This Is This

I like the way Scottish people talk and how they say “situation”. “Sitcheeyayshun.” And Welsh people, the way they say “hyur” for “here”.

My dad’s really good at accents. He can pin down a lilt or drawl after a couple of minutes. He guesses where my friends have lived even if they were only there for a few years. It’s scary. It’s like when Hannibal Lector says to Clarice Starling that she sometimes wears whatever perfume, and adds: “but not today.”

I can tell some accents. Americans are always impressed that I can tell if they come from Philadelphia, because some of them think they sound like everyone else, except they say “churre” for “cherry” and “snoewww” for “snow”. People from New Orleans say “ahl” for “oil”, which kills me.

But recognising accents is all about where you are from. People from Manchester can recognise people from Salford. I can tell the difference between someone from where I live and someone from a town 20 miles away. Ask someone from Bristol to say “purple” and you’ll get a totally different accent from someone from Bath. I bet people from San Francisco can spot an Oakland accent, but I wouldn’t know.

Twenty years ago, everyone on TV spoke the same. They all had the newsreader Oxford and Cambridge long vowels and spoke like they did on the BEEEEEE BEEEEEE CEEEEEEEE. Chech-Nyaaaaaaah. Pahhhhkiistaaaaahn. Now, you hear accents from all over the UK but there remain some exceptions. You don’t hear many Liverpudlian accents on TV, at least not in a position of authority. I can’t imagine a newsreader saying “All right, la. Tons of them French folks been out looking for werk this arvo after the collapse of the moby maaaahrket which made the CAC index drop like a wet cossie. Everyting’s sound here, doh” or “Hozzie staff say they are overwhelmed following scraps involving dockers and bizzies. While the unions were gutted, many of the rozzers were said to be ‘made up’.”

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