Accents

[Daisy]

Lizzie - that's a lovely story. He must have wondered if there was a whole road he'd never known about.

[Lizzie48]

Daisy, that is what he thought! If I drive through the village whilst in the UK, I always think of Hopwood Lane!

[Daisy]

Lizzie, talking about accents - did you find it difficult to learn Dutch?

[Lizzie48]

Very!!! I met a young woman, my age at the time, with children the same age, she said I was always welcome, but, as she didn't speak any English we did it with hands and feet to start with. She got me into the basics and got me reading childrens books etc to learn. It took a while though but got there, she remained my friend for years, sadly she passed away a few years ago.

I can write in Dutch, sometimes when I am answering on here I have to check I don't get it mixed together.

My 2 sons both speak English very well, the eldest with a Yorkshire accent. When he is away on business they guess he is from Yorkshire and not Holland.

[Nana]

Funny how this post has cropped up now as I was saying to OH just a few days ago, how we all live on this little Island yet we all speak differently. I always thought I had a typical Northern accent, until at 18 I got a holiday job in a plastics factory a couple of towns along from where I grew up. At the factory they all thought I was posh as I used 'the' instead of t' ...... "I will get the pipe" & not "I'll ge t' pipe." etc. Made me smile.

I went to College in the Lakes for 3yrs when I left school & shared accommodation with Welsh, Irish, Northumberland & London girls. Needless to say my accent got a little lost at the end of my time there.😂

Lizzie I admire you, learning another language. I love it that your DS1 has a Yorkshire accent.

[Nanto2girls]

Well if you ever meet my hubby beware.
He speaks very broad Yorkshire, and when we are away on holiday i have to translate.

We were once on holiday and got friendly with another Yorkshire couple.
One evening we were sat talking when another couple joined us.
Don't know where they were from,but spoke quite posh,or tried to.
The posh lady used to put R's in her words.
She used to say things like barth(bath) or marshed(mashed).
The Yorkshire lady told her, there is no R in bath and mashed.
Her and hubby never spoke to any of us again.

[Nana]

Made me laugh Nan2. The same subject is being discussed on FBk... the short & longer A. When we went to the Highlands OH translated for me too.😁

[Daisy]

Lizzie - what a kind friend you had. You must miss her, but it was a good idea to learn through reading children's books. How funny that your eldest son speaks English with a Yorkshire accent! What did you speak at home - English or Dutch?

It's amazing how children pick up languages, though. I've got a friend whose sons grew up speaking three languages, and by the time they were about 5 they'd got each one nailed. When they were younger they'd sometimes swap languages mid-sentence.

Nana - you had a proper United Nations at college! It must have been a lot of fun. The friends DS2 shared houses with when he was at Uni thought he was posh - he sounds very southern! He thought it was quite funny.

Nanto - it sounds as though the last couple to join your merry band had a sense of humour failure!

Nana - I find a broad Glaswegian accent really difficult to understand, unless they slow down for me.

I did once apologise to a relative of my OH's because I didn't speak Welsh. Unfortunately she was speaking English at the time!!!

[Lizzie48]

Daisy, she was very good friend, we were friends for years. When I got to speak it I spoke Dutch with the boys, only when I got annoyed did I speak English, then they knew I meant it!!! DS1 used to visit my mother as often as he could and he works with men from the Leeds area so got the Yorkshire accent from all that.

Nana, the same happened to me visiting Scotland, I was used to the Glaswegian from my father and his family, but the higher we went the less I could understand! I have a friend, he is from Glasgow but lives near Aberdeen, he sounds exactly like my father did.

[Daisy]

Lizzie - slightly different question. What language do you think in?

When I used to spend more time in France with French-speaking friends (my French isn't very good) I found I stopped translating between the two languages in my head - and sort of stopped thinking completely. I couldn't keep up with thinking in English, but my French wasn't up to thinking in French!

[Grauntie Mag]

My niece was at college in Kent and said one of the pupils said she was from Fannit when asked by a tutor. Although she said Fannit she meant Thanet. That’s pure Estuary! The only other ‘language’ I speak is ‘backslang’ which is where you either add something to the beginning or end of a word, or put something in the middle, so by putting ‘verg’ in the middle,‘this’ for instance, becomes ‘thivergis’. We learned it at school and it has been very handy over the years, especially when we don’t want the children to understand what we are saying. Both DDs can speak it at speed too and it sounds like gobbledygook but we can understand each other.😆 No idea where it originated. OH is a Yorkshire man and even though he has lived in the south for fifty years he still has an accent.

[Lizzie48]

Daisy, I think in Dutch most of the time, often count in English, why I do not know!

[Gemini]

I'm going to practice that Verge thing!

[Grauntie Mag]

Goovergood morvergorniverging Gevergem!

[Oma]

My MIL has times when she's talking to us she will suddenly come out with German and we have to tell her ,
She has a strong Makem accent and no one would think she was from Germany , but she says when we are in Germany her head hurts trying to think and speak both languages ,
She sometimes forgets how to write in German too .