Being from the South of Ireland working in England I take advantage of my accent. I’ve noticed a trend in that older women especially seem to like it and ask me to say ’33’ and then tell me ‘I could listen to you all night’. When I was out one night this lad said I sounded Jamaican! Then when I joined a rugby club the lads thought I was a plumber/tradesman/policeman [due to my accent] only to reveal to their surprise that I am a Uni Professor. Having a different accent has been overall positive for me. After a lecture once, I had someone ask a question for the sake of hearing my voice. The British really seem to like it.. It’s an icebreaker in conversations and makes the ladies smile 🙂
Tag: Irish
Liz
So I am northern Italian, which is already a bit of a strange accent for Italy (long vowels, many consonants fall, etc.), then I moved to England and lived first in Yorkshire where my best friend is from, and then in Oxford, but with two Irishmen and a Scot in the house, and then I met my future husband who is a Welshman raised in Norfolk. The result? After four years in England, I developed what has been recently defined by a friend of mine a ‘Eurotrash’ accent, with bits of Irish, Northern, Scot pronunciation scattered here and there across my fake-RP.
That said, I love English Northern pronunciation and every day that passes I am more and more tempted to ditch the stupid RP and just go for my northern mash!
Karen
I’m Irish and have experienced a lot of negative feedback and discrimination in the UK due to my accent, ranging from someone refusing to be seated next to me on a plane to students telling me they can’t take me seriously because I ‘sound like Father Ted’!