Irish

[Do228]

I want to learn how to speak English with an Irish accent.
What are the first steps I should do?

 

[emsr2d2]

Why do you want to speak English with an Irish accent? Are you an actor and you need to practise different accents? I would suggest that unless you go to live in Ireland for quite some time, it's not going to come naturally to you. Plenty of non-Irish native speakers can't nail a decent Irish accent.

 

[Raymott]

to be sure!

PS: You should check out YouTube videos such as:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2PHch4IPPQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9NKyBiu6FM

 

[jutfrank]

1) Find someone to use as a model
2) Imitate them

 

[Skrej]

First thing is decide which Irish accent you want. Just like with BrE and AmE, there are a whole bunch of different Irish accents.

Supposedly a trained ear can identify which of the 32 Irish counties a person is from by their accent. It's also been said that the Irish accent changes every 20 km.

Here are some features of 3 major regions.

http://dialectblog.com/irish-accents-dialects/

 

[Tdol]

I want to learn how to speak English with an Irish accent.
What are the first steps I should do?

Make plenty of Irish friends and learn the sounds and music of their speech.

 

[emsr2d2]

If he were still alive, I'd give you my grandfather's phone number and you could have experienced his thick, almost unintelligible Tipperary accent! You might have had better luck than I did when I was a small child - I couldn't understand a word he said until I was about 10.

 

[Skrej]

I've always thought that copious amounts of Guinness and Jameson dramatically improve my Irish accent. But that might just be the barley whispering sweet in my ear.

 

[jutfrank]

Watch all 3 seasons of Father Ted and then attempt to do impressions of Father Jack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI-WRb2u4po

 

[Do228]

Is this a typical Irish accent?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIHVyP-57U4

 

[GoesStation]

Wow, that was painful. Accents are harder to sort out in singing, but they sound distinctly Aussie to me.

 

[emsr2d2]

That is one of the most dreadful things I've ever had the misfortune to listen to (and to see!) If they're actually Irish, I'll be staggered! There is something seriously wrong with that child's accent.

There is no such thing as a "typical" Irish accent (unless a Dublin accent counts as one). Listen to the narrator on this video for an example of a County Tipperary accent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sGoIxoKuZw

 

[Roman55]

Yeah, I agree. Totally horrible. There is this Wikipedia article on the Kelly Family, in which they are described as an Irish-American-European music group (whatever that means). It seems they left Ireland for the States around 1847, so maybe the accent has faded a bit since then. I'd fortunately never heard of them.

 

[jutfrank]

Just to give everybody an excuse to listen to this wonderfully haunting ballad again, if you go to 2:00 you'll hear Papa Kelly using a speaking voice. It doesn't sound particularly Irish to me. Perhaps he's deliberately (and unsuccessfully) trying to put on an Irish accent. As far as I can tell, the US-born Daniel Jerome Kelly never lived in the old country, and neither did his children.

 

[GoesStation]

Just to give everybody an excuse to listen to this wonderfully haunting ballad again, if you go to 2:00 you'll hear Papa Kelly using a speaking voice. It doesn't sound particularly Irish to me. Perhaps he's deliberately (and unsuccessfully) trying to put on an Irish accent. As far as I can tell, the US-born Daniel Jerome Kelly never lived in the old country, and neither did his children.

It's certainly haunting. Dear old Dad does put on a bit of what sounds like an Irish inflection to my American ears, but he doesn't sound like an American trying to reproduce an Irish accent.

The Wikipedia article appears to have been written by people who can actually listen to treacle like that and, if such a thing is possible, enjoy it. The article's quality suggests the practice may cause permanent brain damage. If its numbers are at all accurate, the Kelly family made millions of dollars selling such slop, from which I'm forced to conclude that millions of people paid to be exposed to it.

 

[jutfrank]

It's certainly haunting.

:lol:

millions of people paid to be exposed to it.

They were big in Germany. I have no further comments.

 

[Do228]

How about this guy, does he sound authentic Irish to you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAR3rjCz0Sw

 

[GoesStation]

How about this guy, does he sound authentic Irish to you?

He sounds like an American introducing some aspects of what he perceives as an Irish accent into his delivery.