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> In fact, according to linguist Sheila Blumstein, it's not really a foreign accent at all. Rather, it's a change in speech patterns that listeners interpret as
by yorwba 7y ago
> In fact, according to linguist Sheila Blumstein, it's not really a foreign accent at all. Rather, it's a change in speech patterns that listeners interpret as an accent — though sometimes a bad one.
Well, that's much more plausible than suddenly being able to imitate a specific different accent perfectly. I wonder whether any Scots were involved in identifying her speech patterns as Scottish.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pakitan 7y agoThere is a sound clip in the article. I'm not a Scot and not even a native English speaker but I can recognize some Scottish "artefacts" in her speech. Nevertheless, she definitely didn't go full Braveheart and is nowhere near having a "perfect" accent.
- krilly 7y agoThere are many Scottish accents, and Braveheart isn't one of them. To me it sounds very much like Inverness, or maybe a native Gaelic speaker from the outer Hebrides. They have an interesting accent which sounds somewhat foreign, despite debatably being more native than English
- joegahona 7y agoI think "Go full Braveheart" was used for humorous effect. Would "go full Trainspotting" have passed your correctness meter? :)
- OJFord 7y agoI'm English, and would say 'yes that's pretty good' if she were a Canadian 'doing a Scottish accent' at a party or whatever - with some truth and some politeness. But I wouldn't meet her and think 'yep you're Scottish'. Not that I can claim to have heard representative samples of all Scottish accents (just like 'English' it encompasses far more than one) of course, but something's just 'off' to the extent that I'd actually be surprised if she was introduced as actually Scottish, or assume it had been mucked up by living abroad or whatever.