Useful Research Links

Bolero

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2013
Messages
1,080
Reaction score
106
Location
UK
The YouTube one is good - accurate, but the accents are pretty mild. :)

There are joke/humour books around about accent and dialect - remember one about "Bristle" - which is the Bristolian saying "Bristol".

I'd do a search for humorous phrase books - that will give you some "classic" phrases.
 

williemeikle

The force is strong in this one.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2005
Messages
3,728
Reaction score
664
Location
Canada
Website
www.williammeikle.com
Just append -bach occasionally to people's names, you'll be fine :)


Broad Scots is easy enough

Hah! An Ayrshire man ( like me ) talking to a Glaswegian (say), both conversing in broad Scots, use completely different diction and colloquialisms.
 

Telergic

Overwriting
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 19, 2013
Messages
930
Reaction score
26
Location
Massachusetts
Hah! An Ayrshire man ( like me ) talking to a Glaswegian (say), both conversing in broad Scots, use completely different diction and colloquialisms.

Heh, I mean, easy enough to convey to a non-Scotsman. But I understand I'll have to caw canny to be convincing to a native :)

Edit (after pause for Google Maps): Wow, and Ayrshire is only around 30 km from Glasgow, right? That's a short distance for a large difference.
 
Last edited:

williemeikle

The force is strong in this one.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2005
Messages
3,728
Reaction score
664
Location
Canada
Website
www.williammeikle.com
Heh, I mean, easy enough to convey to a non-Scotsman. But I understand I'll have to caw canny to be convincing to a native :)

Edit (after pause for Google Maps): Wow, and Ayrshire is only around 30 km from Glasgow, right? That's a short distance for a large difference.

Yep - And I'm from North Ayrshire, so as close to Glasgow as it comes, but the difference between there and Glasgow in speech is definitely marked.

Ken whit a' mean?
 

ULTRAGOTHA

Merovingian Superhero
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 17, 2011
Messages
2,467
Reaction score
313
Hah! An Ayrshire man ( like me ) talking to a Glaswegian (say), both conversing in broad Scots, use completely different diction and colloquialisms.

I thought Glaswegians spoke no language known to man? There were Scots at the Worldcon in Glasgow in 2005 that couldn't understand the taxi drivers, much less us poor USAians.


Mirandashell, you rock! Thanks!
 

Bolero

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2013
Messages
1,080
Reaction score
106
Location
UK
@onesecond - :D

Just append -bach occasionally to people's names, you'll be fine :)

Seriously, I'm a little concerned about this myself. For a WIP I have people from Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Man, and highland and lowland Scotland speaking English together, and I'm trying to give them distinctive voices, despite not being a native of the UK myself.

Broad Scots is easy enough -- so easy you can fall into a parody if you're not careful -- but some of the others are less clear, especially if you don't use dialect-spellings. There are plenty of sites out there including various Wikipedia pages that list characteristic phrases and styles, but the trick is to use them in a way that suggests the differences without seeming blatant or intrusive. So for example, I gather that in Wales there is more of a tendency to phrase statements as questions than in England. But this tendency can't be presented in too obvious a way or it will look silly, don't you think?

Couple of comments - Welsh is a lilting accent, so you can also get a rise in voice that implies a question when it isn't.

Depending on what jobs your characters are doing, and how much they've travelled, they may not have much accent left. Varies a lot. (It is the kind of thing that comes out more strongly if someone is upset. Might suddenly let rip with an old home phrase.)

Student in my year was from Glasgow - I had to ask him to speak slowly to get what he was saying. But he said when he went home, his family were saying he had lost his accent and turned into a southerner.

Place I worked near London, one of my colleagues who was from London and lightly London in accent (I won't say cockney as I don't think he was born in earshot of Bow Bells), one day talked about a girl who'd used to work at the company. Got enthusiastic about her lovely red hair, well turned out, really clever and then said "She was from Cornwall and we were always teasing her about how smart she looked but she sounded like a hayseed."
 

Los Pollos Hermanos

Craving the next chocolate hit...
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
480
Reaction score
36
Location
England
I was born in NW England, lived near London from the ages of 7-18/21 (family still in SE, me in Manchester for university) and then I moved back to NW for work. Consequently, I have a mish-mash accent and nobody has a clue where I'm from! I've had everything from Scottish to Scouse to Cockney suggested - haha!
 

mirandashell

Banned
Joined
Feb 7, 2010
Messages
16,197
Reaction score
1,889
Location
England
I worked abroad once and developed an Estuary accent. Not consciously but just from the people I was working with. And then a friend of mine was with me when I phoned home on a public phone. And after the call she said 'I didn't know you were a Brummie'. I hadn't realised but as soon as my Mom spoke to me, my accent went back to its roots.

I'm one of those people who absorb other peoples accents.
 

mirandashell

Banned
Joined
Feb 7, 2010
Messages
16,197
Reaction score
1,889
Location
England
I did live in Brizzle for a while and what interested me on the British Library website was the difference in the accents between the pupils at the posh girls school and the old women from Knowle West . The latter is definitely what I think of as a Brizzle accent.
 

amergina

Pittsburgh Strong
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 20, 2007
Messages
15,599
Reaction score
2,471
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Website
www.annazabo.com
Ah, I was a bit incorrect in my description. All the speakers speak English (the same basic paragraph). Some are native speakers (500+ under English from all over) many are not. There's info about when they learned English and how.

It's a fascinating collection of accents. Heck, even just browsing the native English speakers!
 

mirandashell

Banned
Joined
Feb 7, 2010
Messages
16,197
Reaction score
1,889
Location
England
Ah I see! My apologies. Like I said, I hadn't listened to it so I assumed it was native languages.
 

eyeblink

Barbara says hi
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
Messages
6,357
Reaction score
883
Location
Aldershot, UK
For those who wish to know what a Shetlander sounds like without having to travel all the way there and for those who don't believe how much accents can vary over a very small area, I present this:

http://www.shetlanddialect.org.uk/dialect-map-of-shetland

Enjoy!


And BTW, this is the Shetland Islands:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/vt/da...7fl5niYH5l4lurj0rzJU1vAIx2kXTAhAwiFs4Di9mQ77r


And they are right at the top of this:
http://www.mapsofworld.com/united-kingdom/britain/maps/britain-map.gif

And they look like this:
http://move.shetland.org/assets/images/move-to-shetland/john-coutts-lerwick.jpg

I remember my Dad telling the tale of how some Shetland residents had to fill out an information form (I forget for what), where one of the questions was about their nearest railway station. They answered with "Bergen, Norway" as it's apparently technically nearer than mainland Scotland on some of the islands.

I've been to John O'Groats, but the Orkneys/Shetlands are still on my bucket list!

I've been three times to Shetland (and it's "Shetland", by the way, not "the Shetlands" or "Shetland Islands"). If you like bleak and windswept, I can definitely recommend it. The nearest UK rail station is in Thurso on the mainland, and Bergen is indeed nearer. In fact, Lerwick is further away from London than Milan is.

It's not easy or especially cheap to get to though: you can fly from Aberdeen or take an overnight ferry from there. There's a ferry from Orkney to Shetland which takes about eight hours.

I would also recommend the coach trip to the far north of the islands, which went on Wednesdays when I did it (1999), ten hours round trip, during which you can have a drink at the northermost pub in the British Isles. (The Baltasound Hotel on Unst, though I understand the old radar station at Saxa Vord since then been turned into a tourism complex.)

Yep - And I'm from North Ayrshire, so as close to Glasgow as it comes, but the difference between there and Glasgow in speech is definitely marked.

Ken whit a' mean?

I can vouch for this. There's a well-known SFF writer, born in Kilwinning, I'm thinking of, and he can be hard to understand at times, especially when he's had a bit to drink.

See also the 2002 film Sweet Sixteen, set in Greenock, which has twice been shown on British television with English subtitles throughout. (In the cinema it was just the first reel, with a note saying that you were on your own after that...)
 

ULTRAGOTHA

Merovingian Superhero
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 17, 2011
Messages
2,467
Reaction score
313
I'm one of those people who absorb other peoples accents.

I do that, too. It can be darned embarrassing if people think I'm mocking them. Sigh.

I spent three months in London at university. Got off the plane. Said, "Hi sister!" and she said "Oh, you have a British accent!"

Double sigh.
 

King Neptune

Banned
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Messages
4,253
Reaction score
372
Location
The Oceans
I've been three times to Shetland (and it's "Shetland", by the way, not "the Shetlands" or "Shetland Islands"). If you like bleak and windswept, I can definitely recommend it. The nearest UK rail station is in Thurso on the mainland, and Bergen is indeed nearer. In fact, Lerwick is further away from London than Milan is.

It's not easy or especially cheap to get to though: you can fly from Aberdeen or take an overnight ferry from there. There's a ferry from Orkney to Shetland which takes about eight hours.

I would also recommend the coach trip to the far north of the islands, which went on Wednesdays when I did it (1999), ten hours round trip, during which you can have a drink at the northermost pub in the British Isles. (The Baltasound Hotel on Unst, though I understand the old radar station at Saxa Vord since then been turned into a tourism complex.)



I can vouch for this. There's a well-known SFF writer, born in Kilwinning, I'm thinking of, and he can be hard to understand at times, especially when he's had a bit to drink.

See also the 2002 film Sweet Sixteen, set in Greenock, which has twice been shown on British television with English subtitles throughout. (In the cinema it was just the first reel, with a note saying that you were on your own after that...)

You're right about Sweet Sixteen. I found a 10 minute sample that has French subtitles, and the subtitles are much easier to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a2jmA2ZNFk
 

mirandashell

Banned
Joined
Feb 7, 2010
Messages
16,197
Reaction score
1,889
Location
England
I do that, too. It can be darned embarrassing if people think I'm mocking them. Sigh.

You're right. More than once I've got into a tangle with someone thinking I'm taking the piss and I have no idea what I've just done until I replay the conversation in my head.

In fact, I still have little bits of the dialects of all the places I've lived in or people I've worked with. I still mix my pronouns in Bristolian fashion and I still say 'your man' instead of 'him' from when I lived in Dublin and I still say 'yoursen' instead of 'yourself' cos I once worked with a Yorkshireman. And all of those examples are from years ago. And they aren't the only ones. Certain words come out with an Eustary twang every now and again but at other times they won't. It's all unconsciously done and can depend on who I'm talking to.
 

Barbara R.

Old Hand in the Biz
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
1,963
Reaction score
242
Location
New York
Website
www.barbararogan.com
Your favorite character's favorite tipple

I found an amazing site: a zine for, by, and about drunkards. And they posted this wonderful chart about the drinks of choice of various fictional characters. Ever wonder what's in the bottle that ever self-respecting PI keeps in his lower left desk draw? Tough-guy detectives, it turns out, prefer rye. Carrie Bradshaw drinks Cosmopolitans, naturally. And so on. Have [hic] fun!
 

cmhbob

Did...did I do that?
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
5,729
Reaction score
4,773
Location
Green Country
Website
www.bobmuellerwriter.com
Ammunition Resource

This page has photos of a variety of ammunition cartridges placed side-by-side for comparison. Near the bottom, there's also a couple of images of shotgun ammunition as well as a comparison of choke patterns.

Placing it here for its research value, not a gun discussion.

http://herohog.com/images/guns/ammo/
 

Trebor1415

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
653
Reaction score
82
Location
Michigan
An archive of old magazine articles for research

There's no really good place to put this so I'll start a thread. The mods might want to look at this to see if it should be stickied.

This is a site with archives from old magazines, dating back to around the turn of the 19th/20th Century. You can search by subject.

I can see how this can be useful in so many ways that I wanted to share it. Besides the articles, look at the ads.

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/recent.php#.VGloNMlNeew