Reply To: [unofficial weekender] The snow has gone! (at least here)

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

Aren’t accents peculiar? We all seem to be hyper-sensitively attuned to discriminating between our own localised accents, but unable to tell between other accents, from outside our area.

I grew up in St. Helens – between Liverpool and Manchester – and can tell a fellow “woolyback” from the peculiar blend of scouse and flattened Lancashire vowels. At the time, anyone from Stoke to Milton Keynes was a Brummie. And anyone further south than that, a cockney.

But woebetide anyone who suggested someone from Billinge (just 2 miles up the road from St. Helens) sounded like a wooly – it was a akin to blasphemy. And they’d poke your eyes out for suggesting they sounded like a “pie eater” from Wigan, just 10 miles up the road.

When I moved to Brighton about ten years ago, everyone “down south” sounded the same – from London, Portsmouth, Brighton. Now I can probably tell which part of the city someone comes from, just by their accent! And by the same token, down here, my own accent has been placed in Blackburn, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and even Hull(!?)

I have neices in Birmingham who – to me -sound hilarious (how they make one syllable words last two, sometimes even three syllables is a wonder). My wife’s lad who lives in Wolverhampton thinks the same. Yet to me, they are indistiguishable!

(so no offence meant, calling a Yam-Yam a Brummie – I know how cutting it can be; I smile sweetly when my neighbours suggest I sound like one of them Yorkshire lot, but inside I die a little).

All that said, I think the videos are brilliant. The scenery looks great, the presentation style is relaxed and at the end of one, I’m left thinking “yeah, I reckon I *could* make one of those”. (I’ve yet to, but that might just change in the coming weeks….)