American-Born Scot, Update

So if you'll look below, you'll see a post that says "My Life as an American-Born Scot". This is because I'm trying to master an Edinburgh Scottish accent. I'd gotten pretty good at it up until about a week ago.

I came across an Irish folk choir song that my friend sang and I was a huge fan of. However they sang the song in an Irish accent. Now what's the problem, you may ask? I'll tell you: as I began to hum and whistle the song to myself, I also began to sing it to myself... IN AN IRISH ACCENT. Of course you're probably wondering why this is a problem.


Well if you're geographically advanced as I am, you know that Scotland and Ireland are both on the British Isles so they have somewhat similar accents. HOWEVER, they have some IMMENSE differences about other things.

For example: a Scotsman would pronounce the word "about" as 'aboot', or 'aboat'. An Irishman would say it 'abaht' or 'abut'.

Another example: Scotsmen say the world the letter "I" as 'ay'. So if you came across Gerard Butler or Ewan McGregor, he would say "Ay 'ave never meht yew bafore ehn may layfe." (I have never met you before in my life.) The Irishman next to him would say "Oi hahv nehver maht you bafore in me loife."

The letter "R" is also key in both accents. Scots roll their R's heavily. If they don't roll it, they flip it. On the other hand, Irish people don't roll the R, but they overuse the r sound. It's quite hard to remember .

Scottish people also tend to say the "i" in words like "lift" as "lehft". Irish say it more like "laft". Scottish also say "word" as 'werd', which Irish say "wahrd".


But anyway, the problem is that Oi'm star'en tae fahrgeht whech is whech (I'm starting to forget which is which) and I'm getting them mixed up. But I've decided from now until I master it, I'm going to stay away from all Irish influences and focus only on the Scottish culture. I even checked a book out from the library about Scotland. I'm very excited to read it. I've also become very fond of the Scottish national anthem, "Flower of Scotland". It's not the official national anthem, as Scotland is part of the UK (whose national anthem is technically "God Save the Queen" and oddly enough goes to the same tune as "My Country 'Tis of Thee").

As you can tell, my life is a wreck right now...

My Life as an American-born Scot

Recently, I've been using a lot of this web application called "StumbleUpon". What StumbleUpon is is a website whose toolbar you download and check off boxes of your interests and based on your likes, every time you click "Stumble" on the toolbar, it redirects you to a random page it thinks you might like. Being somewhat a jack-of-all-trades (at least I'd like to think so), I use this toolbar quite frequently just to stay cultured with what's going on in the interwebs.

StumbleUpon

Anyway, so I found a video of a Scottish man imitating all the known accents of the English language. If you haven't gathered it already from my earlier posts, I have a lot of things that I'm into that people don't know about me. For as long as I can remember I've been, for lack of a better word, obsessed with being able to speak in several accents (in order of importance): Scottish, Irish, British, New Zealand/Australian, French, South African, Russian.


A while back, I checked out a book from the library called "Accents: An Actor's Manual". It comes with a CD of lessons that teach different accents of different regions of the general countries' accent. I ripped that CD on iTunes and returned it (obviously). I had forgotten about my accent obsession until recently I began watching the show "Flight of the Conchords", which used to be on HBO and only had two seasons with a total of 22 episodes. I'm very sad that the show was cancelled. But that's not the point.

The characters on the show are all from New Zealand both in real life and on the show. I quickly learned to imitate their accent. In order of how well I've mastered the accent besides my own, it goes Canadian, New Zealand/Australian, British, Scottish, and then WAY down the list, Irish, Russian, etc. But lately I've been getting into the Scottish culture after watching a Scottish comedian named Danny Bhoy and listening to him tell a joke about the Scottish national anthem. I developed a liking for said national anthem and YouTube'd it. That is how my vacation in Scottish culture began.


I went on YouTube and found a series of lessons on how to speak with Scottish accents from real Scots. However, one series was by a man from Edinburgh and the other was by a man from Glasgow. Glasgow is the rugged, brutish, man accent as heard by Gerard Butler, or the Edinburgh accent which is the smooth, sexy one heard by Sean Connery or Ewan McGregor. I've decided that it's easier to try Edinburgh because it's more enunciated as I'm used to with an American accent, then I will shift into the sloppier Glaswegian accent.

I've also found a website that teaches all about the Scots language and vocabulary and whatnot. I will post all of these links at the bottom.

To help me adapt to the Edinburgh accent, I saw a movie called Trainspotting which takes place in Edinburgh. It's not the plot of the movie I was watching for (which was twisted but awesome), but the accent and I think I picked it up rather well. I discovered this movie was based of a book by a Scottish author named Irvine Welsh. I went to the library and looked in his books to find to my delight that all of it is written phonetically as a Scotsman would say it. Thank you, Mr. Welsh (the writer not the physics teacher, though I'm sure I'll thank him too).

But one thing's for sure: next time I go to Disney, I'll be one of those Europeans pretending to be a tourist in America. But don't worry; I'll just be practicing my accent.

Edinburgh Accent Lesson Teacher's Page
This guy's crazy, but more informative.
Glaswegian (Glasgow) Accent Teacher's Page
This guy's hilarious, but more phrase oriented.
Scots Language Website
This website has about all the information one could need if curious as to the Scottish language, accent, culture, etc.

Lack of Blogs

Yo yo yo.
To all my reader(s) (a.k.a. Emily), I just wanted to apologize for the lack of blogs. I don't have time to do a blog now, but I thought'd I'd just post this update saying there WILL BE MORE TO COME soon. I've just been kinda lazy with my posting, but I'll definitely start doing it more.
Ciao.