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

A sister-in-law does this. It is incredibly embarrassing! But not to her.

I'd like to be able to do that. Knowingly, of course.

Apparently the special effects in Zelig involved filming on old film stock, with old cameras and then bringing out of retirement people experienced in old processing techniques. Then the film was artifically aged by scrunching it up in a shower and jumping on it.

Favourite line: 'It's amazing what you can achieve when you're totally psychotic'.

But back to accents:
There's a phenomenon which I know will amuse some of you whereby a certain type of Scottish person, usually involved on the fringes of folk music, likes to be taken for Irish. It's cool to be a Celtic Tiger!

For myself - I met up with some old friends recently who were amazed at how Scottish my accent (and dialect) has become. Indeed, some Scots are these days taking me for one of them. In fact, I'm a 'Scot of English Ethnic Origin' (a self-coined term, designed to infuriate the more bigoted elements of the SNP) - grew up in Liverpool - but with an accent influenced by a South Walian grandmother - and the Scouse elements were bullied out of me once I got a scholarship to a school with ideas above its station. Then I lived in the South East of England for a while.

Generally, only I notice my Scouse elements (the usual vowels: fur, fair, fir) - When asked, nobody has ever guessed where I'm from. But I'm told my origins become more noticeable after a few scoops. I'm not sute whether I 'S my Ts' though. (The Scouse T elides into an S - as in 'Arrice?')

It's embarassing to me when I realise it!

I grew up speaking broad Scouse... a friend of mine (Canadian) had a theory that NZ children adopt the accent of their non-New Zealand-native parent, because it's "stronger", was the way he put it. My mother's accent was as far as I can remember, some kind of NZ/RP, what my brother-in-law called "Posh Kiwi"... she was born in 1918, her parents were born in NZ, but her two grandmothers (one from Ayrshire, the other from London) lived with the family when she was little.

We dropped the Scouse when we went to school. In some respects, NZ is a very conformist place - and all children with non-Kiwi accents were bullied. I am not kidding, they were *bullied*!

'S-ing the T's' is one of those similarities between Scouse speak and Dublin speak I've noticed. Another is the 'ee' sound that creeps into the word 'you', 'y-ee-oh'.

Just one type of Dub-speak though - sometimes the T is swallowed up in a glottal stop instead, I've noticed.

The glo'al stop is becoming mainstream English. It's a feature of 'Estuary English', the accent which has spread out from London. It's found in President-for-Life Tony's speech, so I guess that makes it official.

Incidentally, it seems that Glaswegians are - in the words of The Proclaimers - throwing the R away: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1436972,00.html#article_continue

The correspondence of Liverpool and Dublin speech is perhaps unsurprising. Liverpool has ben called 'Ireland's Second City' (although my vote would go to Kentish Town ). Scouse has been termed 'equal parts Irish, Lancastrian and adenoids'.

In Dublin it's not so much a glottal stop as a h (not an h, you'll notice). Saherdy is the day after Freudy.

In the middle of a word though? When it's at the end though, it's a sloi' bi' more like a glohal stop.

In Glesca, 'Ra' replaces 'The'

As in 'Ah stay in Ra Shaws = I live in Pollokshaws

Something else:
In French: 'Prends-tu une verre de vin?'

In English English:
'Do you want a (cup of tea)'
or
'Would you like a....'
or
'Will you have a...'

But in Scots English:
'Will you take a whisky?' (as per French)

What about the rest of us?

Said to my brother in the North of Ireland:

"Will ye have a cup of tea now or will ye wait till ye go home?"

Then, of course, there's the famous Glesca/ Edinbugger divide:

'You'll be wanting your tea' vs 'You'll have had your tea then'

My brother told me of a comedy performance he'd seen by Billy Connolly in which he'd said "The Scots can see the future. Someone said 'well, there's me off up the road'"

See also:

"This is me since yesterday"

and

"That's me, then" (meaning "I've finished" or "I'm off")

Not to mention the famous bus driver's phrase - "Come on! Get off"

Or County Down football suporters: Up Down!

>>"This is me since yesterday"<<

So that means I've finished/I'm off?

"This is me since yesterday" means (approximately) "I've been doing this since yesterday"

Another nice Scots expression:
"The back of nine" = "some time after nine o'clock". It can mean either a short time - as in
"I'll see you the back of nine" (probably up to about quarter past)
or a longer time:
"We didn't get home until the back of nine" (some time before 10)

(sudden realisation)
Hah! That's Back to the Future!

<<"That's me, then" (meaning "I've finished" or "I'm off")>>

My mother (NZ born, of recent Scots descent) used to say that...

Oh, so quiet...

You know how women tend to be evaluated through their marital status in many cultures/languages? I realised the other day that the Finnish word for 'man who yet doesn't have a spouse' is literally 'boy-man'. A man is not a man before he's got himself a woman.

(the female equivalent is literally 'old maid')

Back to studying for my last exam of the spring () - it's on morphology.

<<'man who yet doesn't have a spouse' is literally 'boy-man'. A man is not a man before he's got himself a woman.>>

That is so Aïna!