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Do yous blokes uda'stand me? [international english]
Ryna
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I watched some irish movies, 'Adam & Paul' and 'Hunger', I get most of the language without a few of the references.
In the past 'english' movies (british ones that contain heavy dialects), haven't really been a huge problem.
I just watched 'Chopper', a movie in my native Australian accent, and thought how other english talkers took to it. Can you Americanos understand our talk? Do my irish kin understand us? What about those South Africans, can they understand aussies?
On the other-hand, do you Scots get New Zealand accents? Canadians with Welsh?
Has the english language evolved to the point of subtitles?
In the past 'english' movies (british ones that contain heavy dialects), haven't really been a huge problem.
I just watched 'Chopper', a movie in my native Australian accent, and thought how other english talkers took to it. Can you Americanos understand our talk? Do my irish kin understand us? What about those South Africans, can they understand aussies?
On the other-hand, do you Scots get New Zealand accents? Canadians with Welsh?
Has the english language evolved to the point of subtitles?
Ryna on
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We have more problems with Irish. The only movie I have seen with subtitles for English was for the Pikey's in Snach, and no one understands them.
Jamaican accents can be goofy sometimes, but not incomprehensible. Just kind of funny.
but they're listening to every word I say
really when words and prepositions and phrasal structures start changing, that's when it's hard to understand. Newfoundland English is heavily accented and they use prepositions completely differently - "where you to?" means "where are you," and "where you at?" means "where are you going", for example.
Canada? I've never heard anyone from there talk like that.
edit: they must be hiding it from me.
but they're listening to every word I say
well it's more "whar ya tew, bye? havin' a time, is we?"
Damn, If I remembered the bits I didn't get I'd ask you now... uhhh..
Well that's a very unconventional theory to say the least; most say the Australian accent is derived from the old Middlesex mix of Irish and Cockney with the reasoning that it a) it really sounds like it is b) Linguists think so and c) the vast majority of Early Ozzies were from there.
Whilst the Yorkshire accents have some very old elements derived from the Norse influx, it was always limited geographically. So whilst the Yorkshire accents are old, they're not the ones everyone used to speak. Ironically the accent most similar to the old accents most English people had in Shakespeare's time can apparently be found in isolated parts of North Carolina.
Despite the stereotype of being 'old-fashioned' the British half of Anglophone accents have undergone a harder and faster evolution than the American ones since the 18th century, like the non-rhotic shift was something England did rather than America not doing.
NSFW- language
"Scots" is actually a separate academically-recognized language from "Scottish English," though there is much overlap, which is itself derived from the many Scots-Gaelic dialects and old Danish/Norse tongues.
In short, language is basically one long never-ending orgy.
Iron Chef America really gets me everytime Morimoto comes on. He speaks English! They don't even subtitle him, they dub him over!
And while they'll never hesitate to dub a strong Irish/Scots/South African accent, ever notice how Appalachians never get subbed?
Scottish is alright, Glaswegian is another matter entirely.
Though bizarrely, when I was at Uni in Edinburgh my Indian classmates had no problems understanding the Glaswegian bus drivers and often had to translate for me. How much of that is put on for one of the Auld Enemy I don't know, since I had a similar problem during the Edinburgh festival when people who had seemingly spent the entire year using the nice, easy to understand Edinburgh accent suddenly switched to a thick Glaswegian one.
On the other hand, I've also noticed that a lot of native English speakers seem to have less problems with strongly accented English, than the other way around (i.e. so germans have a harder time understanding german with non-german accent, be it english or otherwise). Could just be an issue of familiarly I suppose.
I ended up picking up a bunch of phrases (do the needful) and uncommon word usage (kindly) because my logic circuits and engineering lab courses in college were taught by an Indian guy.
Also this thread is an excuse to post this sketch.
I've noticed that myself, as well. I think that English being a sort of lingua franca combined with the high immigrant populations in English-speaking countries means that English speakers are generally more likely to hear the language spoken in odd or broken ways.
Meanwhile, languages that don't benefit from those two factors often end up having this intelligibility gap where a non-native speaker understands it fairly well, and can actually speak it fairly well by English-speaking standards, but it doesn't matter since native-speakers are not used to hearing their language in an unfamiliar way.
One of my friends is from Glasgow. I can't understand a goddamned thing he says. I'm constantly having to ask him to repeat things, and I feel bad about it, but what can you do?
Rigorous Scholarship
But my wife has a perfectly neutral London accent, and I have a perfectly neutral Continental US accent.
Rigorous Scholarship
Nothing insult us more in Québec than seeing one of our movies being subtitled when playing in France. Happens a lot :S
I used to play WoW with two Scots.
One of them had to translate what the other one said on Vent.
Bill Bailey does a bit about a Glaswegian roadie he worked with. They all went drinking after a gig and he went to the bar and said
"Gonnaegiesapintalager"
And he was admonished and told he needed to speak more slowly down south.
"Gonnaegies .... apint .... alager"
Aussies are pretty damned easy to understand. I rather like their accent for much the same reason as MM favors british ones. I've pretty much exclusively been exposed to Aussies in various bars across Europe. They tend to be fun.
My parents were from NYC and Massachusetts, I was born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvanian in upper classish burbs populated by transplants. For the past decade and a half I've been in central Florida, which again is just about all immigrants. Don't think I have much of a accent.
The idea of this happening is pretty hilarious to me because I am imagining such indignation on both sides.