Accent

[williamjm]

A couple of days ago I was talking with one of my colleagues, who started working here at the beginning of the month. I made some comment about going up to Scotland for a week next month and he looked slightly surprised and said 'Oh, you're Scottish are you?'. I was slightly surprised he hadn't noticed this before since I've talked to him quite a few times and I had thought that although I don't have the strongest Scottish accent it should have been reasonably noticeable. Admittedly, my new colleague is originally from India and therefore may not be an expert on identifying British accents but before starting work here he was in Glasgow for 5 years so should have heard a few Scottish accents before - although he did comment that I didn't sound much like a Glaswegian which I think is probably fairly accurate. I mentioned this to my Mum and she said she didn't think I had much of an accent, on the other hand there have been quite a few occasions when people who didn't know me had identified me as Scottish just from my accent, for example I remember peadarog telling me 'you must be one of the Scottish contingent' when I first met him. I find it difficult to really assess my own accent, I know how I hear myself won't be the same as other people will hear me and I've never been very good at identifying accents anyway.

So, if you've met me what is your opinion? Do I have an obvious Scottish accent or not?

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

yeap. It's very context dependant.