Ah the wonders of accents, eh?
I am sometimes, admittedly rarely and usually by people with ludicrously thick regional accents themselves, accused of sounding a little bit like a farmer. Yes, sometimes I might possibly pronounce 'light' as if it had an extra 'o' in it, but that's as far as it goes I'm sure.
I don't say 'my luvverrrrr' and I don't own, nor have I seen in the flesh, a combine harvester.
I reckon (as I suppose most people do) I have a very neutral accent, kind of like the queen minus the poshness. I pronounce all my words the way they are written, vowels are strictly to be used as they are intended, and I don't use any weird regional slang either, or (and this really annoys me) do things like pronounce 'texts' as 'texes'. Argh.
Anyway, so there is me, Mr Neutral, and today I went to Bath to meet up with another signmaker to help him fit some graphics in the university library.
He came from Scotland
He even came from Glasgow.
He had the best accent. Ever.
The title of this post roughly translates as 'I never did that in all my live long years' which is one of the many hugely confusing but brilliantly interesting things he said to me today. I use that one as an example because it was one of the only things he said that I could actually translate, I found my self constantly saying 'pardon?' or 'sorry?' and then straining to pick out recognisable words so hard I swear it made me sweat a little.
We managed to do the job, more by gestures and pointing I reckon than by actual communication, (although I did figure out by the end of the day that 'skwidge' is 'squeegee', and 'cudd-a' is 'scalpel') but I had a whale of a time talking to him, and he was such a nice guy that I kept talking even though it was like holding a conversation with a badly plumbed house.
I'm going back tomorrow to finish it off and I will try to remember some of the slang terms he used and the phrases that he said, they were great.
So, Mr Neutral here is going to sit up all night and watch downloaded episodes of Taggart, so I might be able to piece some conversations together tomorrow, and because maybe secretly, I want to sound like that too.
'Ken ya pass me thaa thar wee rool so's aye ken chop this parna?'
(Would you be so kind as to hand me the ruler so that I may trim this section of vinyl?)
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