English accent reduction

[Sparkles]

Unfortunately, Italian is one of the worst accents to have to listen to as a native English speaker (after Irish and Scottish ).

It depends of the person's accent, but agree that Irish and Scottish can be harder to understand than a non-native speaker. Anyone remember the Blether?

I remember a few years back watching, on True,a football fans program aimed, at a British audience, and 2 Manchester United supporters from Glasgow were being interviewed.

If you ever experienced speaking to a Glaswegian you will probably understand very little of what is said.In this particular program they ran sub titles and it was, as a I said before, aimed at primarily a UK audience.

We had a fully qualified, Scottish teacher, at our private language school in Bangkok,he lasted about a month,Thai students were lined up at the Managers office complaining they didn't understand a word he said. I also have an Irish friend just about to come here to pursue a career in teaching.I have warned him but how you can correct a lifetime of using your native accent ...mission impossible I would suggest.

[Saan]

The Australian accent has changed over the years. Listen to political broadcasts from the thirties and forties and you will hear a much broader and more nasal accent than is generally spoken now, quite grating. Now days there is not much difference in class accents except at the very lower of the school where a kind of argot is practiced as some sort of rite.

I have always found it amazing that there is so little variation of accents from state to state. I would have thought people from Perth would have developed a distinctive accent because of the isolation and distance from the east coast, about 4000 km by road. But I can't pick a Sandgroper by their accent. The only ones I can usually identify ware the Queenslanders (Banana Benders) because of their peculiar habit of finishing each sentence with an 'aye'.

The thing about the nasal thing is definitely right. It does grate, and even some white collar workers speak through their nose rather than their mouth.

The 'aye' at the end of the sentence comes from the Kiwi's. The coastal Queensland accent is quite similar to Kiwi. I'm ashamed to say that in the 18 months that we lived there I picked up the 'aye' habit and it took about 4 years in Melbourne to rid me of it.

When my late wife and I first moved to North Queensland we found were finishing ours sentences with aye. It took a concerted effort, each picking up the other, to stop.

In my youth If I was talking to an Irishman or a Scot I'd find myself unconsciously mimicking their accents, rolling my rs and begosh and begorrahing along with the best of them. Seemed to have lost that affliction in my old age.

[Saan]

Konini, where did the Aussie phrase 'yeah, no' come from? I take the piss out of Aussies that say it, but most of them don't actually realise that they're saying it. I'm still not sure which of those two words it is supposed to mean, yes, or no?

It's a great mystery where it comes from. I'm a daytime radio listener, always have been and always talk radio from BBC or equivalent which a lot of people would call me a snob for but I don't care. I listen to ABC Melbourne mornings and BBC Radio Tees afternoons. One of the presenters on the Melbourne station has a running tally of people who say 'yeah, no' during interviews or call-back. It's a habit, like the Kiwi's saying 'aye' at the end of every sentence. I needed people to be professional on the phones, and i once gave a written warning to someone who kept saying 'yeah no' to people. After that written warning, everyone stopped doing it immediately both on the phones and face to face with anyone who came into the office, but still used it amongst themselves.

Very annoying, but just a habit. My husband's granddad used to say 'like' at the end of every sentence, and for 4 years I thought he was a bit mad or senile because he always called me Trixlike. He was calling me Trix for some reason and just adding like on the end. That's a Teeside thing, just like Geordies will often say 'man' on the end of their sentences. I still do that to this day, hubby still says like at the end of a lot of sentences.

The 'yeah no' is almost always at the beginning of their sentence, the first words not the last. It's also quite recent. When we got to Australia in early 1989 it wasn't in use, I think maybe only the last 10 years or so, starting off slowly then building up very quickly so a huge number of people say it, even the middle class. If it were me, you could say I was using it to stall for a couple of seconds to think about what I was going to say, but for most people that isn't the case. There has been much discussion in Australia about how it started and how it can be wiped out, because it is really annoying.

If you watched The Vicar of Dibley you will hear one of the characters, Jim Trott, saying before just about everything no no no, yes. Maybe that's where I, along with many other Australians, picked it up and simplified it into yeah, no.

[Saan]

Konini, the 'like' at the end of a sentence doesn't bother me, in fact said with a Geordie accent it sounds quaint, but the American "I was like....." Can be a bit annoying when it is in every sentence.

And don't forget the English whose universal response to just about anything is 'cheers'.

"My mother died last night." "Oh, cheers."

[Konini]

Konini, the 'like' at the end of a sentence doesn't bother me, in fact said with a Geordie accent it sounds quaint, but the American "I was like....." Can be a bit annoying when it is in every sentence.

I got it wrong. His grandad used to say 'well' at the end of his sentences. It was Trixwell that he called me. How could I have got that wrong? I must be getting old.

The American 'Like' before almost every verb annoys the he!! out of me. My very pet hate though is the whatever. I was on the phone once to the personal assistant to the Registrar of Incorporated Associations and she wasn't being helpful, actually being obstructive, then when I told her she wasn't being helpful she said the dreaded word 'Whatever'. Bad move when I wasn't in a good mood over her unpleasantness. After a very pointed silence I said 'Whatever What?'. Silence. After another pointed silence I said in a more menacing tone 'Whatever what? Whatever isn't a sentence, so whatever what?' she was getting jumpy. I scribbled a note and handed it to my assistant telling her to phone the number, ask to speak to the registrar and if asked what it was in relation to say it was a personal call from his doctor's office (never failed to get past a PA with that one). I told her she was being very unhelpful and that I would like to speak to her supervisor (I knew it was the registrar but I didn't want to let her know that I knew that. Knowing that a complaint was going to be going in, she told me that he was unavailable and that she would have to put me on hold because she had another call coming in. I left my phone on my desk and picked up my assistant's phone and had a 15 minute conversation with him informing him how his assistant was not only unhelpful but very rude and that if a member of my staff was speaking to anyone in this way I would want to know about it, so I was letting him know in person, explaining the way I had to have my assistant phone to be able to get me through to him as she told refused to let me speak to him knowing that she would be in trouble, He followed up with a call to me the next week, telling me that she had received a written warning and that he had had his wife call the office asking a complicated question but one she should know the answer to, and she had been given a second written warning, no idea what the first one was for, but one more and she would be dismissed. Not my problem. She was being paid a wage to do a job which involved helping people and being cordial to everyone one the phone and she simply wasn't doing her job. I'd have had her out of her job the first time she ever did that if she worked for me. no reason for a written warning, that was grounds for instant dismissal.

I didn't have to hit edit post for my grammatical fix up, I wrote this hours ago and forgot to hit Add Reply. Luckily I checked which tabs I had open before closing th e 'pooter down for the night, aye

[Nolster]

When/if i get to climb the ladder,and are able to look down,i may too loose my accent,

the examples of Geordie words i gave ,could never be used when speaking to a non

Geordie,thats a given.

regards Worgeordie

Your obsession with climbing ladders suggests that you are a frustrated fireman. Do you dream about climbing a ladder? From the internet.....

"According to Freud, dreams of climbing may represent a longing for sexual fulfillment."

Where's THAT ladder? Just when I need it!

[mikey88]

There's English and there's English ..... Be careful who you copy. There's the thorny issue of 'class' which we like to pretend doesn't exist. I'm from Australia and ...truly.....there are some types of Australians I have no idea what there're saying....

Rain in Spain is actually quite good...

A E I O U

works as well....

[Saan]

There's English and there's English ..... Be careful who you copy. There's the thorny issue of 'class' which we like to pretend doesn't exist. I'm from Australia and ...truly.....there are some types of Australians I have no idea what there're saying....

Rain in Spain is actually quite good...

A E I O U

works as well....

Fair crack of the whip. I've never had any problem understanding an Australian speak because of accent (providing large quantities of alcohol wasn't involved) but their meaning sometimes eludes me. But that is not just a prerogative of Australians.