Brummie accent

[ThePenguin]

Messing around again with google -- this article caught my eye. Chris has often said she hates her Birmingham accent, but I guess I never realized what an awful stigma is still attached to it in the UK! Look at the last sentence of the article, about 'giving people w/ the accent a fair chance'. I had no idea the accent was so scorned over there!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/w...ds/3187433.stm

I've always thought she sounds adorable LOL.



-Lis

[amber]

That was interesting. I always thought Chris's accent must be a high class british kind. (not knowing anything about such, except that Cockney was low)
She sounds all refined to me...

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by amber

That was interesting. I always thought Chris's accent must be a high class british kind. (not knowing anything about such, except that Cockney was low)
She sounds all refined to me...

Same here! I love the way she talks! I had no idea it was considered inferior by anyone.

Thanks for posting that article, Lis.

[NicksIllume]

I love her accent! I always love to find interviews or live shows where she talks. I feel her pain with hating an accent though. -_-

[macfan 57]

I LOVE Christine's accent. I always thought she sounded classy. This must be why she always claims she hates to hear herself speak. I wonder why Birmingham has such a bad public image.

[ThePenguin]

Originally Posted by macfan 57

I LOVE Christine's accent. I always thought she sounded classy. This must be why she always claims she hates to hear herself speak. I wonder why Birmingham has such a bad public image.

From what I know, Birmingham used to be viewed as a very industrial, ugly, blue collar type place w/ few redeeming features. However if you check out various websites you can see it's been 'refurbished' in many areas and looks like a pretty decent place now. As somebody wrote about it:

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"I have been to Birmingham - it is ok. They seem to have replaced a lot of the grottiness with modern development. But it's not a very romantic city - All modern American-style bowling allies, Starbucks, and pub-clubs etc. I could live there for a year or two with a good job."
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So it basically sounds like any American city LOL.

Here's an interesting description of the accent-- it's amazing how many sites you can find that explain exactly WHY this accent is viewed as inferior! It's crazy!!

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Ozzy does ramble on in a way that most Brummies who haven't done massive amounts of drugs don't, but his sounds and his intonation are basically the way real Brummie sounds.

The most important elements of the Brummie accent are the rounding of the long I sound and the downward intonation of both words and sentence endings. Both of these elements seem to make other Brits think Brummies are unimaginative and even "thick," although Brits probably mostly think Brummie is unattractive because of the unaesthetic qualities of the cities in that area of the country.

Words like Friday start to sound like "Froyday." The "a" sound at the end of the word is also underarticulated because of the downward intonation, so it comes out sounding like "Froydeh." The "ee" sound is over pronounced though so "city" is pronounced like "si-tee" and even "si-tay" the closer one gets to the Black Koontray (Country) to the west of Birmingham. In the Black Country accent (Wolverhampton, Dudley), the "oy" sound is even more strongly pronounced although, in my opinion, the accent has more tonality to it.

The rhythm of a Brummie sentence is just as important as the pronunciation, though. Just imitating the sounds will not make you sound like a native. While it's not an atonal accent, it definitely has less tonality on a whole than RP, Estuary and most of the northern accents. I heard someone say once that the Birmingham accent is "bad" because its speakers don't open their mouth as vertically as much as southern speakers and instead keep their lips as horizontally as possible. While I disagree with the value judgment, I find that trying this helps me imitate the accent better.
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This whole thing is really interesting to me, i have to say. I found this website so neat:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A496352

Check out the papagraph where the do the phonetic pronunciation-- I can totall hear Chris saying it that way LOL.

-Lis