Looong weekend! F*ck yeah!

[gothikmaus]

My weekend has officially started. Tomorrow's a bank holiday and I took a day off on Friday, I stayed at work a bit longer today so I could finish the most urgent things. And if something comes up, my boss can take care of it from France. I also handed in all my articles for this week. I had the culture and sport page this time around: this week we have a special feature on the local basketball team, next week I'll write about football and the one after that about volleyball.

I just want to sleep until midday tomorrow, eat a big brunch and enjoy having the flat all to myself.

In yesterday's post I talked about British vs American English and a couple of people mentioned the Australian accent too. Well, maybe it's because I've only ever talked to one Australian in my whole life, and she had been living in England for 2 years at the time, so her accent wasn't so strong, but I have no idea what the "Aussie accent" sounds like.

For example, in this interview Alex O'Loughlin (who is my latest celebrity crush, by the way) says "'Cos I'm just Jenny from the block" and apparently he says it with an Aussie accent?

From 2:41

I consider myself quite a language geek and I love the English language, but if I think about it, I realise there's a lot I don't know. Not just the Australian accent, even the Irish accent, I have no idea how Irish people sound. Does anyone on my flist have links to clips, snippets from films etc. where I could hear different accents? I could just go to the Speech Accent Archive, but there are just so many times I can listen to "Please call Stella..." :P

(Or maybe I could just watch "Australia". What's the running time again, 12 hours?)

Comments

[angrylogic.livejournal.com]

Apparently I sound Irish. I get this all the time from people who are from the same town as me ¬_¬ Maybe it's because I don't speak like I have a pie jammed in my mouth that they don't get my accent. Not that I have much of an accent, or at least compared to most people here.

Try looking at trailers for films for different accents. Some of them can be a little put on, but they're about as accurate as you're ever going to get from something that's been recorded for entertainment rather than recorded from real life.

[gothikmaus.livejournal.com]

My accent is painfully obvious, any Italian can understand I come from Milan in less than 3 seconds. XD

And yes, looking for film trailers is probably the easiest way. I just need to look for films set in different countries or where the characters are supposed to come from different countries. That's the problem with always watching dubbed films, every actor sounds the same, no matter where they (or their characters) come from.

[schwimmerin.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just me, but I actually liked Australia. It didn't hurt that Hugh Jackman was in it. It's about three hours.

Australian and New Zealand accents are a little twangier; Irish accents are softer and sort of similar to Scottish in a way, except Scottish vowels are tighter. None of that is really helpful, but yeah, I would try movie trailers. Actually, this video is pretty awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k

[gothikmaus.livejournal.com]

Well, Hugh Jackman is always worth watching. ;)

That video is amazing! :O I died when she put on the Scottish accent. "You know, Walker like the shortbread?" XD Thanks for the link! :)

[kiviraat.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wonder if even looking for news interviews from different countries would help you understand accents better? That's what I do when I really need to hear some good ole German accents (mmm, Berlin...)

It's so tough because there isn't ever just one accent XD I can understand people from the east coast of Northern Ireland waaaaaaaaaaaay better than I can understand someone with a very thick accent from the south west. Even when I was up on Orkney at the weekend, I had an awfully hard time trying to understand the people even though technically we were all Scottish XD

[gothikmaus.livejournal.com]

I could look for interviews on YouTube, thanks for the suggestion. :)

I know there are a lot of different accents within the same country/region, I'm just trying to get an idea of what people from different English-speaking countries sound like, because it seems I always end up hearing the same standard accents and when I stumble upon something different I have trouble understanding what's being said.