Voices of Scotland .....

[JustJean]

I've heard more than once that it's easy to tell where a person comes from in Scotland by the accent that they use. Since I've never heard but two or three Scottish people speak in my life it was hard to imagine those differences. Now that is all changed!!! I offer the following web address to anyone with curiousity to check out the various regions. Quite obvious there are differences....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/whereilive/

Maybe some of you regular Scotland based posters would like to get in on this program and have some of your own favorite phrases recorded!

Jean

[Guest]

The same can be said in Newfoundland.There is more than just the difference in speach between a "Bay man" and a "Townie".In the little bays and hamlets you can hear the original speach of our ancestors still spoken today.There's one place in particular that comes to mind.Branch,it's population is made up of different families of Brennan's and McGrath's and they all speak with an Irish accent that could have been straight from Ireland today yet none of them have been of the island for generations.I guess it depends on the location ,in our case isolation from the rest of the world.
HK

[Andy]

In Greenock it doesn't take a Henry Higgins to tell what STREET some individuals grew up in from their accents which are different even within the town. The Gourock accent (Gourock ajoins Greenock) is suptily but definitely different too.

Some of the lazier accents in Port Glasgow and Greenock are almost GRUNTS!

I remember walking home from school with my cousin when a THUG a few years our senior approached us and said what HONESTLY sounded like a gruff "U. N. E. R."

Turns out he was enquiring as to our relationship: Are you anything to each other? i.e were we related!

[WilmaM]

I wonder how it would cope with my accent

I'm from Glasgow - well spoken [but not pan loaf] Mother, Plantation Father
now living in Falkirk

I don't even know how I'd describe it myself

[NancyinNJ]

Jean, Thank you for that site...I have passed it along to family members here to let them hear all the voices from Scotland.

[DavidWW]

I wonder how it would cope with my accent

I'm from Glasgow - well spoken [but not pan loaf] Mother, Plantation Father
now living in Falkirk

I don't even know how I'd describe it myself

Can I take it, then, that your accent is not "Kelvinside" ?!

For those not familiar with a posh Glasgow "Kelvinside" accent - "Morningside" in Edinburgh terms, - "sex" is what coal is carried in !!

Davie

[mesklin]

Kelvinside classroom.

Teacher: "Name a Belgian sea port"

Class: No Reply

Teacher: "Ostend"

... so the entire class stood up.

[WilmaM]

Can I take it, then, that your accent is not "Kelvinside" ?!
Davie

I don't think I could muster up a 'Kelvinside' ever , My Mum was so well spoken she was often mistaken for an Inverness woman [ highest compliment possible as they seemingly speak the purest brand of Queen's English].
She'd have a fit if she could hear her namesake of a Granddaughter at school though they know to keep the F'kirk accents for the playground.

[StewL]

My accent, probably Australian Western Australian that is, there are differences in accents across the country. Although people do occasionally pick that I am Scots by birth, they tell me it is the way I pronounce some words.

My late mother, who was from Clarkston Airdrie, would never let us speak like "Glesca Keelies", we would get told off, not that she expected us to speak posh or such.

I never really understood why until I was doing a unit on communications skills at university, and an Aboriginal women, who was a guest lecturer, describe the way Aboriginal people talk, they have different ways between themselves and us Wadjilas (white fellas). She explained that what my mother was doing was to prevent me be labelled by the accent that I had, which can be a barrier later in life. The same way that Aboriginal people protect themselves from being labelled as uneducated because of their accents.
By the way, Aboriginal people have about 500 dialects.

[CatrionaL]

Thanks, JustJean for that link.
The E-cards on the Borders' site took me back to childhood: holidays in Eyemouth, where the "fun" more than once was watching the rescue boats set out to sea.; the crossing of the water and the casting of the colours at the Common Riding in Selkirk; Sunday afternoons watching the salmon leap; climbing the Eildon hills.
Not my accent though. I was brought up trying to please west of Scotland parents who lamented my "awful" Border accent and school friends who unkindly accused me of "talkin' lik' an english wumman". Sometimes you can't win!

By the way what was the name of that Radio program in the dark ages before tv.? Seem to remeber it was called "The McFlannels" or was that the name of the Kelvinside lady who talked awfy highfallutin'?

Glad to know you're not lost in a snowdrift, Heather.

Catriona