A cogently presented point, Kitty: consider my opinion amended.

Wouldn't dream of it, Ron. Certainly wouldn't do to let that information slip out!

Could the resilience of those two accents have anything to do with the particular pride in their birthplace of both groups?

There's actually a second possible reason for the tenacity of certain accents, and one of which many actors in particular will already be aware. It's generally assumed that we learn accents and their vowel sounds by ear, but a second theory suggests that they are as much a product of attitude, environment and physiognomy. In brief; the dampness, speed of wind, quality of air and many other aspects of everyday life can have an effect on how people hold their heads and mouths: in places where this pattern becomes locked into the muscle memory it's very difficult to lose the sounds.

Let's compare Scousers and Brummies, for a minute. The accents are quite different, but it's quite surprising how most people find it difficult to do both: one's easy, but the other keeps mutating towards it. If you try and do it by sound alone, it isn't easy. But, possibly becauase of the rather damp and smokey surroundings that Brummies lived in, there developed a tendency to keep the mouth pretty closed, even when speaking: the placing of the voice is forced to the the back of the throat and the top of the soft palate: because the air is expelled slowly there's plenty of time to take things steady, and (possibly allied to the slightly whingey aura that the city seems to give its people) the words are slow and lacking in energy.

Scousers, on the other hand, live by the sea, where the air is very different: they tend to breathe much faster than Brummies. Their basic mouth-shape is very different; if Brummies are speaking through lips which are pursed into a tight little 'o' shape, Scousers go to the other extreme and elongate their mouths towards a letter-box shape. Although the voice tone stays in the midde of the mouth (though more towards the top front, pushed in towards the nasal cavities) a good deal of the breath that should carry the voice actually goes to waste without carrying any tone at all, and escapes round the sides or through the front of the teeth: consonants have more pressure and often overshoot: the letter 't' for example often sounding more like a 'tz', and 's's becoming noticeably more hissy than in most other accents. Because they're breathing faster, and wasting more air, Scousers have to talk much faster to keep up with the breathing gaps. It's much harder to lose that habit than the rather nondescript Brummie pace and shape, so the accent tends to stay.

Most Scots use different resonators to the English, so the voice is placed differently too: along much of the East Coast there's a facial habit of locking-off the upper lip so that it covers the teeth permanently and hardly moves at all. If you're able to do this (think Elvis without the lift on one side) you'll find that certain vowel sounds immediately move towards those made by the Scots: you can't escape it. The mouth shape dictates those sounds, and if you can't lose that mouth shape, you won't lose the accent. (I'm very good at detecting Scots doing English accents on the telly, by the way, I know where all the give-away points lurk. The one actor around at the moment who can lose his Scottish accent completely is David Tennant, but then he's something of an exceptional performer all round.)

   

Yes - very interesting, Ron. The spluttery Scouse "t" sound is a big problem in choirs!

There is a distinct overlap between Scouse and parts of North Wales, like Wrexham or Hawarden. Is that what you mean by gutteral, Antheil? Think of Michael Owen (the footballer - don't say you've never heard him speak ) who comes, I think, from Hawarden. He doesn't sound Welsh by most people's standards.

The North Walians' whole sound is at least partly derived from the fact that they're making the sounds for English with muscle-memories attuned to the production of vowels and consonants in North Welsh, Anty: in much the same way as many Brits don't attempt to alter mouth shapes when speaking French, for example (think Edward Heath). I have friends whose parents and grand-parents were very much Welsh-speaking first, and English as an afterthought, so I'm quite used to hearing the two languages spoken by the same mouth, sometimes even in the same sentence!

The North Walians were allied to a different group, weren't they, Anty?  A group which stretched from there up to Glasgow, basically: which is why Penrith, a Welsh name-place if ever there was, is stuck in Cumbria (cognate with Cymru, of course). South Walians were closer in language to the Cornish.

No books yet, Anty, though maybe I'll publish "The Mine of Useless Information".


Is it time to trot out the little gem that really riles most Scots brainwashed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart into believing that William Wallace spoke like a weegee? The surname reveals that he was of Brythonic-speaking stock. It's a modernisation of the Anglo Saxon "Wealhas" which means foreigner, but came to be associated in particular with those who were already on the island that they'd invaded: the Celts. Gaels, in return, called them 'Sassenach', Bryths called them 'Saesneg'. The Saxons called the Brythonic Celts "Wealhas", and their mongrel ancestors, even after the marriage with Norman French and importation of countless other foreign words along the way, have never lost the habit, but just a couple of letters plus a transposition - that's how we get the word 'Welsh".