What English (UK) Dialect Could This Be?

[Outdated]

I don't know about that. Have you ever heard educated people from Boston, Massachusetts speak?!

There's a few people that will deliberately portray a particular accent too, for effect. There's a classic little cartoon from many years ago that I think you'd appreciate called Cane Toad. I don't think I can post the link here but I can PM you if you can't find it.

That video is a classic example of a "put on" accent.

 

[Angular Chap]

There's quite a few videos out there of people getting Scotts to try and say "burglar alarm".

It’s usually "purple burglar alarm".

The former head of NATO was a Scotsman, General George Robertson. I heard a radio interview with him discussing the war in Ukraine and he managed to slip the words “burglar alarm” into the interview!

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Years ago for the first time, a work mate, some one who was first generation from somewher else asked me about my accent, just told him its probably a rural Canadian accent, bit different from city of Toronto accent.

 

[Alexej]

It is not Scottish - just to say.
I suspect not a native UK person

 

[Judge]

I suspect not a native UK person

Interesting. If you search his bio (not written by him) it claims he was born in England. Though for a very long time I just assumed he was an immigrant. Then a Scot...but then in posting this that didn't sound correct either. His accent is more subtle, but I just couldn't pin it down. Still, in some ways he really did come across to me as an immigrant in Britain.

LOL...leaving me still a bit confused.

 

[Hypnalis]

Quite a few tried to teach me how to do that when I was a kid. No matter how hard I tried I never managed it, I think Scotts are built different.

Aussie English is "r-hostile". That sound is learnable, but not easily for an Australian, even starting with an Adelaide accent.

Rhoticity in English - Wikipedia

FWIW, the basics:
* Check out how you make a "t" sound: tongue should be tapping upwards a bit behind your teeth just before you "breathe" out.
* Step one in rolling R's is to do approximately the same thing with your tongue when you make an "r" sound.
* Step two is to do it lightly enough that the breath pushes it down while you're very lightly pushing it up.
It takes a lot of practice to get it right in normal speech. IMO unless you want to complete with e.g. Scots or Catalonian it's not worth the effort.

NB: there's a bit more to it OFC.
I think the way "Daniel the Australian hero" in the video says "you" right at the end ("... your mates will look after you") is an indirect example of "r-hostility".


BTW - my English is non-rhotic, but less so than Australian. Where I live is rhotic, but less so than Scots. What I do unless I'm deliberately masking my accent is somewhere between the two.
Naturally people in both places give me a hard time about my failings /lol.

 

[Mary Terry]

There's a few people that will deliberately portray a particular accent too, for effect. There's a classic little cartoon from many years ago that I think you'd appreciate called Cane Toad. I don't think I can post the link here but I can PM you if you can't find it.

That video is a classic example of a "put on" accent.

View attachment 145322

Send it to me via PM! That frog needs a bra.

 

[Judge]

Anyone recall actor Jonathan Harris, AKA "Dr. Smith" of the tv series "Lost In Space" ?

Most people think of him as having quite a "polished" accent. Though in reality his native accent was straight out of the Bronx, New York City.

I think it was on the Mike Douglas Show where he told the audience that he once used to describe 33rd Street as "Toyty-Toyd Street".

However his determination in changing his accent helped him out of the slums and into Hollywood.

 

[Outdated]

Anyone recall actor Jonathan Harris, AKA "Dr. Smith" of the tv series "Lost In Space" ?

In the original Star Trek the engineer Scotty was actually Canadian.

There's a lot of Aussie actors that can pass themselves off as Brits and Americans too:

 

[Judge]

In the original Star Trek the engineer Scotty was actually Canadian.

There's a lot of Aussie actors that can pass themselves off as Brits and Americans too:

James Doohan...somewhat famous for cleverly hiding his hand that his fellow Canadian soldiers accidentally shot off his fingers on the beaches of Normandy.

 

[Roisin]

Sounds like there are northern european influences on how he speaks english.

 

[Judge]

Sounds like there are northern european influences on how he speaks english.

I'm glad a few others have weighed in as well, with similar suspicions I had that his accent in some way just doesn't seem so clear. Though some of it does have a "Mersey" ring to it all. I just wish I could get more information on the guy, but it would seem that it is his intent to keep his identity private.

It just puzzles me when I hear such a subtle accent, yet cannot account for where it came from.

 

[Judge]

There's a lot of Aussie actors that can pass themselves off as Brits and Americans too:

Cate Blanchett and Anna Torv come to mind as well. They seem to be capable of doing virtually any accent. And Rod Taylor (RIP) seemed to just evolve towards an American accent much as Mel Gibson did. (Though Mel was born a US citizen).

 

[Roisin]

I'm glad a few others have weighed in as well, with similar suspicions I had that his accent in some way just doesn't seem so clear. Though some of it does have a "Mersey" ring to it all. I just wish I could get more information on the guy, but it would seem that it is his intent to keep his identity private.

It just puzzles me when I hear such a subtle accent, yet cannot account for where it came from.

His vowels remind me of germanic languages, but his turns of phrase seem southern UK.

 

[Hypnalis]

His vowels remind me of germanic languages, but his turns of phrase seem southern UK.

I thought so too. Every now and then he says a word or a phrase where the vowels are 'off", but most of the time they're perfect. And I didn't notice any characteristic errors (like "-ing" words - German speakers with very good English tend to get them wrong on occasion).

So I think his mother could be German, Dutch, maybe Danish or other Scandinavian. Or perhaps he spent a few "tweener" years at school in one of those countries.

 

[Outdated]

His vowels remind me of germanic languages, but his turns of phrase seem southern UK.

One that's tricked me many times over the years is a South African influence, because I don't hear it all that often that can sound a little Germanic too.

 

[Judge]

One that's tricked me many times over the years is a South African influence, because I don't hear it all that often that can sound a little Germanic too.

Listen to YouTuber Dawid Coleman.

"Dawid Does Tech Stuff". A Vancouver transplant from South Africa. Though he has one peculiar vocabulary. Not sure where that came from...lol. Though he was educated in Capetown. May not even speak Afrikaans. Though he has an irreverent sense of humor that not everyone may appreciate.

 

[Outdated]

I think it likely as Hypnalis suggested, that it's likely influence through family members or having overseas schooling because he sounds fairly native English to me. But then I don't live there so I wouldn't pick up on so many of the subtleties, and when English people come here their accent changes quite quickly so it's not really a good example for me.

 

[Judge]

I just wish I had a more articulate way of defining this young man's speech. Then again from most comments, I have to assume others posting here acknowledge that there's just something different, though subtle in play.

I hear many different dialects and accents when it comes to YouTubers. Many are pretty familiar one way or another, but just this one continues to intrigue me.

Anyways, thanks for all the feedback.

 

[maleonolo]

It's hard to tell since many youtubers have Americanised accents, but if you're familiar with the qualities of a wide variety of accents you could use a spectrogram, they're used among linguists who study phonology.

I know very little about northern accents but it's surprising that he pronounces 'theory' as 'theury" at 7:18, and 'enough' with the FOOT vowel (which sounds like enoff) at 8:28. I don't think I've ever heard the un-split FOOT-STRUT in Australian or Southern English accents

Phonological history of English close back vowels - Wikipedia

It's nice to meet people who are interested in accents/phonology