The UK's least respected accents?

[kiloran]

It really annoys me that people seem to think all Welsh accents are the same
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Personally I love the Geordie accent closely followed by a Scots accent.
R6

It really annoys me that people seem to think that all Scots accents are the same....

--kiloran

[scotia]

And that corner of Scotland, the Aberdeen waterfront in particular must be about the coldest part of Scotland.

Dod

Try out Wick harbour in January with a Nor-Easter blowing a gale.

[Dod101]

And that corner of Scotland, the Aberdeen waterfront in particular must be about the coldest part of Scotland.

Dod

Try out Wick harbour in January with a Nor-Easter blowing a gale.

I could believe that, but I try to avoid that part of the world in the winter

Dod

[stewamax]

BlueDonkey, Just to clarify Huw Edwards is South Wales born and bred, I think his accent is very soft unlike Gwynedd accent which is very harsh and nasal.

Yes. And it is in spoken Welsh as well as English.
The more extreme North Wales coast accent is reminiscent of Liverpudlian and Birkenhead'ish - Liverpool is not that far away and in times past the Dee estuary could be crossed on foot by hardy individuals grazing cattle there - at some personal risk (vide Kingsley's "O Mary, go and call the cattle home,...across the sands of Dee")
The South Wales accent has, for me, the softer Hereford / almost Somerset lilt.

[bungeejumper]

It's amazing how many people, including TV presenters and even government minister's say: "are country", (or "are something"), rather than "our country".

They're the same people who say yurz instead of years.

And then there's Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose weird accent is so cut-glass that he can't bring himself to pronounce the word Europe. Which is a bit of a disadvantage, considering that so much of his (pretty good) TV stuff has been about what he calls Yurp.

Yurp, to me, is the sound of a yak belching. Or perhaps the sound of an upturned jar of marmalade emptying itself unexpectedly onto the tablecloth? I can only think that his inimitable pronunciation was the psychological scar from having been put through public school with a name like Sebag. Oh god, the pain he must have suffered......

But nobody is in quite the same league as Alice Wobbits, whose Exeter University accent is wholly artificial, and all the funnier for it. She probably uses a kerk berk to kick her fid. And the time when she invited us to lick at a frozen willy mammoth, I nearly fell off the sofa laughing.

BJ

[Itsallaguess]

A Yorkshireman goes to a goldsmiths and asks, "Can tha mek us a gold statue o'me whippet?"

The goldsmith says he can, then asks, "Do you want it 18 carat?"

The man replies, "Nay lad, chewin' a bone'll do fine."

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A rambler walking through the Yorkshire Dales sees a farmer bent over a sheep.

He shouts to the farmer "Are you shearing?"

The farmer shouts back "Nay, lad - get yer own".

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A man from Derby takes his cat to the vets.

He says to the vet, "Me cat's sick".

The vet says, "Is it a tom?"

The man says "No, I brought it with me".

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[SimonS]

Try out Wick harbour in January with a Nor-Easter blowing a gale.

I could believe that, but I try to avoid that part of the world in the winter

Dod

Spent just over three years working at Dounreay and got my Kilogale medal for one thousand days with Gale force winds. The wind there had particular hazards,I still glow on dark nights.

[SimonS]

Certain words gain notoriety; I occasionally watch the TV on Fillum Four, or have smoked Sal-mon but a friend explained the bete noire of the English language, the American "nukular". Various languages, like Japanese, weight every syllable and don't glide over paired vowels ( the difference between a diphthong and a monothong) so one reads nucle as nukul and the ar follows, whereas most brits see it as a variation on unclear.

Not so much a matter of dialect but of reading habit, that and the fact that most people don't revert to the dictionary when faced with an unknown word, they simply infer pronunciation and meaning from the current context.

[bluedonkey]

Rhyd,

I stand corrected but I still think Huw has a bit of nasal going on. Adenoids, maybe!

For some more variation on the Welsh accent, listen to John Toshack of Kaaahdif.

[Lootman]

The more extreme North Wales coast accent is reminiscent of Liverpudlian and Birkenhead'ish - Liverpool is not that far away and in times past the Dee estuary could be crossed on foot by hardy individuals grazing cattle there - at some personal risk (vide Kingsley's "O Mary, go and call the cattle home,...across the sands of Dee")

Funny you should say that because my dentist is originally from Wrexham and he sounds proper Scouse to me. Although as he likes to put it: "Around Chester and the Wirral, we speak posh scouse".

a friend explained the bete noire of the English language, the American "nukular".

I raise you "aluminum", yo-get and 'erbs.

Although if you really love a dropped "h", go to Leicester. It probably took Gary Lineker years to learn how to add that back for the Beeb.

[UncleEbenezer]

Although if you really love a dropped "h", go to Leicester.

Lechster? Or does the h go somewhere else?

Anyone remember Brian Sewell's accent? Or Pratchett's send-up of him in Thud?

[scotia]

Spent just over three years working at Dounreay and got my Kilogale medal for one thousand days with Gale force winds. The wind there had particular hazards,I still glow on dark nights.

My wife hails from those northern parts and tells the grandchildren that her (almost) 5 foot stature is due to wind pruning.

[gryffron]

a friend explained the bete noire of the English language, the American "nukular".

I raise you "aluminum", yo-get and 'erbs.

And "arks". As in "I arks him his name".

Although mainly used by Afro-Caribbean Londoners these days, and just the odd white youth (usually the very odd ones), I note from some old folk recordings that it seems to originate from rural Gloucestershire. Strange combination?

Gryff

[pje16]

a friend explained the bete noire of the English language, the American "nukular".

I can explain it... ignorance
Every time ex President George Bush said it, it made him sound stoopid

[Dod101]

I could believe that, but I try to avoid that part of the world in the winter

Dod

Spent just over three years working at Dounreay and got my Kilogale medal for one thousand days with Gale force winds. The wind there had particular hazards,I still glow on dark nights.

My father's family were mostly scattered along the coast well to the east of Thurso from about Dunnet Head down to Freswick on that wild and woolly corner. The original accents are dying out fast but are almost unintelligible to most people. Dounreay is no longer a source of much comment but presumably it is still being worked upon?

Dod

[TUK020]

Although if you really love a dropped "h", go to Leicester.

Lechster? Or does the h go somewhere else?

Anyone remember Brian Sewell's accent? Or Pratchett's send-up of him in Thud?

Reminds me of the joke about the similarity between Leicester and rap music........

The 'c' is silent

[scotia]

To avoid over quoting........but I drove past the northern nuclear installation that I cant spell, in the dark about 2 months ago. It was lit up like a Christmas tree (quite a sight really in the remote north coast). It certainly looked like there was still a lot going on and I suppose there is, what with all the ongoing decommissioning work.

Both Dounreay Sites - the Fast Breeder Power Reactors and the Nuclear Submarine Test Reactors (HMS Vulcan) are currently being decommissioned. We no longer require to breed nuclear fuel - there is not a shortage. And we no longer intend testing real Nuclear Submarine reactors - we apparently have confidence in our designs, and can simulate them in computer software.