On this St. Patrick's Day, you may be hearing people attempting their best Irish accents. Because these attempts are usually bad, we've invited a professional dialect coach to help.
Listeners: call us up and try to stump the dialect coach. Charlotte Fleck, professional dialect coach and dialect professor at Brooklyn College, will guess whether your Irish or Irish-American accent is real or fake. And for you fakers, she'll offer advice about how to improve your imitation.
Comments [11]
Brian: I would advise your guest not to use the term, scotch- Irish to describe those in Ireland with a Scots background. When the Irish - that included protestant as well as Roman Catholic - first migrated to America they only considered themselves as being Irish. Scotch is either a hard liquor or a cellophane sticking tape, not a Scotsman. That term scotch-Irish came later in American history when the settled Irish of Scottish descent wanted not to be part of the mere Irish who came here during the great hunger of the mid 1800's.
@ ian lyn -- i've actually NEVER had anyone agree with me on this point! glad to know someone else hear it;-)
Hmmm... so, St. Patrick's day and the best you can do on an Irish topic is ask folks how well they can say "always after me lucky charms?"
There's a bit more to Ireland and Irish Americans that that Brian. It would have been nice had you addressed the peace process or the economic situation with the same care and seriousness you lavished upon Israel earlier in the show.
My grandmother was from Thurles (in Tipperary), which the locals pronounce "Durlas". I always thought this helps explain the roots of Brooklynese (e.g.: "dems" and "dose", and "Turdy-Turd & Turd Avenue"
i've always thought the lilting jamaican accent has a bit of a scotch-irish cadence. what does your expert think?
the first fella was very Obviously from Dublin !!!
Listen to a hardcore Jamaican and a Hardcore Irish and you will hear they are very similar. My old Irish neighbor in Rosedale Queens was a McGartle and they sound the same as my Jamaican family members
Listen to a hardcore Jamaican and a Hardcore Irish and you will hear they are very similar. My old Irish neighbor in Rosedale Queens was a McGardle and they sounded the same as my Jamaican family.
When the USA has so many different regional accents, why don't Americans seem to understand that the same is true of other countries? There isn't one Irish accent, there are several.
RE: "The Fighter"
As a Boston native watching the accents in that movie noticed Christian Bale's accent was dead-on and Mark Walberg, despite being a native, was terrible. Walberg grew up in Dorchester and did an awful job with the Lowell accent. Do you agree?
What about the "Newfie" accent from the Canadian province of Newfoundland? How does that compare to Irish accents and can your guest demonstrate it?
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