, and this is surprising to me.
This is absolutely standard. People are able to easily distinguish a variety of accents that are close to theirs, while they have problems distinguishing accents that are very different from theirs. They will say, “I can’t hear any difference between the accents in region X,” where region X is far from them, but they will say, “There isn’t just one accent in region Y. There are a lot of them,” where region Y is close to them.
Unless you’re trained in phonetics, you can’t really reliably make any such statements. The fact that you can’t hear the differences between two accents doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t any differences. The fact that you can hear the difference between two accents doesn’t mean that everyone else does.
I can’t place the accent as Irish - if he’s irish, he’s spent a lot of time in North America.
The tune at the start is Irish, if that helps - the Kerry Dance.
The guy is Irish, pretending to be an American, to purposefully piss off the other players. :rolleyes:
Definitely not American or Canadian. Sounds Irish to me, perhaps trying to put on some American characteristics. Or maybe he’s spent a lot of time with Americans and has picked up some features of American accents. But his basic accent is not American, not at all.
It took me a second to realize which one was the annoying troll, because I pegged the young kid shouting profanities in the beginning as it and wondered how anyone could think he wasn’t Irish. Then I read the video description. 
Yeah, the guy definitely sounds American, especially in contrast to the clear Irish accents of the people he’s talking to. There are a few slips and a few vowel twists that would make me wonder where he’s from, but otherwise it’s pretty darn close.
Concur with Evil Prince Zorte, though. As soon as he says, “Oh my god,” the jig is up. That’s not any American accent I know.
My first guess was Irish, although the more I listened to it, the more I thought the Newfoundland/Atlantic provinces accents might be a possibility. There’s a clear difference in the “ow” sounds from the standard American pronunciation, as well as palatalization of the “t” (listen to how he says “You Tube,” sounds more like “You Tyoob.”) “We’re” is pronounced more like “wurr.” Etc. It sounds like a “watered down” accent, though, as if it’s been cut with Standard American English. Still sounds very distinct, at least to my ears, from an American accent. My third guess was a native speaker of a Scandinavian language speaking American English.
I don’t know if Brits are “sensitive” about American actors doing bad accents. I think they’re more amused than offended by the likes of Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.”
So, how well do English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh/Australian actors do with American accents? It’s a VERY mixed bag. MANY top actors from the UK come to Hollywood and play American roles extremely convincingly. Indeed, British actors often do American regional accents better than American actors. That is, Brits often do better Brooklyn or Texas accents than actors from California or Michigan. There’s a lot more money to be made in Hollywood than in Britain, so a British actor has a lot of incentive to work hard and get the accent right.
On the other hand, I’ve seen many BBC shows on which actors do embarrassingly bad American accents, and the all-British (or mostly British audence) eats it up.
It comes down to this: who’s the audience that the actor is trying to fool? If the audience is all/mostly American, an actor can do a bad phony Irish brogue, Scottish burr or Cockney accent, and the American audience will buy it, not knowing any better. Similarly, if an English actor is playing a Texan on a BBC situation comedy, he can do a preposterously bad drawl and the British audience will figure it’s spot on.
It’s only when a movie or TV series becomes popular overseas that anyone notices how well or badly an acotr is doing.
There’s no other Irish people speaking in that video! The first guy is from Scotland, the next from southern Greater Manchester, etc.
It sounds kinda Irish to me, definitely not any variety of American.
Wow, those other kids sounded like they were talking with a baseball shoved in their mouth. 