h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm replying to this here because I didn't want to run amok on Mal's journal with something completely unrelated.

"I do put it on sometimes, though, in pubs and things when we're out and about up north. Especially if anyone has commented on the Sheffield Wednesday Owl tattoo...

Mostly, however, I had any traces of an accent kicked out of me early on as a kid. I learned very quickly that neutral was best, unless you really had to assimilate, then I had one accent for play and one accent for home."

When you 'put it on', does it come naturally, or are you consciously trying to sound Yorkshire?

"Neutral" is also an accent, of course. When you said that about one accent for play and a different one for home, it made me realise that you and I come from completely different worlds, in a sense.

Are you good at impersonations? Like, if you heard a...Portuguese person (for the sake of argument) speak, could you mimic the accent easily, from that "blending in" talent?

When I'm actually in Yorkshire and surrounded it's much more natural to me to "talk Yorkshire". But to anyone who knows me from outside Yorkshire it can be a bit of a shock. And I don't then speak Full-On-Shefful or else and the Gruesomes would be a bit lost ( less so since he still has a Middlesborough accent)

At school it would depend what I was doing and which group I was with, how my accent would sound. Especially at Junior school, but even at boarding school. I was a bit of a "non-group-member" and used to get on with lots of different people who hung out in different cliques. Irritating sometimes, but... So there were a few day-girls who I spent weekends with when we were older, and since they were mostly local and mostly scolarship girls, they had a local accent (Bristol - it's horrible) and I did sort of absorb some of that when with them.

With the Military kids we all spoke more-or-less BBC type. And then when I was out on an Exeat with one of the Roller-owning classes, I could cut crystal at 50 paces with the best of 'em. It has been useful though - especially when I wanted to discombobulate a jumped up little rupert in my army days.

As for impersonations - no. But I can generally "do" an accent. My Gruesomes always want me to "do Hagrid's accent" or from some stupid kid's show they watch "do Natalia's accent". I like being Natalia - she's a sexy Russian spy.

And at work one of the guys who speaks truly fab English, and I, sometimes spend all day talkink like zis, juzt to annoy the natives.

Can't do Oirish though... yet.

Actually, what I am noticing more and more is that I'm beginning to get a bit of an Estuary accent when I'm not concentrating. That's scary!

What do you sound like then? You're pretty good at languages aren't you? Do you pick them up easily?

Good - don't do Oirish. Irish people don't do Oirish either - the only people I know who do Oirish are people who watch too much bloody John Wayne Quiet Man shite.

But now that I've removed that bee from my bonnet - what do I sound like? Hmmm. Do you know the difference between a southern Irish accent and a more northern one? You've met Beatrice, haven't you? Well I suppose I have that *sort* of accent, but not as refined a version. Trying to think how to describe it. It's probably not the Irish accent you're thinking of.

And Hagrid's accent - that must come easy after the Bristol days.

Oh ar, I'm good at 'agrid. (and of course, I speak fluent too)

I know the difference between the Irish accents. I have a friend from south of the Dublin area and she has a very soft accent. And then there's Liam Neeson who softens his a lot - but it comes out sometimes a bit Ian Paisley-ish. And yes, I've met Beatrice, but I don't remember that she had so much of an accent. Perhaps she's got it back now.

Well the thing about Liam Neeson...I would have mentioned him, but he usually acts as people from Germany or Cork, which wouldn't give you much of a clue, really.

And nobody - nobody - speaks like Ian Paisley, he's a voice of his own completely! That's not a political comment, it's a comment about his speaking style and oratory.

Have I ever bored the off you about Louis McNeice yet?

no... not yet
should I settle in with and cookies?

Really? You're in for a treat then!....

Well, he was a poet, and I love him for a lot of different reasons, not least of which being that he captured the harsh accent ...He wrote very sound oriented poems. So to cut a long story short, I heard him speaking and he sounded so English!

And one of the things I love about him is that he didn't believe in orthadoxies religion-wise, or politics-wise, he believed in reading and thinking for himself.