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.
No comments:
Post a Comment