Accents

I wish I understood accents better. We hear the broad, rolling, Dorset accent, the BBC/Oxford accent, and the sharp, urban Brit accent (a sort of modified Cockney) that pervades young people’s speech no matter their origin. I “get” American accents--Great Lakes vs. Maine vs. Boston vs. New Jersey vs. Virginia vs. South Carolina vs. Louisiana vs. Texas Panhandle vs. Idaho vs. Southern California (to name some I can think of off the top of my head, and not including Sanpete County vs. Orderville in Utah), but my ear has not learned to discriminate well even between Ireland and Scotland over here in the UK. I have to stop and think about it: in Ireland they say “ar” for “or,” with a hard “r.” (In fact, Ireland may be the origin of the infamous Southern Utah “ar.”) For Scots I think of movie voices. And even then (or of course then) I’m often wrong. But it’s still fun to listen to people.