Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder.

I certainly used to talk more poshly at home than I did at school. But as time has gone on, the accents have sort of met in the middle.

Going to school not far from Epping, we were particularly amused by one teacher (not a local) who insisted that a nearby village was pronounced 'Theydon Bwa'.

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gbsteve.livejournal.com

That was my problem. I mean, I know about Theydon Boyce but I didn't know it wasn't Bo Liə. I had no frame of reference to say Bew Lee, especially having spent 10 years in France.

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Shortly before order a "Buccleuch estate beef burger" in a pub the other, t'other half asked me how to say "Buccleuch".

Neither of us had a blithering clue. I have suspicions that it might be One Of Them words that try to trip up the unwary.

I think he said "a burger", which seemed to work but got us no forwarder.

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It's /bəˈkluː/, according to the FOAK. Which I think is approx like 'berCLOO(ch)' where the ch is vestigial.

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Hmm. Not too bad then - hardly into Beaulieu territory.

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Any bets on Kirkcudbright?

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K'COOObree, innit?

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Smart arse. How about Southampton?

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Saaaaaaarmpn, I think. Not sure on that one, though.

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The only sentence I can still hear in my grandfather's 'voice' is 'Goan down Sampton, sarf'dee'.

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"Holborn" confused me for ages. Pronounce it anything like it's spelt and parochial Londoners contrive to affect complete ignorance.

Assuming my very best (i.e. most grotesquely parodied) "Saaand a'Bow-Behwz" accent turns it into Owb'n (like the town near the Isle of Mull in NW Scotland - only more so.

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I still have trouble with Hoebunn as well.

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bibliogirl.livejournal.com

"dyoo" for me is that damp stuff on the grass in the morning...

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Dang it, I meant to include that in the poll, but forgot. For me that one is also 'joo'.

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bibliogirl.livejournal.com

I think I know _why_ that one differs for me, and it dates back to one of the songs we sang in the school choir ("I Sing Of A Maiden", not that anyone would care). It includes a line about "as dew in April that falleth on the grass" and my music teacher was particular about how it was pronounced, and it stuck.

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Was she makeless?

I answered "dy..." for most things, but am now (saying things out loud) and wondering that I might veer more towards a "j...". I do remember being very firmly told by choirmonsters that it was dyo-oo-oo in April.

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bibliogirl.livejournal.com

She was indeed makeless, and our guy said much the same about the April dampness ;)

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Curious. In isolation I could easily say "joo" or "dyoo", but in the context of a sentence, I'd always say "dyoo", at least in my normal register.

With "due", the first example that came to mind was "Give the Devil his due". Give the Devil his "joo" sounds like the Unacceptable Face of Catholicism!

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I vary to be honest. Both accent and dialect will wander around the country depending on my mood at the time, and what I think will sound most effective!

Answers given are my default settings (as it were), although my Yorkshire accent thickens up quite regularly. In fact, the Yorkshire accent is as much an affectation as any other. Whitby, where I grew up, has an accent that is all its own, and I don't speak that naturally at all - I didn't like the accent growing up, and so decided not to adopt it. My sister on the other hand speaks nothing but.

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It is interesting how localized these accents can be, especially in those isolated towns of the East Coast. A friend of mine moved from Leeds to Hull as a child -- a distance of only 50 miles or so -- and the Hull kids called her "cockney", because that was the closest they could guess at her weird accent.

(That was back in the 50s, but even so.)

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Coastal accents are a rule unto themselves, largely because coastal communities, especially in remote places like Whitby tend to have a lot more linguistic contact with other similar communities on the same coast, than they do with those inland of them. Whitby is a good case in point, as the accent and dialect has recognisable elements of Scottish and Geordie in it, as well as Yorkshire. Almost certainly it has things in common with Humberside and Lincolnshire as well, but I am not familiar enough with those to judge.

Scouse is another good example, and more recognisable to most. You do get bits of northern Cheshire that sound slightly Liverpudlian in the vowels, but in the main, Scouse is remarkably different to anything else in its proximity - especially Lancashire. I think that a lot of that is Irish influence.

Of course back on the right of the Pennines, Yorkshire is a slightly odd case, being a large, sparsely populated county with an apparently unified identity. In fact, although acknowledging a generic Yorkshireness, that is vaguely preferable to anything else, most places in Yorkshire don't have much commonality with anywhere more than a couple of hills away. I mean, to a Whitbyite, Hull and Leeds are completely different parts of the country, and Sheffield, although nominally in Yorkshire, is actually half-way to London!

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karohemd.livejournal.com

I always get confused by questions like this and I never quite know how to answer them. You'd have to ask me in person to read out a sentence with the above words in it. The more I think about it, the less certain I get.

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Confusion reigns, my work here is done ;-)

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karohemd.livejournal.com

Heh, well done.

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kauket.livejournal.com

My accent, pronunciation and my tone of voice changes when I'm in Court. I have what others have described as an 'advocacy voice' which is a lot posher and gentler than my usual voice, I think. When I speak to clients I try to make my accent less posh, but I end up sounding like a posh person trying to sound 'street' ;)

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You just need to add 'innit?' to the end of everything for that to work, don't you, innit?

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Mm, I'm quite lucky I got a good solid grounding in 'talking common' when I was a kid -- I don't think I could successfully fake it now otherwise ;-)

I wonder how juries react to poshness of lawyers' voices: might a really really posh one alienate them?

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fractalgeek.livejournal.com

Due was the most difficult to pick I suspect I use more than one.

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ninthcouncil.livejournal.com

I'm sure I also oscillate between dy-- and j-- depending on context and audience. I suspect "due" is most likely to go to the initial j, "duel" least. Also, the surrounding sounds probably affect things - I think I'm more likely to say "sanjoon" for "sand dune" than "joon" for "dune", for instance.

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Good point: I suspect that within set phrases like 'sand dune', consonantal degradation (if we can call it that) is more likely to take place, because the degraded consonant is a less important part of the larger lexical unit than it is just in 'dune' in a less familiar context.

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Hmm, "degradation". Not sure I would call it that in this instance, although it could be in others.

I think that in this case it's to do with the fact that most English speakers don't differentiate between the alveolar n and the glottal ŋ. Enunciating the "d" in "sand" would sound like over-pronunciation in the context of "sand-dune", so I'd guess that most people would actually come out with something about half-way between the two "n" sounds, and thus make "joon" more likely than "dyoon".
I suppose that what I've just said could actually be fairly called degradation, as it's not a straight swap between n and ŋ, or it would come out as "sangyoon" or something!

Gah. Get some work done Malk!

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If I ever get the time to do some proper study of linguistics, I'll learn the proper terminology for all this stuff!

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I kind of thought you did actually, or I'd have been more explicit! It's your own fault for sounding all erudite about linguistics, and using schwa characters in cold blood!

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Well, I guess I have a fair understanding of some areas of it, I've done quite a bit of reading -- but not in any formal sense, so correct terms are not as much at my command as I would like. And phonology is particularly dense with technicalia!

But yes, sounding erudite about a wide range of gubbins is pretty much a core skill for the amount of designing/running freeforms and RPGs that I do ;-)

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bluedevi.livejournal.com

"Trying-too-hard middle-class" in that my mum was the child of dirt-poor farmers and thus rather class-anxious, despised what she called 'country' or 'rough' accents, and had taken elocution lessons, but went pure Monaghan when she was angry.

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