Attn UK Natives-What Is This Narrator's Accent

[haha]

Vancouver protesters chide Olympics

(The woman narrates the piece about German bobsleds)

She says " pearfect". I have heard it before, but can't place it.

 

[Peter]

Glasgow?

Peter

 

[Alan]

I can't get onto the article - it skips over the bobsled article and if I click directly it says playing now, but only plays the 1st article

 

[Alan]

Finally got on it - I reckon for sure Scottish, and a mild Scottish accent at that such as Edinburgh.

 

[Alan]

Finally got on it - I reckon for sure Scottish, and a mild Scottish accent at that such as Edinburgh.

I just Googled her (Anna Mcintosh) and this is probably her, from an article published by her in 2005.

JOMEC Online Journalism :: Anna McIntosh - Is journalism a dying profession?

Anna is a 22 year old trainee broadcast journalist at Cardiff School of Journalism. Before moving to Cardiff, she studied Interpreting and Translating in French and German at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.

 

[W2R]

Wow! You were able to tell the exact location, just from her voice. That's pretty impressive.

 

[Texas Proud]

I thought Scottish right away... but to good to be Glasgow from the people I met from there....


Looked her up... Anna McIntosh did not say where she was from... I think this is her... this was from 2005...

The author

Anna is a 22 year old trainee broadcast journalist at Cardiff School of Journalism. Before moving to Cardiff, she studied Interpreting and Translating in French and German at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.

 

[Texas Proud]

I just Googled her (Anna Mcintosh) and this is probably her, from an article published by her in 2005.

JOMEC Online Journalism :: Anna McIntosh - Is journalism a dying profession?

OK... got scooped!!! I took a bit of time to try and find something else about her... but the quick journalist gets the story out first!!!

 

[Alan]

Wow! You were able to tell the exact location, just from her voice. That's pretty impressive.

Just happened to have lived close to Glasgow for 18 months, and DW's sister and family have lived in Edinburgh for 25 years so we have spent a lot of time there. The accent to me just sounded a lot more like Edinburgh than Glasgow. The article only states that she studied in Edinburgh but I'm willing to bet she is east coast lowlands rather than west, and although I don't really know the highland accent, I'm sure it is a lot stronger than hers.

Of course,she could be fooling me completely as she is a university graduate, with post grad in Wales and obviously well traveled, so the accent will have softened a lot.

 

[Alan]

Here is a mild Glasgow accent - Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) being interviewed.

YouTube - Robbie Coltrane interview - Parkinson - BBC

... and here is a much stronger Glasgow accent (Billy Connolly) which may be I should post under Health and Retirement - Warning - it contains bad language.

YouTube - Billy Connolly - Colonoscopy

 

[haha]

Thanks Alan, Like W2 said, you are good. Add Texas, you are pretty good too!

I love her voice. I love pearfect!

That Billy Connolly is hysterica! He speaks slowly enough that I can understand it. I used to watch British crime movies. Sometimes I would have to turn on the subtitles, if the film had English subtitles. I think that London Cockney accent is prety well beyond me, and they speak rapidly and mumble.

Ha

 

[W2R]

Those Glasgow accents really ARE strong! Fascinating.

 

[Gumby]

Those Glasgow accents really ARE strong! Fascinating.

You've never heard a Geordie.

This is an interesting site, at which you can hear people from various parts of the UK.

Sounds Familiar?

A Geordie is from Tyneside. If you are looking on the map, it's up about halfway on the East coast of the island.

 

[W2R]

You've never heard a Geordie.

This is an interesting site, at which you can hear people from various parts of the UK.

Sounds Familiar?

A Geordie is from Tyneside. If you are looking on the map, it's up about halfway on the East coast of the island.

Thanks! Looks like I can play on the website for a while.

 

[Alan]

You've never heard a Geordie.

This is an interesting site, at which you can hear people from various parts of the UK.

Sounds Familiar?

A Geordie is from Tyneside. If you are looking on the map, it's up about halfway on the East coast of the island.

Nice site, thanks Gumby

I'm from about 25 miles from Geordieland in County Durham. If you listen to the guy from Wearhead, Co Durham, that is what I sounded like before I left y'ame. I had to make a lot of changes to be understood anywhere south of Durham.

 

[haha]

This accent site is very intersting. US natives from the east coast, South and Midwest often have strong regional accents unless they have worked to get rid of them, but I wonder if there are as many different ways of speaking among US native speakers as seems to be the case in UK?

On the west coast one can essentially go from Chula Vista to Blaine and if one stays close to the coast native middle class educated people may have very similar accents, if the way they speak can even be called an accent. Much more apparent are class differences, or small age related subgroups, such as the Valley Girl habit of making a statement sound like a question.(Something I also noticed in BC, Canada years ago.)

Ha

 

[Alan]

The accents in the UK vary enormously within a few miles in some areas. My brother and I would get a stern rebuke from my mother sometimes if we spoke like "townies" - people from Sunderland, the big town 5 miles down the road, and you certainly could tell the difference in accent.

My BIL is from Whitehaven, Cumbria, 60 miles from Tyneside on the other coast. If you listen to the sound clip from that site you'll hear a big difference in accent

 

[Gumby]

I think that London Cockney accent is prety well beyond me, and they speak rapidly and mumble.

Ha

They also swear quite a bit and use rhyming slang. Here is bit of what is perhaps the most famous Cockney, Michael Caine

YouTube - Alfie 1966 Part 2


I am a native Cockney and spoke with an accent until I went to school in the US, where I fought every day until I learned to speak like everyone else. I then spent the rest of my childhood translating my mother's speech into American English for anyone with whom she spoke.


Here's another bit with some rhyming slang.


YouTube - Rhyming Slang Translation - Commercial

 

[Alan]

I am a native Cockney and spoke with an accent until I went to school in the US, where I fought every day until I learned to speak like everyone else. I then spent the rest of my childhood translating my mother's speech into American English for anyone with whom she spoke.

I love the Cockney accent. I really liked the series "Only Fools and Horses" and was pleased to see some years ago that they aired it over here, and didn't even use subtitles (of course the accents weren't too strong).

 

[Texas Proud]

I see we have a some Scottish here... nice..

As for Glasgow, my sister and I visited there for a few hours... we went to Edinburgh and decided to take a quick trip over there (we had a Brit rail pass)...

When we were ready to leave, this guy came up to us and started to talk to us... I had been in England for a year, but I could not understand a word he said.... except 'Jerry Springer'... now, my sister could not understand a number of Scotts, so whe just shook her head and said 'yes,yes'...

Just to let people know... Jerry was big over there.... but not the same show he had here... I did not watch him, so I can not comment on what it was about...

 

[Alan]

I see we have a some Scottish here... nice..

As for Glasgow, my sister and I visited there for a few hours... we went to Edinburgh and decided to take a quick trip over there (we had a Brit rail pass)...

When we were ready to leave, this guy came up to us and started to talk to us... I had been in England for a year, but I could not understand a word he said.... except 'Jerry Springer'... now, my sister could not understand a number of Scotts, so whe just shook her head and said 'yes,yes'...

Just to let people know... Jerry was big over there.... but not the same show he had here... I did not watch him, so I can not comment on what it was about...

Don't know about Jerry Springer in Scotland but I can confirm how difficult the accent can be in Glasgow. I twice had taxi drivers where I literally couldn't understand a single word they said. (Remember that I grew up close to Scotland, and at the time of the taxi trips we had been living and working close to Glasgow for about a year).

On another occasion I was sitting at a picnic table in a park with my 3 year old son when an old guy with a walking stick came by. The old chap starting speaking and we couldn't understand a single syllable, and neither apparently could he understand me. Eventually he raised his stick like a rifle and had a "shooting match" with my son who was in fits of laughter, and when he left I felt so stupid that we had not been able to communicate.